Since Drafts is evolving more and more into a ‘database application’ where you can store content and data for other Apps in combination with Shortcuts i run into the following limitation:
For ‘regular’ drafts that i use, read and edit myself i name the file by starting the document with a description.For example my list of groceries i start with “# shopping list”. My list with ideas for the weekend “# Weekend ideas”. And so on. Since Drafts List view always displays the first line(s) of a Drafts file this is how i name and identify Drafts. You get the point.
However, for the growing amount of Drafts item’s i use to feed other Apps (with Shortcuts) i usually can’t start the file with a (markdown) title describing the file contents. Because that would mess up the content format required for the specific App im trying to feed.
So now i have a workspace named ‘app database’ where i keep all my little Drafts that i use to feed other Apps with and it has become quite messy and not easy to identify which file contains what.
Would it be an idea to add a name or title to a draft that can be displayed (instead of the first line of the drafts file itself) when enabled in the Workspace settings.
Or is there maybe a workaround for this available im not aware of?
The two workarounds I can think of for this are either create a descriptive tag for each one, which isn’t in the spirit of how to use tags but would probably work, or since you’re using these files to be processed by Shortcuts, allow for comments in your data files. Come up with a prefix and do a regexp search/replace to get rid of them before you process the file.
The best workaround would be to use the first line of the draft as your title, and to split is off and re-add it in your Shortcuts. You should be able to split by lines in Shortcuts, put the first line in a variable, manipulate your text, and remerge the first line before calling “Update Draft” to set the new value.
I couple of extra steps, but if you made utility shortcuts for those steps and included them in other shortcuts, maybe not that bad to maintain.
Adding a separate user-assignable title field is something we have on the feature list, but can’t say when it would be something that gets addressed.
Thank you for addressing and understanding the issue!
After Yvonne’s post i realized i could just go the ‘wipe first line’ route although that adds extra steps to my shortcuts routines. IOS 13 isnt that stable executing lengthy shortcuts. But its a very decent workaround: thank you for that.
agiletortoise - Im glad this stuff is at least on your radar!