[Ann] CintaNotes 1.8 Beta 2

[CintaNotes Developer]

Surprise, surprise - another beta is here!

After some consideration we decided that it makes sense to combine all the changes that we've had in 1.7.2
with the changes we prepared for the 1.8 version.

The 1.8 changes mostly involve re-working text formatting in regard of paragraphs and numbered and bulleted
lists. We are now using native RichEdit paragraph formatting, which has required us to change the database
format. So after you open a .db file in this version, it will be automatically upgraded, and CN prior to 1.8 it
won't be able to open it anymore. You'll have to use the XML export feature to get back - but even that won't
guarantee integrity, because now numbered and bulleted lists are defined by tags also in XML.

So I strongly suggest to make an extra backup first before trying this version out on your main notebook!

Sep 19, 2012 - Version 1.8 Beta1

(in green are features/fixes that were not present in 1.7.2 Beta 2)

Features:

• Reworked paragraph formatting for indents and lists
  
• Editor: Indent and unindent blocks of text with Ctrl+Tab and Shift+Ctrl+Tab
  
• Keep supported text formatting on clip/paste from rich text enabled applications such as MS Word
  
• "Expand All/Collapse All" context menu commands in the Tag Sidebar

Enhancements:

• Tag sidebar now remembers the last selection when reactivated
  
• Double-click on blue related tag marker to toggle 'Display only related tags'
  
• Click on 'All' doesn't reset the 'Display related tags only' mode
  
• Editor: Shift+Enter to add a new paragraph to current list item
  
• Lists in exported XML and HTML are now be defined by tags
  
• Relevant tag marks are now affected also by the text search filter
  
• Support working with read-only databases
  
• Editor: Added F5 shortcut to insert current timestamp
  
• Display fonts preview in the Note Appearance dialog
  
• Improved tag auto suggestion
  
• "Cut", "Copy", "Paste" and "Delete" context menu items in the search filter box
  
• Double click on a tag in any tag edit field selects the whole tag
  
• Note Properties dialog enhancements (Default focus on Created Date, no more on-the-fly date validation.)
  
• Enhanced system window menu (right-click on app title icon)

Fixes:

• Strange tag display when searching with 0 results and "Display related tags only" is on
  
• Not possible to switch 'display related tags only' mode with negated tag selection
  
• Tags disappear on Alt+Click when 'Display only related tags' mode is on
  
• Editor: Wrong indentation of wrapped bullet list lines
  
• Editor: Numbered list numbers could not be deleted with DEL
  
• Editor: spaces on the end of the line are not removed
  
• Hugely degraded performance on bases with lots of deeply nested tags
  
• Note preview: wrong line breaks for mixed monospace and normal lines
  
• F3 behaved differently in the note editor compared to the notes list when having more than one search term
  
• Note properties dialog: created date was not saved for new notes
  
• Exception on searching for " /" or "//"
  
• Strange selected notes after removing tag
  
• Wrong URL highlighting when using german umlauts
  
• Various window focusing issues
  
• Certain text was disappearing from note preview
  
• Key shortcuts in popup menu were not properly aligned
  
• Crash on search with 0 results + Down Arrow + Alt+Enter
  
• "@cintanotes" was not found when searching for "cinta" (with search inside words off)
  
• Was not possible to add multiple non-autodeleted tags through the New Tag dialog
  
• Unnecessary tags present in exported XML
  
• On Ctrl+BkSp only first tag was expanded in the Tag Sidebar tree
  
• Buttons in notebook message dialog were too narrow for some languages

[ChrisCN]

quick feedback from my side:

Double-click on blue related tag marker to toggle 'Display only related tags'

seems not to work - I still need to double click on the tag - blue line doesn't change the mode

Click on 'All' doesn't reset the 'Display related tags only' mode
Strange tag display when searching with 0 results and "Display related tags only" is on
Not possible to switch 'display related tags only' mode with negated tag selection
Tags disappear on Alt+Click when 'Display only related tags' mode is on

works fine now

I am very happy about the enhancements on formatting - let's see how it works...

[ChrisCN]

regarding formatting:

Outlook -> CN //works fine
CN -> Outlook //text gets highlighted in Outlook

If I enter a formatted text in Outlook and paste it into CN the formatting looks good.
If I use this text - copy it - and paste it into Outlook the formatting looks good.

But every normal text i type into CN and copy/paste into Outlook gets an ungly yellow highlight!?

[Thomas Lohrum]

Hi Alex,

thanx for providing 1.8 beta 1. Also for displaying the changes 1.8 in green color

Quick summary

• RTF editor looks promising
• new formatting reveilles more desires, e.g. line spacing between bullets
• F5 in title is now supported
• arrow up/down in date dialog is fixed
• context menu in title is now complete
• editor indents is interesting, wondering how i will use it
• editor spaces on the end of the line are not removed; neither on open/close nor on manual save

More on bullet lists in a separate reply to come.

Thomas

[Thomas Lohrum]

Double-click on blue related tag marker to toggle 'Display only related tags'

seems not to work - I still need to double click on the tag - blue line doesn't change the mode

Chris, the double-click works for me. Alex, the blue area is really hard to click. I see it has increased size over 1.7 to allow double-clicking. I also understand you don't want it to become even larger, but right now it's just difficult to use. I suggest to return to the old "small" blue line and have some other ui element to toggle mode.

[ChrisCN]

Chris, the double-click works for me.

Thanks for the info - this is really strange - I tried it again - but no mode switch (I even checked if I'm really using 1.8Beta1)

[Thomas Lohrum]

Crash on clicking blue tag. After clicking the blue tag marker several times, filtering and toggling, CN suddenly crashes!

[Thomas Lohrum]

Crash while browsing the notes list! I edited a note, switched to the main window and scrolled the list by pressing page down. All the sudden CN crashes and Windows tries to find a solution.

Alex, there seems to be a serious bug with 1.8 b1. I have just lost my last edited note. I'll finish my tests and my reports here. After that i'll switch back to 1.7!!!!

Thomas

[Thomas Lohrum]

For example copy RTF-formatted text from CN to a simple editor, like the forums editor itself:

• Bullet example
  - soft paragraph

All bullet formatting information will be lost:
Bullet example
- soft paragraph

While copying "old-style"-formatted text from CN to the forums editor looks like:

• Bullet example
  - soft paragraph

For other RTF capable editors like Word, the results look fine for both cases.

[Thomas Lohrum]

With 1.7 it was possible to create a numbered list simply by entering "1. ". That feature is gone with true bulleting rtf features in 1.8. I suggest to have an option to allow creating bullet lists, either by "* " for a simple bullet list or by "1. " to create a numbered list.

[CintaNotes Developer]

quick feedback from my side:

Double-click on blue related tag marker to toggle 'Display only related tags'

seems not to work - I still need to double click on the tag - blue line doesn't change the mode

Probably that's because you have enabled double-clicking for switching this mode (app.mainframe.tagsidebar.doubleclick.viewrelated)?
But it doesn't make this behavior legit of course

[CintaNotes Developer]

But every normal text i type into CN and copy/paste into Outlook gets an ungly yellow highlight!?

As I understand, this is not new - you had the same problem with 1.7?
I coundn't reproduce it, so please remind me the exact versions of your Windows and Outlook. Also could you please describe in detail what you're doing? Thanks a lot

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi Thomas!

[*]editor spaces on the end of the line are not removed; neither on open/close nor on manual save

Well, the whole point of it was that the extra spaces were created by the auto-indent feature.
Now auto-indent doesn't create these extra spaces, do you think there still is a need to remove them?

BTW the auto-indent option seems to be redundant now, don't you think?

[Thomas Lohrum]

Hi Thomas!

[*]editor spaces on the end of the line are not removed; neither on open/close nor on manual save

Well, the whole point of it was that the extra spaces were created by the auto-indent feature.
Now auto-indent doesn't create these extra spaces, do you think there still is a need to remove them?

Maybe i did not understand the change right away. With 1.8 spaces are no longer created. Fine. Still my original report was meant to remove any existing spaces at the end of the line, when saving a note. This is to make the note "clean".

[Thomas Lohrum]

BTW the auto-indent option seems to be redundant now, don't you think?

I can not tell. I have just uninstalled 1.8. I'll check again, when a stable 1.8 version is avaible.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Alex, the blue area is really hard to click. I see it has increased size over 1.7 to allow double-clicking. I also understand you don't want it to become even larger, but right now it's just difficult to use. I suggest to return to the old "small" blue line and have some other ui element to toggle mode.

I agree that it leaves something to be desired.. but I have nothing in mind other than a keyboard shortcut such as Ctrl+R.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Crash on clicking blue tag. After clicking the blue tag marker several times, filtering and toggling, CN suddenly crashes!

(( Couldn't reproduce.. are there any specific steps maybe?

[CintaNotes Developer]

With 1.7 it was possible to create a numbered list simply by entering "1. ". That feature is gone with true bulleting rtf features in 1.8. I suggest to have an option to allow creating bullet lists, either by "* " for a simple bullet list or by "1. " to create a numbered list.

But it's still there. Enter "1", ".", space, some text, Enter

[CintaNotes Developer]

Maybe i did not understand the change right away. With 1.8 spaces are no longer created. Fine. Still my original report was meant to remove any existing spaces at the end of the line, when saving a note. This is to make the note "clean".

I see. In this sense you're right, this hasn't been done. However in the roadmap it is tracked as a bug, and the bug is no longer there.
I suggest then changing the type of the issue to "idea", and remove it from the 1.8 release notes, would it be ok?

[Thomas Lohrum]

I suggest to return to the old "small" blue line and have some other ui element to toggle mode.

I agree that it leaves something to be desired.. but I have nothing in mind other than a keyboard shortcut such as Ctrl+R.

Why not? Sounds good.