[Ann] CintaNotes 2.5 Beta 3

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi guys, here's the last beta before we go live with version 2.5!
Thank you so much for your tremendous help, hopefully you've still got a little bit
of thrust for this Release-Candidate!

I'll describe only changes from 2.5 Beta 2, if you want to see
the complete list of changes please also see the Beta 2 discussion topic.

Dec 21, 2013 - Version 2.5 Beta3

Enhancements:

• Notes list: always scroll to the top of the list on new search (updated).
  
• Tag sidebar: scroll to top/bottom of the tag list on arrow double-click
  
• Editor: Alt+Home/End to always navigate to note text's start/end

Fixes:

• Change shortcuts that use Ctrl+Alt to using other modifiers to avoid keyboard driver collisions
  
• Notes list: search didn't start on entering capital letters or accented characters
  
• Editor: fixed issue with tags being partly hidden
  
• Editor: fixed issue of some controls' colors not changing on section change
  
• Simplenote sync: tags added in SN got deleted after sync
  
• Simplenote sync: Remarks field not synchronized
  
• Simplenote sync: tags deleted in CN are not deleted in SN

Download:
Installable: CintaNotes_2_5_Beta3_Setup.exe
Portable: CintaNotes_2_5_Beta3.zip

As usual thanks for testing, we are now finally very close to the release

[gunars]

Hi Alex

Good news. Thanks!

Notes list: search didn't start on entering capital letters or accented characters

There are still some problems with the search box. A few brief comments:

1) With the lvtest.db I sent you, there is a note with all the accented characters. While starting a search with one of them does move the focus to the search box, most of them do not get a hit when they should. I went back to beta 2 and I could see the problem with the same characters. I just hadn't tested them all before when the first one or two had issues with the focus.

Good: ā ē č ģ

Bad: ī õ ū š ž ķ ļ ņ ŗ

2) I've also noticed that entering a char, even a plain English one, converts from upper to lowercase (I can actually see it make the swap, so I guess I'm not as old/slow as I think ). But this happens only for the first char, so it looks a bit odd ('DDD' --> 'dDD'). Also, I've had a few times when an uppercase letter did not get converted to lowercase, I think more often if the right Shift was used (this has nothing to do with accented letters). This does not happen consistently though, but I haven't pinned down the conditions yet.

3) The ESC char now gets treated sometimes as a regular char and goes into the search box if it's the first char.

I'll see what I can pin down.

Gunars

[gunars]

Also, if I start with an accented char, that char is properly highlighted. But, I still get hits on a bunch of notes that don't have that char. If a second char is added to the search, then it seems to work ok. Before, I thought this was if something was in the link field, but I'm now getting this problem even if the field is empty.

[gunars]

1) With the lvtest.db I sent you, there is a note with all the accented characters. While starting a search with one of them does move the focus to the search box, most of them do not get a hit when they should. I went back to beta 2 and I could see the problem with the same characters. I just hadn't tested them all before when the first one or two had issues with the focus.

Good: ā ē č ģ

Bad: ī õ ū š ž ķ ļ ņ ŗ

When I try them today, they do get a hit, where yesterday they did not (NOTE: the difference was with SIW being on/off). I do still have the issue that they're not filtering properly and notes are selected that do not contain the accented chars in the search box.

2) I've also noticed that entering a char, even a plain English one, converts from upper to lowercase (I can actually see it make the swap, so I guess I'm not as old/slow as I think ). But this happens only for the first char, so it looks a bit odd ('DDD' --> 'dDD'). Also, I've had a few times when an uppercase letter did not get converted to lowercase, I think more often if the right Shift was used (this has nothing to do with accented letters). This does not happen consistently though, but I haven't pinned down the conditions yet.

Here's what I've found if you type in a few uppercase letters ('DDDD'):

1) If the search box does not have focus, the first char will pop to lowercase (doesn't look very professional) and focus shifts to the search box.
2) If the search box does have focus, the first char stays as uppercase.

It has nothing to do with right/left shift or anything else. Searches appear to work correctly though. This is more a cosmetic issue.

[Thomas Lohrum]

The ESC char now gets treated sometimes as a regular char and goes into the search box if it's the first char. I'll see what I can pin down.

Steps to reproduce:
empty search box
arrow down
ESC
Ctrl+Alt+F12

Now a small arrow is displayed in the search box and the search result will show an empty list. This is an annoying issue. Please fix before releasing 2.5. Thanks. I did sent my settings file per private mail in case needed.

Thomas

[Thomas Lohrum]

Thank you so much for your tremendous help, hopefully you've still got a little bit of thrust for this Release-Candidate!

You're welcome. Thanks for providing this RC!

Notes list: always scroll to the top of the list on new search (updated).

Finally! This is - minor as the issue is - a great fix!

Editor: Alt+Home/End to always navigate to note text's start/end

Thank you. I did a test with all controls in the edit dialog. Works as expected.

Tag sidebar: scroll to top/bottom of the tag list on arrow double-click

The feature helps a lot. However, the recognition of a double click does not react the same way as a standard double-click in other windows programs. When i want to scroll down the list, i use: click, pause, click, pause, click, pause and so on. CN does not take my pause and handles it as click, double-click. Maybe this can be adjusted better.

Thanks again Alex. 2.5 is a great release which features many enhancements and fixes.

Thomas

[gunars]

The ESC char now gets treated sometimes as a regular char and goes into the search box if it's the first char.

Also, if Minimize on Escape is off:

Do a search
Hit Esc to cancel the search
Entering more ESC chars will alternately put the ESCs (small arrow) in the search box and clear them

I agree that this would be good to clear up for the final release.

[gunars]

Also, if I start with an accented char, that char is properly highlighted. But, I still get hits on a bunch of notes that don't have that char. If a second char is added to the search, then it seems to work ok. Before, I thought this was if something was in the link field, but I'm now getting this problem even if the field is empty.

I think I see what's going on. If searching in the Creation Time or Modification Time (or Anywhere selection), starting the search with an accented 'a' gets a hit on the 'AM' in the timestamp. So, you'll get the same hits if you search for 'am', 'àm' or 'ām', whereas only the first one should get a hit.

A similar behaviour is exhibited in the Tags and Link fields. A tag of "beta" is also matched by "bētā" and a link of "www.test.com" with be matched by "tēšt" as well as by "test".

For comparison, the Remarks field (and Title and Text) looks like it works ok.

When I was testing previously, I had search set to Anywhere, so I was hitting a number of these at the same time with shifting results.

Gunars

[gunars]

I also tested the new enhancements and fixes and they worked fine for me.

I haven't been looking at SimpleNote since I believe it requires iOS7 and my iPhone4 from work isn't quite up to speed for iOS7. Dropbox has been working very well for me though to sync CN files (except backups, of course) between machines.

Yes, thanks Alex, for a good new release. It's been fun testing it. And thanks for your patience with my constant nagging about I18N (internationalization) issues. I'm sure other forum members are tired of it also . It's good to get it right though in a global market. It's also more difficult than most people expect.

And thanks for keeping CN small, fast and to the point. I very much like your design philosophy.

Gunārs

[gunars]

For comparison, the Remarks field (and Title and Text) looks like it works ok.

No, it looks like Title has the same issue. "ttest" in the title is also matched by "ttēšt".

I also get extra incorrect hits if Search Inside Words is on. In the sample lvtest.db I sent you earlier, go to the Main section. Search in Any Text Field with SIW off and search string "č" (RightAlt+c). You'll get the one note you should. If you turn SIW on, you get more hits that also look like the accent is being ignored ('č' == 'c').

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi gunars,
thanks a lot for such outstanding testing!

1) With the lvtest.db I sent you, there is a note with all the accented characters. While starting a search with one of them does move the focus to the search box, most of them do not get a hit when they should. I went back to beta 2 and I could see the problem with the same characters. I just hadn't tested them all before when the first one or two had issues with the focus.

I've done some research on the issue, and the problem is quite simple here: SQLite's LIKE operator ignores accented characters and treats them like 'normal' letters: 'ā' gets treated as 'a' etc.
So every time a LIKE search is used (the conditions are different for each note's field), this problem manifests itself.
You could try it out yourself: load your .db into sqlite3.exe and execute "SELECT * FROM Notes WHERE Link LIKE '%ā%'".
There's an open question what should we do with it. Obviously there isn't an easy fix.

2) I've also noticed that entering a char, even a plain English one, converts from upper to lowercase (I can actually see it make the swap, so I guess I'm not as old/slow as I think ). But this happens only for the first char, so it looks a bit odd ('DDD' --> 'dDD'). Also, I've had a few times when an uppercase letter did not get converted to lowercase, I think more often if the right Shift was used (this has nothing to do with accented letters). This does not happen consistently though, but I haven't pinned down the conditions yet.

Unfortunately I'm unable to reproduce this issue. If you can sometimes reproduce it, perhaps you could record a log file? This would help to track this down.

3) The ESC char now gets treated sometimes as a regular char and goes into the search box if it's the first char.

Yes, I'm aware of this problem and it'll be fixed in 2.5 final. Thanks!

[CintaNotes Developer]

The ESC char now gets treated sometimes as a regular char and goes into the search box if it's the first char. I'll see what I can pin down.

Steps to reproduce:
empty search box
arrow down
ESC
Ctrl+Alt+F12

Now a small arrow is displayed in the search box and the search result will show an empty list. This is an annoying issue. Please fix before releasing 2.5. Thanks. I did sent my settings file per private mail in case needed.

Thomas

Hi Thomas,
thanks for the exact steps to reproduce! Will be fixed in 2.5 final.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Finally! This is - minor as the issue is - a great fix!

Sorry for it taking so long;)

The feature helps a lot. However, the recognition of a double click does not react the same way as a standard double-click in other windows programs. When i want to scroll down the list, i use: click, pause, click, pause, click, pause and so on. CN does not take my pause and handles it as click, double-click. Maybe this can be adjusted better.

This depends on the system's "double-click interval" setting in the Control Panel/Mouse. I guess you have a quite large value there. If you make this interval shorter, then your clicks won't be treated as double-clicks any more.

Thanks again Alex. 2.5 is a great release which features many enhancements and fixes.

Thank to you for your tremendous help in making 2.5 bug-free

[CintaNotes Developer]

I think I see what's going on. If searching in the Creation Time or Modification Time (or Anywhere selection), starting the search with an accented 'a' gets a hit on the 'AM' in the timestamp. So, you'll get the same hits if you search for 'am', 'àm' or 'ām', whereas only the first one should get a hit.

Yes, the Time fields are also searched using the LIKE operator (I wish more people would vote for http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/317 ... ck-filter/ so we could get rid of this rudiment).

[CintaNotes Developer]

A similar behaviour is exhibited in the Tags and Link fields. A tag of "beta" is also matched by "bētā" and a link of "www.test.com" with be matched by "tēšt" as well as by "test".

When SIW is on, Tags and Link search use the LIKE operator => ditto.

For comparison, the Remarks field (and Title and Text) looks like it works ok.

Title, Text and Remarks field use FTS search (MATCH operator) - hence no problem. (But only when SIW=off).

[CintaNotes Developer]

I also tested the new enhancements and fixes and they worked fine for me.

Good!)

I haven't been looking at SimpleNote since I believe it requires iOS7 and my iPhone4 from work isn't quite up to speed for iOS7.

Are you sure? For me it was working on iOS6. But honestly I wouldn't recommend it - very slow and many bugs. In this regard Simplenote was a big disappoinment for me. Android clients are better.

Yes, thanks Alex, for a good new release. It's been fun testing it. And thanks for your patience with my constant nagging about I18N (internationalization) issues. I'm sure other forum members are tired of it also . It's good to get it right though in a global market. It's also more difficult than most people expect.

Thanks for your help, Gunars! Thanks to you there'll be less bugs in 2.5, more people would get a positive impression and buy it, and we'll have more resources for continuing development and implementing other highly demanded features

And thanks for keeping CN small, fast and to the point. I very much like your design philosophy.

It's getting tougher and tougher, especially with CN getting more features and settings (their combinations are growing exponentially).
But it is a problem that no one can avoid. I'll do my best to keep CN relatively small and performant despite all the added power.

[Thomas Lohrum]

This depends on the system's "double-click interval" setting in the Control Panel/Mouse. I guess you have a quite large value there. If you make this interval shorter, then your clicks won't be treated as double-clicks any more.

My setting is "medium". Nevertheless, i can live with this. It's just, that my expectation was different. I expected it to behave like a click on a scroll-bar. The control for the tag sidebar is a different one, though. No problem.

Thomas

[Thomas Lohrum]

Hi Thomas, thanks for the exact steps to reproduce! Will be fixed in 2.5 final.

Glad to hear

[Thomas Lohrum]

I've done some research on the issue, and the problem is quite simple here: SQLite's LIKE operator ignores accented characters and treats them like 'normal' letters: 'ā' gets treated as 'a' etc. So every time a LIKE search is used (the conditions are different for each note's field), this problem manifests itself. You could try it out yourself: load your .db into sqlite3.exe and execute "SELECT * FROM Notes WHERE Link LIKE '%ā%'". There's an open question what should we do with it. Obviously there isn't an easy fix.

I did a google search "sqlite accented characters":

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1035 ... ios-sqlite
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1628 ... ry-android
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1408 ... te-android

Depending on CN's implementation it might be possible to set the collation or maybe write a user function. I know too little (actually nothing) about CN's implementation, so it is best to trust to Alex's skills here.

One workaround might be to let the user know about the problem. For example, when an accented character gets entered, let the user know, it can not be used for search. Respectively show the message only depending on the SIW setting. Also a hint to turn off SIW to support the search.

Thomas

[gunars]

I haven't been looking at SimpleNote since I believe it requires iOS7 and my iPhone4 from work isn't quite up to speed for iOS7.

Are you sure? For me it was working on iOS6. But honestly I wouldn't recommend it - very slow and many bugs. In this regard Simplenote was a big disappoinment for me. Android clients are better.

The one that's currently available is listed as requiring iOS7. The same for the Evernote out there now, although I think a previous version did work with iOS6.