cintanotes limitations

stefan2078
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cintanotes limitations

Postby stefan2078 » Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:22 pm

Hi,
I would like to know if Cintanotes has any limitations such as the max number of section in a notebook, max number of notes in a section or notebook, max length of a note, max number of tags per note or notebook or section, max length of the name of a tag, note' title, max depth of tag hierarchy, etc.

I'm also curious if the usage of images in Cintanotes will be available: linked local images, embeded images, displaying of online images and/or videos, note attachments (even if these are not stored in the main database but in a separate folder structure to make it possible to link notes to these images, videos, attachments). Thanks

This application evolved much in the latest years, it become a similar software to onenote (sections) and evernote (advanced tag system).

Stef
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Tue Aug 05, 2014 4:57 am

Hi Stef,

Thanks a lot for your message and question.

I would like to know if Cintanotes has any limitations such as the max number of section in a notebook, max number of notes in a section or notebook, max length of a note, max number of tags per note or notebook or section, max length of the name of a tag, note' title, max depth of tag hierarchy, etc.


This question has been asked in the past, I'll just link to previous answers if I may:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1642
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=183

To recap, we need to differentiate theoretical and practical limits here. I suppose that theoretical limits are of little interest to you. Practical limits are the limits at which CN considerably degrades performance of basic operations, but still works.

But just for basic orientation:
Max number of section in a notebook: free version - 3, PRO version - 4 billion (practical: 100)
Max number of notes in section: 4 billion (practical: 10000)
Max number of notes in notebook: 4 billion (practical: 100000)
Max size of note: 1 GB (practical 10 MB)
Max size of note title: 1 GB (practical 100 KB)
Max number of tags: 4 billion (practical: 10000)
Max length of tag's name: 100000 chars (practical: 1000 chars)
Max depth of tag hierarchy nesting: ~100 (practical: 10).

stefan2078 wrote:I'm also curious if the usage of images in Cintanotes will be available: linked local images, embeded images, displaying of online images and/or videos, note attachments (even if these are not stored in the main database but in a separate folder structure to make it possible to link notes to these images, videos, attachments).


Linked local images: already available as links to a file
Embedded images: currently planned only as attachments, not within text
Displaying of online images and/or videos: currently not planned
Note attachments: already started implementing, will be available with the PRO license. You'll be able to select whether to store them in the database or in a separate folder.

Hope this info helps!
Alex
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby stefan2078 » Tue Aug 05, 2014 7:29 am

Hi,

Very useful answer thank you. I know Cintanotes in the last couple of years. I used many note taking applications such as Evernote, Onenote, MediaWiki, TiddlyWiki, TheBrain (formerly PersonalBrain, mind mapping software), TreeDBNotes, CherryTree, TagSpaces, KNote, Notepad++ and the rest note managers both offline and web-based listed on alternativesto and other websites.

Note-taking is such an important activity of many users, I keep all my important data (photos, user account details, code snippets, todos, various attachments related to notes) in databases of note taking applications.

Your answer to my questions is very appreciated, it means this software is not getting slow if I load it with tons of information and is capable of holding, searching, editing large amount of information.

Cintanotes has some very useful balanced features such as the tag system, search and sections which make this application an important tool in note taking. The sections feature I meet only in Onenote but not in Evernote, gives the application a big plus.

The tagging system is more advanced than of any note taking tool even better than what TiddlyWiki offers.

I would like to store all my data in a full-featured friendly personal note and resource management tool. Not for a couple of years but for my entire life and because if this, I am also looking not only for tons of important features but active development, active forum (responses mainly but questions too), chances to be developed on other OS-es too (Android ex.).

Some features I still need to move all my data in Cintanotes such as the attachments feature. About the image link: will be any chance to be implemented a feature that at hover over the image link displays the content of the image in a small popup window? It would be nice to see the attachments' content without opening it with an external viewer. Other interesting features I would like to see in Cintanotes such as syntax highlighting, the ability to select the color of a text, and a feature that displays the list of existing tags and lets me choose quickly one or more tags from the list when I want to tag a particular note (such in TiddlyWiki, this feature helps when I have notes with 4-10 tags ex. articles about food have tags like food, cooking, ingredients, etc. and when I want to create a new note with another food related article simply just select from the huge list of tags and choose the desired tags without missing important tags that could simplify and speed up the search process).

Related to note attachments: I saw Cintanotes uses SQLite database. How many attachments will be able to hold the database and what is the size limit of attachments? If the attachments feature will be similar to the way TreeDbnotes uses them it will be fine too (its content not displayed in the notes but can be open with external viewers and file operations such as attachments renaming, deletion are possible). A quick preview mode of attachments and attachments browsing are welcome.

The price of the pro version of this software mirrors Cintanotes' unique and very useful features, the hard work of its developers and quick responses to users' questions.

Thanks,
Stef
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:09 am

Stef, thanks for all the kind words!

stefan2078 wrote:Your answer to my questions is very appreciated, it means this software is not getting slow if I load it with tons of information and is capable of holding, searching, editing large amount of information.


Well it's best to do some tests first. The parameters which I wrote above are not independent from each other. For example, if each note is 10MB, the practical limit for the number of notes will be much lower than 100,000. Also, it is important where you keep the notebook: obviously working on an SSD will be much faster than a regular HDD, and HDD will be faster than a USB stick.

So CintaNotes might get slow when you load a lot of information into it, but it shouldn't break - at least it didn't break from my stress tests.

stefan2078 wrote:Cintanotes has some very useful balanced features such as the tag system, search and sections which make this application an important tool in note taking. The sections feature I meet only in Onenote but not in Evernote, gives the application a big plus.


Great to hear, thanks!

stefan2078 wrote:The tagging system is more advanced than of any note taking tool even better than what TiddlyWiki offers.


Yes, the tagging system is CN's strong point, and we intend to make it even stronger in the future.

stefan2078 wrote:I would like to store all my data in a full-featured friendly personal note and resource management tool. Not for a couple of years but for my entire life and because if this, I am also looking not only for tons of important features but active development, active forum (responses mainly but questions too), chances to be developed on other OS-es too (Android ex.).


Well I can't tell for 10+ years into the future, but at least for the next year you can be sure that CN development won't cease. And I've already started working on an Android app.

Also, CintaNotes data format is not closed. You can open the .db file in any SQLite editor and query data with SQL. Also you have XML export, so it will be possible to convert your data into any other format should the need arise.

stefan2078 wrote:Some features I still need to move all my data in Cintanotes such as the attachments feature.

The attachmenets will probably appear somewhere in September with version 2.9. Before there will be version 2.8 will forward/backward navigation and big performance improvements (but probably also initially with a log of bugs because of very heavy refactoring that we are doing ;)

stefan2078 wrote:About the image link: will be any chance to be implemented a feature that at hover over the image link displays the content of the image in a small popup window?

Yes, unless we're really time-pressed we'll implement some kind of image previews.

stefan2078 wrote:It would be nice to see the attachments' content without opening it with an external viewer.

Well you understand that this depends on the attachment's type. For common image types this should be no problem, but for DOC, PDF and other types we probably won't bother.

stefan2078 wrote:Other interesting features I would like to see in Cintanotes such as syntax highlighting, the ability to select the color of a text,

You're welcome to add these requests to [url=roadmap.cintanotes.com]our roadmap[/url]. If your ideas get many votes from other CN users, we'll schedule them for implementation.

stefan2078 wrote:and a feature that displays the list of existing tags and lets me choose quickly one or more tags from the list when I want to tag a particular note (such in TiddlyWiki, this feature helps when I have notes with 4-10 tags ex. articles about food have tags like food, cooking, ingredients, etc. and when I want to create a new note with another food related article simply just select from the huge list of tags and choose the desired tags without missing important tags that could simplify and speed up the search process).


Currently you can press Ctrl+Space in the tags field to get the list of all tags. Also there's this suggestion, please check it out:
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/318 ... r-control/

stefan2078 wrote:Related to note attachments: I saw Cintanotes uses SQLite database. How many attachments will be able to hold the database and what is the size limit of attachments?

Let's first check the max DB size. According to this page (item 14, "Maximum Database Size"), "this translates into a maximum database size of approximately 140 terabytes". Also they say that "tests do verify that SQLite behaves correctly and sanely when a database reaches the maximum file size of the underlying filesystem".

The attachments will use an integer ID, which is an integer, so 4 billion max.

As for the max size of a single attachment, according to the same page it is 2147483647 bytes, or ~2 GB.
(So no Bluray movies as attachments, sigh).

But anyway, if you plan to put in large attachments, probably the external folder is the way to go. It will be also faster because there will be no need to copy it to hard disk and back for any external processing.

stefan2078 wrote:If the attachments feature will be similar to the way TreeDbnotes uses them it will be fine too (its content not displayed in the notes but can be open with external viewers and file operations such as attachments renaming, deletion are possible). A quick preview mode of attachments and attachments browsing are welcome.

Yes, we'll support opening attachments in external editors, renaming and deleting. CintaNotes will copy the attachment into a temporary file, run the editor process with this file, and wait for the editor to finish. After that it will copy the changed file back into the database.

stefan2078 wrote:The price of the pro version of this software mirrors Cintanotes' unique and very useful features, the hard work of its developers and quick responses to users' questions.

Thanks a lot, hope you won't regret getting yourself a PRO license!
Alex
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby rhickman » Sat Aug 09, 2014 7:02 pm

Without trying to thread hijack here, I'd like to ask a brief follow up question regarding database limits and best usage practice.

As my notebook starts to get very large (which it slowly is), is it better (performance/practicality wise) to move older/less used notes to another section or an entirely different notebook? I understand that another notebook is basically another database, but I was wondering that if other sections would not be queried unless selected, and hence would also make my "main" notes sections more responsive. That might be easier if it is an acceptable route.

I've been using Cintanotes since 1.2 now and have had a pro license for I think 18 months. Glad to see the program is maturing sensibly and still only uses a handful of MB of RAM in an age when even the silly instant messaging app we have to use at work eats 200MB :)

Thanks for any advice!
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Aug 11, 2014 5:48 am

rhickman wrote:As my notebook starts to get very large (which it slowly is), is it better (performance/practicality wise) to move older/less used notes to another section or an entirely different notebook? I understand that another notebook is basically another database, but I was wondering that if other sections would not be queried unless selected, and hence would also make my "main" notes sections more responsive. That might be easier if it is an acceptable route.

The short answer is yes, moving notes into another section will make queries faster. Whether moving notes into another notebook will improve performance - that's, of course, is a no-brainer ;)

rhickman wrote:I've been using Cintanotes since 1.2 now and have had a pro license for I think 18 months. Glad to see the program is maturing sensibly and still only uses a handful of MB of RAM in an age when even the silly instant messaging app we have to use at work eats 200MB :)

Thanks, I always keep an eye on performance and memory footprint. BTW the next CN version will probably eat a bit more of RAM (but still well under 50MB), but! access disk much less, which will make it much more responsive.
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby rhickman » Mon Aug 11, 2014 11:00 pm

Thanks. It sounds like I may just try having an 'archive' section for now unless it gets very slow and then I'll start using another notebook, as the former option seems easier.
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:13 am

Yes, I think this is a good approach.
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby Scipio2603 » Sat Aug 30, 2014 8:54 pm

Hi Admin,

Further to earlier replies, I personally use cintanotes to store thousands of information fragments, eg I enter one single quotation to one single note which I multi tag by author, subject(s) etc. As I have only a short amount of text for each note, usually 1 to 10 lines, would I be able to have more notebooks and sections than those mentioned earlier?
Max number of notes in section: (practical: 10000)
Max number of notes in notebook: (practical: 100000)

If so then how many please?
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Re: cintanotes limitations

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Sep 01, 2014 8:11 am

Scipio2603 wrote:I personally use cintanotes to store thousands of information fragments, eg I enter one single quotation to one single note which I multi tag by author, subject(s) etc. As I have only a short amount of text for each note, usually 1 to 10 lines, would I be able to have more notebooks and sections than those mentioned earlier?


Probably, but CN will be getting slower and slower as you add more notes.

Max number of notes in section: (practical: 10000)
Max number of notes in notebook: (practical: 100000)
If so then how many please?


I didn't try this, theoretically up to 1 million notes. Might still be workable if you have a fast PC and SSD. But the search will be VERY slow.
Are you sure that all notes will remain relevant and you won't be able to move some of them to an archive notebook (or at least section)?

How many notes per day do you expect to be making? I don't think that more than 100 per day. This gives 36525 notes per year, should be enough for 27 years :) I hope CintaNotes lives that long!
Alex

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