CintaNotes review

ZEE
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CintaNotes review

Postby ZEE » Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:39 am

CINTANOTES REVIEW

1. When export to text format, not include TAGs info. However you can export to xml with TAGs info. Therefore it is not a big deal.

2. No support to grab picture and also formatted text like in Ms-Word. (rich text format)

3. Miss the hyperlinks in WebPages. it should automatically grab the hyperlinks inside selected text when they capture from web pages etc. source. because many websites use hyperlink for downloading instead of directly putting links in text form.

4. The URL detection method is not well. Only WWW taken as URL, if URL starts with http:// then it doesn’t make it clickable.

5. Separate hotkeys needed, one for silent capture and other for editing window after capturing.

6. Drop basket(box) is missing for quick capture


7. No right click context menu to add selected item or a link from web page.

8. Not capture data from any type of GUI control. For example, if you select all files in window explorer and press hotkey, it does nothing.

9. Not capture TAGs info from web pages that contain tag information.


CONCLUSION
OK, I appreciate the author work. It is very good for creating notes. But this program works very similar to multiple clipboard programs. However it also grab the source info when capture data but in term of memory I will not recommend it to anybody. because many multiple clipboard and other similar monitoring program takes only 1-2MB of memory during ideal time(when they are minimized to tray) while CINTA NOTES take 6-7MB in ideal time.

Quick suggestions

1. Reduce memory usage’s and it will be a good freeware

2. And if you can include/correct the additional functions I described above it can be the best competitor to commercial programs like: link collectors, multiple clipboards(however in this case you have to add hotkey support for pasting at least most recent 9 data items), To-Do, PIM, info organizer (however with alarm and calendar navigation support).

At last, even with these additions I can't purchase it because at present I am a student (home user of CINTA NOTES) having no extra source of money to pay, however, I am sure many other peoples will be interested to pay for it after these additions.
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Re: CintaNotes review

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:31 am

Hello and thanks a lot for writing this review!

When export to text format, not include TAGs info. However you can export to xml with TAGs info. Therefore it is not a big deal.

This is deliberate, most often you don't need tags in plain text. However it will be possible when template-based export comes around
(Roadmap, #164 "Template-based export").

2. No support to grab picture and also formatted text like in Ms-Word. (rich text format)

On the roadmap, #86 and #154.

3. Miss the hyperlinks in WebPages. it should automatically grab the hyperlinks inside selected text when they capture from web pages etc. source. because many websites use hyperlink for downloading instead of directly putting links in text form.

See #144.

4. The URL detection method is not well. Only WWW taken as URL, if URL starts with http:// then it doesn’t make it clickable.

You mean URL detection in the editor? Unfortunately that's standard behaviour of the RichEdit control. I'm going to roll out a better implementation in one of the next versions, see #70.

5. Separate hotkeys needed, one for silent capture and other for editing window after capturing.

I don't think that having 5 hotkeys (show/hide window, create new note, normal clipping, silent clipping, clipping with editing) is better and more user-friendly than just having possibility to configure the program's behavior on clipping.

6. Drop basket(box) is missing for quick capture

Ok, put on the roadmap, #171.

7. No right click context menu to add selected item or a link from web page.

This would be a handy thing, but it would require developing extensions for every major browser out there, what would be quite time-cosuming. I think these extensions will be better provided as an optional download later on. Put on the roadmap, #172.

8. Not capture data from any type of GUI control. For example, if you select all files in window explorer and press hotkey, it does nothing.

Unfortunately there's no way I can provide for every possible type of control. I guess you wanted to get a list of files in a note?
I'll investigate this, but generally I can take only what's put into clipboard.
Put on the roadmap, #173

9. Not capture TAGs info from web pages that contain tag information.

Hmm, do you really think that those META tags can be trusted? I don't think that's a good idea, because they are completely different from the user tags.

However it also grab the source info when capture data but in term of memory I will not recommend it to anybody. because many multiple clipboard and other similar monitoring program takes only 1-2MB of memory during ideal time(when they are minimized to tray) while CINTA NOTES take 6-7MB in ideal time.

The data you see in Task Manager shows total memory, including the common DLLs that are shared across the system. The private bytes of CintaNotes is actually about 3MB on a small notebook. Just to compare: Skype sitting in tray takes on my machine about 10x times as much.
However I acknowledge that the problem with large notebooks exists, since the whole notebook is put into memory for fast access. This problem will be solved when multiple notebooks and tab-based categories come along, as well as the back-end will be migrated to SQLite.

Thanks for your feedback, and hope you'll enjoy the future versions as well!
Alex
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Re: CintaNotes review [update]

Postby ZEE » Fri Apr 24, 2009 11:33 am

IMPROVE SEARCH METHOD

The search functionality is very basic. It should be improved by adding "+" and "-" sign in front of words to search like google search. "+" for including a word in search and "-" for excluding a word in search.

Here is an example (problem) of office work list with 100 notes [If the list is small (about 10-20 notes), that is not a big deal to do that manually] to signify the need for this improvement.

1. I attach a tag named “office” to each note for office work in cinta notes.
2. When a work gets done, I attach a new tag “done” to that note.

3. Now it is possible to search completed work notes: by entering "done" tag in search box
4. And also it is possible to search all office notes: by entering "office" tag in search box

PROBLEM
But what if I want to display all uncompleted work notes: No way to do that

SOLUTION
FIRST: add done tag and remove office tag
Instead of just tagging completed work as "done"; if "office" tag is also removed from completed notes then we can display uncompleted notes by entering "done" tag in search box. (but this will pose a problem if there are more work categories(personal, home etc) that contain same "done" tag on completion. Therefore I don't recommend it)

SECOND: improve search method by allowing to use "+" and "-"sign
However, the google search has more way to search than just adding "+" and "-". eg. Quotes (“…exact text here…”) for exact match, site search method etc. But at least cinta notes should be improved by allowing "+" sign and "-".
Last edited by ZEE on Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: CintaNotes review

Postby Midas » Fri Apr 24, 2009 1:11 pm

I like this idea for search modifiers, but think that '+' is redundant -- if a search term is present and not modified, it can be assumed that the search should heed it; however the '-' would make a significant improvement... :)

While thinking of this, why not use the '+' for AND operator and '|' for OR? With this three modifiers and the regular wildcard characters ('?' for a single char, '*' for any string except zero lenght) you'd have the foundation of a search syntax, simple in principle, but broad in scope. :geek:

EDIT: OOPS! Didn't notice the feature poll thread here, so I repost this there... :oops:
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ZEE
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Re: CintaNotes review (quote5)

Postby ZEE » Sun Apr 26, 2009 8:21 am

I don't think that having 5 hotkeys (show/hide window, create new note, normal clipping, silent clipping, clipping with editing) is better and more user-friendly than just having possibility to configure the program's behavior on clipping.


OK, I agree there is no need for 5 hotkeys and even you can reduce one more hot key. But in the current version (M8) it is not possible. And you have to modify program behavior.

here is my problem

when I capture text from a webpage, many times I want to add tags in the note. In the current version (M8) I can disable the silent clipping (as you suggest), and then capture text using hotkey, that bring me to the main window of cintanotes. But I need to manually open the respective note window, and enter the tag there. This is the reason why I suggest adding a hotkey to open editing window after capturing text.

solution

Instead of adding a separate hotkey you can simply change the program behavior to open the captured note editing window after capturing text, just then opening the main interface window. This way I can add tag (or edit text) directly, instead of manually opening note and then adding tag (or editing text). Also it doesn't make a sense why someone wants to open main interface window instead of note editing window when capturing text.

how to reduce one hotkey

you can remove "create new note" hotkey just by instructing program to open create new note window when capture text hotkey is pressed and nothing is selected. And that will be more sensible.

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