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BeOrg and Drafts

Anyone have information on using BeOrg and Drafts together on an iPhone?  In particular, I'd like to know:


1. Do the two share the iCloud directory containing the files?  I'm already synchronizing this directory with Working Copy to Github.


2. Any gotchas about BeOrg updating a file while you're working on it with Drafts or vice versa?

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I haven't used Drafts that recently, but I don't think it can edit files directly from iCloud - rather it maintains its own database. So whilst you can import a file it doesn't maintain a link to the original file so that it can save the contents back again. Other apps such as iA Writer though can work like that. In general though I wouldn't edit a file in another app that beorg currently has open (such as in the outline or text editor).

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I use drafts as a bridge to get things into beorg without issue. But, as Matthew said, drafts keeps its own database, not in a way that can be edited in situ, so it should really, I think, be considered a way of getting information between various places and not a working environment in and of itself (unless you plan on using nothing but drafts forever and hoping they will remain in business).

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I am great fan of Drafts(4) but share Steen's concerns. So while I don't consider a working environment either I have added a couple of things which help me make better use of Drafts. I created a "action" to export items I could be working on for more than a day to Dropbox as markdown files which means, at least, I have a backup which I can edit. I also use 1Writer on iPad & iPhone which means I can edit the markdown files in Dropbox and with a 1Writer action to send files to Drafts I could restore a lost, damaged or otherwise unusable items.

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Some good points above that illustrate the benefits of having more ownership over your own data. I'm fairly paranoid about ensuring that my org files are safe, and have the following in place so that nothing should ever really get lost:

  • beorg itself every time it downloads an updated org file from WebDAV, Dropbox, iCloud keeps a copy of what it is replacing - and the same happens each time you update an org file locally in beorg. Up to 7 days of versions (actually complete copies of files) are stored locally on your device. So even if you delete a file accidentally in beorg you can get it back again by creating it again, long pressing and selecting versions - they will all still be there in local storage.
  • My Org files are stored using WebDAV using a free Cloudamo account.
  • Every day ChronoSync on macOS backs up all of the my org files to Dropbox and to an external hard disk.
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Interesting points.  I'm not using Drafts (yet), but it's voice recognition features looked interesting for on the go note taking.(like meeting notes).  With respect to security, I've found the following:

  1. Git is very good for storing Org files  You can easily use it to track changes to files as well as use branching if you have multiple people working on the Org files.
  2. Github, Gitlab, and Bitbucket are places to remotely store your Org files using Git.  They have limits on private areas for free, but, if you consider how you organize your files, 1 respository might be enough.
  3. Working Copy is an excellent Git app for iOS, but it is a bit pricey (worth it, though). WC can synchronize it's repository with BeOrg. 
  4. I'm still making Crypt part of my workflow.   Org-Crypt encrypts the note part, but not the header.  This may be good for passwords (etc.),  but I'm still thinking about the structure.
  5. I need to look at and test how BeOrg does encryption.
  6. It would be nice to automate things with Shortcuts.

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Stumbled onto this thread and thought to mention for Drafts users a set of actions that facilitates working with .org files held in Dropbox. I've been using it for some time.


Org-Mode Capture from Drafts.app


It leverages Drafts core function -  quickly enter text and send it somewhere else.


Customize the action (change path etc) to prepend or append a headline with body text and :PROPERTIES: to various org files. Such as inbox.org, tasks.org, notes.org... etc.


It respects :tags: in the headline. Pretty neat.


Hope this proves useful for some interested in adopting Drafts into their org-capture workflow.

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