[Ann] CintaNotes 2.0 early preview - Tabs & Links to notes

[Noddy330]

I had 7 tabs - All, Main and 5 others. When I created the last one I could not see it, and there was no indication it existed.
Maybe shrink them down so that can be seen, or have a marker on the RH edge (>>) to indicate there are more?
Nod

[Thomas Lohrum]

An entry "copy note link" is missing. A shortcut should also be added. However Ctrl+L can not be used, because it is already taken for managing lists.

I suggest we use Ctrl+Alt+C in both Notes List and Editor.

Ctrl+Alt+C is a good solution, because we will have Ctrl+Alt for all link actions!

Also I think it makes sense to add this command not only to the text editor context menu, but it should be available anywhere you click.

I don't understand. What do you mean with "anywhere you click"?

[Thomas Lohrum]

An entry "delete link" is missing. This would be more convenient and easier to understand, than deleting a link by deleting the link text. The shortcut Ctrl+Alt+D can be used.

Agreed. I think this entry should replace the "Insert Note Link" command when selection contains note links, what do you think?

Yes, absolutely.

Or maybe "Insert Note Link" could be used in this case to quickly change the link target?

No. When the selection is a link, a menu "Edit link" should be available in addition with "Delete Link". The Edit link menu should use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+L, because "Insert Note Link" will not be available anyway.

[Thomas Lohrum]

An entry "edit link" is missing. This would be more convenient and easier to understand, than deleting a link by deleting the link text and creating a new link. The shortcut Ctrl+Alt+L could be used, because the system is already smart enough to recognize the caret is placed on a link when it reports "Can't add link to text that already contains link".

I'm afraid this will make too many context menu entries and the context menu will become messy. But I wouldn't like to move note link commands into a submenu, since they are expected to be used quite often.

Exactly my opinion!

The "Edit Note Link" command should replace the "Insert Note Link" command in the NoteRichEdit?'s context menu when the selection is wholly inside of a single note link, or contains just one note link. The link bounds should not be changed by this command, only link target.

Yes, the "Insert Note Link" shall be replaced with "Edit Note Link" (better "Edit Link Target"; see comments below). However, i would limit such functionality to a selection, that will select one link only, nothing else. When the selection contains plain text and one or more links, no link action should be offered at all. Also we should think of editing in such a way, that i simply place the caret to a link and open the context menu thereafter or use a shortcut right away. That is CN must recognize, when the caret is on a link and act as such.

How do we define "editing a link"? Is it editing the link target only or also the link's caption? Probably it should change the link target only, since i can edit the link's caption simply by editing it's text. Thus the menu caption actually should be "Edit Link Target" (rather than Edit Link). The shortcut should be Ctrl+Alt+L.

The "Delete Note Link" command should be added, which should be enabled when selection contains any note links. The shortcut for this command should be Ctrl+Alt+D

Imo, no need for handling a collection of links in one single step. Actions should only apply on a single link. Either by placing the caret to the link or by selecting a link.

[Thomas Lohrum]

I think that adding a label is a really good idea. We'll do that.

OK

About the arrow I'm not sure - loading all notes' titles is not really useful and can be a huge performance drain. Maybe it would be worth it to display only first N entries, sorted by title.

The arrow's main purpose is to support standard windows gui behaviour, thus meeting the user's expectations. Let's add an arrow and limit its result to the first N entries, e.g. 20-50.

This however will be very confusing if there are many notes having empty title.

How would you select notes with an empty title anyway? Imo, don't show them at all. To select a link a title must be provided.

[ChrisCN]

Or show the first X characters of the note text instead (just an idea - I don't use notes without title myself).

No, you were right above, there's no need to list these notes. I think requiring a title for linking is not a very strict requirement - is it?

[Thomas Lohrum]

I would like to have an option for smart exporting of all linked notes. In which case the links must be transformed to some file link. Linked notes shall all be exported to the same directory and may use an artifical file name. Also the note's title could be used by taking care of invalid characters, that are not allowed in the file system.

But this is already related to this, isn't it? CN currently doesn't support exporting to multiple files. I suggest you add this request as a comment to that readmap entry. So that when we are implementing it, we don't forget to add an "Also export all linked notes" checkbox.

Agreed. I have added a comment to the request http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/342 ... ual-files/

[Thomas Lohrum]

1. When i select some text that will match an existing note title and press Ctrl+Alt+L, this will create a new note, instead linking to the existing note. I understand this can be convenient when you really want to create a new note, but it can be confusing the same time, when matching a note that already exists.

We will make it so that "Create new note" will always come last, and the issue will be resolved.

Great!

An entry "convert link to text" is missing. This would be more convenient, than deleting the link and re-enter the text. A shortcut can, but must not be supported.

I actually always imagined "Delete Note Link" command to work as "Covert link to text". Deleting is easy enough to do with a single DEL press, no need for a separate context menu command for this. Don't you agree?

No. With "Delete Note Link" i really want the caption and the link target removed both together. I would like to see this in the context menu also, not just by means of pressing DEL.

A menu "convert link to text" is different. It actually removes the link target and should be provided as a separate item.

[Thomas Lohrum]

UAC is not supported

Will be supported, although with the time frame that we have it can require waiting for 2.1.

OK

To register i had to start CN in elevated mode, that is, i had to close my running instance first, start CN elevated, close again and at last start CN in normal mode again.
[*]While elevating a blank database was shown

Strange.. and where is your CN instance located? In Program Files?

I will retest with the next beta.

The system menu state does not reflect the state, even though the protocol is now registered.

Couldn't reproduce this. Please remind me your system config.

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-Bit

I copied a CN link to firefox's address-bar, which opened the CN note. But why would i want to do this? I copied a CN link to an Outlook appointment's note and was able to open the note. Personally i have no plans to use the feature.
[*]When opening a linked note by the system, CN's main window opens together with the notes window . It shouldn't.

I think it shouldn't only when CN is already running and is minimized to tray. Otherwise, the user will know that 1) CintaNotes has started and closing the editor won't close it; 2) How else to quickly find the linked note in the notes list?

OK. Btw, after thinking about the feature i might actually use it in combination with Outlook

Maybe a separate tool could be provided to handle the task of registering the link protocol. Starting the tool with higher priviliges would be easy... ehm and you would be easily capable of supporting the UAC request with a separate tool. The tool can be used to turn the option on/off.

It can actually be cintanotes.exe itself - just with a special command line switch.

Perfect.

Also the installation should have an option to register the link protocol.

Do you think it should be user-selectable on the stage when the user hasn't even seen the program? I would have no clue should I select this or not.. I think it would be better just to register it, like Evernote does.

The best is to always register the protocol together with the installation - not bothering the user at all. That would also eliminate other issues discussed here. UAC should be supported at some time, though.

[Noddy330]

When I select the ALL tab, the sort order off every tab gets reset to that used by ALL.

I see this is the documented behavior, but it loses a lot I have set up.

Nod

[Noddy330]

At the top LH corner of CN there are two 'All's.
They have different meanings - all notes with selected tags - all notes in a selected tab - I think.
I can't help but think they would be better renamed. But what to? They are both logically correct named as 'All' but potentially confusing.
What does anyone else think? Nod

[Mark S.]

I think I would be happy that I found the note und would work with it, without trying to find it again in the corresponding section.
But this feature is new and maybe - after some time - I would like this feature as it is - not sure at the moment. Maybe this could be an option?

No, I don't think an option would make sense here. To avoid frustration, the program model and the user's mental model should be in sync from the get-go.
The real problem I suppose is that "All" looks like it is a (special) section, but it is not.
Have you noticed that when you click on "All" every tab becomes active?

The thing is, by clicking on "All", you've just wiped out the filters you've set up in all your tabs. This is not a happy result. I may know a note can't be in 8 of my sections where I've carefully set up unique filters, but their filters will be wiped anyways.

Thanks,
Mark

[Thomas Lohrum]

The list of linked notes when creating a link (Ctrl+Alt+L) is sorted descending, but should be sorted ascending.

[wukaem]

3 major new features for the upcoming CintaNotes 2.0 release, namely:

- Tabbed notebook sections
- Links to notes
- Simplenote synchronization

Hi,
is there a licence key for beta testers? I'd like to see this note linking in action. :)

[CintaNotes Developer]

:?: Is the location of the database file part of the link information?
- is it relative or absolute?
- what if the portable app folder has different drive names on different machines?
- what can't be done without breaking the link (move, rename,...)?

Notebook's unique ID (UID) is part of the link. CN can open the link if it has the notebook with this UID open (it appears in File menu list).
I guess this pretty much answers all your questions - you can move the DB anywhere you want, as long as it remains
open in CN you will be able to open the link.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Ahh, OK, I see - they are 'disjoint sets', so they are like virtual databases then? Nod

Yes, they are like little subnotebooks which you can union for search purposes.

Main use cases:
- Different projects
- Trash/archive
- Temp place to place new data
- Separate tagged lists (tasks to do, recipes, books to read, places to visit, ideas for new book, CN help [haha], etc)
- I guess now you can think of some of your own..

[CintaNotes Developer]

I had 7 tabs - All, Main and 5 others. When I created the last one I could not see it, and there was no indication it existed.
Maybe shrink them down so that can be seen, or have a marker on the RH edge (>>) to indicate there are more?
Nod

Yes, as I said, this is just not finished yet:

What we plan to finish: Horizontal scrolling in the tab control (now tabs that don't fit just disappear).

Will be in the final version!

[CintaNotes Developer]

Ctrl+Alt+C is a good solution, because we will have Ctrl+Alt for all link actions!

Yes that was exactly my thought

I don't understand. What do you mean with "anywhere you click"?

I mean that this command applies to the whole note, not just its text. There's no reason why it should be available only when you right-click in
the text area. I guess it should be there even if you right-click on a blank area of the edit dialog.

[CintaNotes Developer]

No. When the selection is a link, a menu "Edit link" should be available in addition with "Delete Link". The Edit link menu should use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+L, because "Insert Note Link" will not be available anyway.

Agreed)

[Thomas Lohrum]

No. When the selection is a link, a menu "Edit link" should be available in addition with "Delete Link". The Edit link menu should use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+L, because "Insert Note Link" will not be available anyway.

Agreed)

Fine

Remark: I think cluttering of the context menu is no problem, because items like "Edit link target", "Delete link" or "Convert link to text" will be available only, when the caret is on a link anyway.