2024-12-02

Update on using the OBTF and Textastic for publishing from the iPad

I've been using the OBTF (One Big Text File) for about eight months now and I'm still finding it very useful as a daily starting point and home base for all note taking, journaling and writing. All my blog posts are written here too (details in previous post). Currently the file is 794 KB in size and Textastic has no problems handling that.

When I migrated my website away from micro.blog and over to my own hosting a couple months ago, I also moved the OBTF over to the root folder of the website so it sits along side of index.html and other pages for easy access via the file sidebar in Textastic.

When a post is ready to publish I share it to the appropriate Shortcut which creates a ready-to-upload new post file for stand alone full posts and also copies excerpts into the PastePal clipboard app and then sends me back to Textastic where I paste in the ready to use code to the appropriate files.

A screenshot of an iPad with three windows open. In the top left quarter is the Textastic app showing the FTP client with local files on the left side and remote files on the right side. The right half of the screen is a text document open in Textastic. In the bottom loft quarter is the PastePal app with numerous tiles of text.

Textastic has a built-in FTP client which makes for easy upload of blog/html edits. The whole process is about as easy as any CMS I've used in the past. It's actually much easier than WordPress.

Of the apps I rely on the most Textastic remains a long-time favorite. I probably spend about half of my computing time in this app. Rather than rehash the details in yet another mini-review I'll refer to a few notes I made in a previous post.

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