List Search

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List Search

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Sat Jan 23, 2016 4:01 am

I'm half inclined to think this is a bug, and half inclined to think it is a missing feature. If you have a list (1. 2. 3. etc) that has been created by the Ctrl+L function, then a search (either by find within an open note or via the search field in notes list) will not find any of those numbers (eg 2). If you want to be able to search for notes with lists - which is what I was doing when I discovered this - than you better hope that you have manually created the lists (not with Ctrl+L but manually typing 1. 2. 3. etc).

(Most of my lists unfortunately have been created with Ctrl+L, so my attempt to filter my notes down to only notes containing numbered lists did not go too well. I wanted to do this because in a specific reproducible case, CN incorrectly spaces the first number - that being 1 - and I wanted to fix them.)

Chris
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Re: List Search

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Jan 25, 2016 3:27 pm

Hi Chris,

To me it's no wonder that CN can't search for such lists, simply because these lists are part of paragraph formatting - so all these "1.", "2." are not stored in the DB with the text. CN inserts numbers on the fly for consecutive paragraphs marked with the "numbered list" style.

Since MS Word behaves in similar way, I also can't call it a bug.
Let's get back to why you needed all these notes in the first place. Is this problem with incorrect spacing still there in version 3.1.1? I remember that we fixed a similar problem already, or didn't we?
Alex
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Re: List Search

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:34 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Let's get back to why you needed all these notes in the first place. Is this problem with incorrect spacing still there in version 3.1.1? I remember that we fixed a similar problem already, or didn't we?

Kinda. The problem fixed was CN removing the first number from a numbered list when clipping. That was indeed fixed - the problem left behind (excessive space with entry number 1 in a list) is this one here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2094#p10632 (see the bit beginning 'I think this was reported as fixed...')

From your reply in the next post, it's a known issue in CN at the moment until if/when you can adjust the logic a little. I believe I have notes affected by this in my database, and I wanted to find them, remove the automatic list numbering and just manually number them 1, 2, 3 etc (the extra space after the 1 in a numbered list really bothers me).

It seems that at the moment, the only way for me to find automatically created lists in a CN note is to manually open each note one at a time and look through them (my CN database has too many notes for me to do that).

As to why I have these in my notes - it's not intentional on my part, simply for some reason, when clipping from websites (99.9% of my note taking), CN seems to like inserting a blank line between each number in a numbered list (it doesn't always do this, just some of the time). Don't know why it does this - from looking at the text on the webpage, there don't seem to be any blank lines. Maybe something hidden in the HTML that CN doesn't quite handle correctly, I don't know. But it does mean I end up with these lists with the incorrect spacing on item 1.

Chris
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Re: List Search

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Jan 27, 2016 10:35 am

I see, thanks for the detailed explanation. Let me do some research and maybe I'll come with an easy solution to this problem.
In the meanwhile, you could export all your notes to XML, and try doing some kind of a search and replace for the <ol> and <li> tags.
It won't be fully automatic, but at least you won't have to open notes one-by-one.
Alex
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Re: List Search

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Thu Jan 28, 2016 10:05 am

Yes, I could use the export as a quick find tool - rather than search/replace, just search, and then when I find a match, open the equivalent note in CN and see if it needs fixing or not. That would save exporting->fixing->reimporting.

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Re: List Search

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Wed Mar 09, 2016 9:05 am

Hi Chris,

We've revisited this issue and have trouble finding an example of a list which CN3.1.2 wouldn't clip correctly (e.g. when only first line is formatted as a list). Since CN still doesn't parse HTML, I assume that the list is pure text.
Could you please help us with that? Thanks!
Alex

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