Sonora - A fast, lightweight music player for OS X. The killer feature of this app is speed. For me, the quality applications that I use on a regular basis are generally defined by their speed. Speed is such a fundamental element in any app because it’s that element which really defines the quality of the code behind it.

So the new version of TaskPaper (version 2.2.3) is out, offered at a great discount, which is nice for us original buyers. Also the latest version of Notational Velocity is also out (Beta 5)

Now I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Hog Bay Software, but I think I’ve finally seen why Notational Velocity works for me and the reasons why TaskPaper, although an excellently put together application, really actually never clicked, even though I tried, really hard to get into it.

###Workflow The workflow is probably the single most significant aspect of Notational Velocity’s success with how I want to write things. The secret sauce is the single input text field at the top of the application.

After a few years with Google Chrome I am now completely programmed to use an application using a single text input field. I now crave the single line input text field that also offers search and inputing text flexibility, within that same space in all of my applications.

I guess the single essential innovation that works for me on Google Chrome that I miss the most when I flip over to Safari, is that input text field. Sure I love the tabs at the top, but the input field is far more essential and without it I feel like something important has been disrupted.

The thing is TaskPaper is great in it’s own right. It really is a well crafted piece of software, and one that has a lot of quality oozing everywhere, the problem is that there is a fundamental problem with regards to how it was conceived to be used.

Also another important feature is how titles are generated in comparison. While both pretty simple, the fact that the first thing you write in the text field before pressing return is the title, again just works.

###Synchronisation One of the things that NV has over TP is the seamless integration with Simplenote and Dropbox. It seems that Jesse wants to get this done for the iOS version, however the sad truth is that this doesn’t exist at the moment. You can synchronise using simpletext.ws, which has a pretty horrible web interface. So much so it’s distracting.

While the web version of simplenote has the clever search bar at the top and visually reminds you of the software on your mac. I guess because I write notes at work on my windowz machine, and then edit on the fly on my iPhone and then do the heavy writing on my Mac at home, the integration works so much better for me.

From the comments in the post it does seem like it’s on the cards, but basically taking too long, the free versions have won me over (even though I’ve paid for both the Mac and the iOS versions).

###NV wishlist Don’t get me wrong, I still think there are a few things that I would like Notational Velocity to have before it honestly becomes the perfect text editor. In particular is markdown integration.

I’d like to be able to write in markdown and have the words change in front of my eyes, if it’s an option that I choose to activate. Leave the text exactly as it is (so all the original markdown text will be available when I view it in Simplenote) but this would be an excellent feature. I don’t really want a separate generator, just let it update then and there.

While this isn’t a feature request, I would like some of that animated polish that is found in TaskPaper to find it’s way back into Notational Velocity. I know that Zachary Schneirov is already taking some queues from TaskPaper (such as the lists and @done), so some other little interesting visual animations would add to the polish (as in when creating formatting etc).

So will I be slapping down some cash on TaskPaper? No, because it doesn’t fit my workflow and I’ll be deleting it off my iPhone as well since it’s just not something I’m likely to use now that I have established my workflow with the NV/Simplenote note taking combination.