Let me type notes without titling them first

[KelseyHigham]

Sometimes I just want to get an idea into a text field as fast as possible, before it leaves my head. When this happens, being forced to give the thought a title slows me down, and sometimes causes me to forget the idea altogether.

Because of this, what I've been doing is simply using the NV title field as a part of the text field, and hitting Return when I reach the end of the line, mirroring what happens when you sync a Simplenote note with NV.

It'd be nice if this were a native feature of using Notational Velocity — namely, the ability to write a note without titling it first.

I can think of several solutions to this problem:

• Treat typing in NV like typing in Simplenote; when you reach the end of the line in NV (or a certain number of characters), automatically switch focus to the text field, so that I can keep writing without hitting Return in the middle of my sentence. This has the added benefit of making it so that you don't have to expand the window to see long titles in NV — since all titles end up being short.
• Do that, but instead of just switching focus, copy what I've written so far in the title field into the text field. This way I can edit the complete sentence without hitting Tab and Shift-Tab all the time.
• Let me write a note first, and give it a title after. When I hit Cmd-N, instead of just switching focus to the title field, switch focus to a new note, with the title field blank, similar to creating a new document in just about every text editor. If I don't give it a title, give the note a title automatically — either by autosplitting the note, as when syncing with Simplenote, or by duplicating some text from the note, as when invoking the NV: New Note With Selection text service.
• Simply allow me to have notes without titles, and display a preview of the note in the title list, similar to how iOS Notes and Simplenote work.

In the meantime, what I've been doing is typing into TextEdit and invoking the NV: New Note With Selection service, which works but is silly.

[scrod]

You can already create blank-titled notes simply by hitting return before you start typing. Pressing ESC beforehand will clear out any existing typed-text, so a combination of ESC-Return already has exactly the same result as Command-N would have.

[KelseyHigham]

Whoa! Cool!

Two problems with this:

• I never discovered this, because I always tried clicking in the text area and that never worked. So let me click there to have the same effect.
• Now my Simplenote and my NV are filled to the brim with Untitled Notes, which aren't very useful, since my Simplenote is set to display just the title line. It'd be better if the title field were populated with more useful text, maybe the first time I select a different note or quit the app or it syncs with the cloud.

[scrod]

1. I'd rather that there be only one way to create notes. See here for a related rationale.
2. Yes, that would be nice. For now, you can use a keyboard shortcut to rename the note: https://github.com/scrod/nv/wiki/List-of-All-Keyboard-Shortcuts