I’d like to put in a request for keystroke-accessible ruler formatting and/or ruler styles.
BBEdit has a great feature which allows you to hit cmd-[ and cmd-] to indent a text selection. While I realize that BBEdit handles line returns differently than most writing-based text editors (as opposed to coding-based), these simple commands allow one to quickly place or enter information in hierarchical format without having to resort to messing around with little ruler widgets.
While the outline items in the document list are perhaps handy to some, I think that most people would benefit from some kind of in-document outlining, particularly if it worked within the RTF document format (unlike other packages like Omni Outliner). Simple commands to automatically set ruler indentation would be a great step forward in this regard. Basically a command to move the left margin rightwards a specified amount and a corresponding leftwards command is all that’s necessary for this.
In addition to this style of quick indenting, some kind of ruler styles palette would be very handy. Sure, there’s the ability to copy and paste rulers, but it’s far from efficient and I’d argue it’s also far from intuitive.
The goal here, of course, is not to turn DT into a full-fledged word processor (though I certainly wouldn’t stop you from trying), but to ensure that its own text handling is sufficient for the most common types of note-taking. Messing around with the ruler widgets is tedious at best, and simple commands and buttons to indent/un-indent would facilitate excellent organization and re-organization of text and ideas within documents.
