[Ann] CintaNotes 3.2 Beta 1 (Autotagging Rules Early Preview)

[Thomas Lohrum]

Hi Alex,

thanks for your remarks.

Allow me to save rules without applying them immediately.

If I add the confirmation dialog, this item will be taken care of as well.

The point is, that i want a way to save my changes and exit the dialog, without applying the rules.

Instead add a button "Apply rules" inside the rule editor.

Should it re-apply ALL rules, or only selected ones? Re-applying ALL rules to ALL notes can be massive, especially if rules have some heavy conditions like "any text field contains.."

I think you already gave the answer. Allow me to either apply selected rules only or all rules at once. Also using a context menu, one rule only can be applied.

Another request is to add a button "create backup now" inside the rule editor or add a confirmation-dialog "create backup", when i click "OK". Maybe add a checkbox "[X] create backup before applying rules".

So I think I'll add an on-by-default checkbox to create backup to the "Rules changed - apply to existing notes?" confirmation box we discussed earlier.

OK

Not sure I understand which feature you're talking about, could you please post a link to the roadmap issue?

Sorry, obviously it did not make it to the roadmap yet. However i was able to find the related thread here in the forum tag workflow

I don't quite understand why you don't want to press Ctrl+S to see the rules applied?

Yep, i think you're correct. I will be able to save the note and remain inside the editor to verify everything is fine.

Also there's a problem with correctly defining what is a new note. Say CN downloads a note from Simplenote - is it a new note or not?

Thanks i am aware of the Inbox. A new note is a note opened in the note editor and not saved at all.

By creating such a rule, you're effectively saying to CN: "I want all notes with the tag 'Delphi' to be always located in the 'Development' section". And it does what you tell it to do.

That's why i am asking to be able to apply a rule only, when the note has not been saved yet. Then i will be able to apply a rule only once the note is saved for the very first time.


Remark: As for your remarks on issues i did not reply to today, i agree with your answers and comments.

Thomas

[CintaNotes Developer]

I moved the notes first to examine what went wrong. The no_att tag had notes which certainly had attachments. I tried to isolate further, but found that my database which I exported and then imported didn't have this problem!!
As it solved those other unexplained/random problems, maybe these steps deserve a mention in a 'Troubleshooting' section in the help file?

I'd prefer still to get to the root of the problem. Do you think that the reason for this was some kind of database corruption?

Also as of this beta-version, CN doesn't maximize properly on windows 7 and 8? (XP is fine.) The scrollbar runs through the taskbar.

Can't reproduce on my Win7 x64. Can you post a screenshot please? Also, do you have Aero enabled? Do you maximize using the mouse, or using the keyboard shortcut?

Also it occured to me that the top notification bar (that notifies about a new version) could be used as an easy way to implement reminders in CN. Just an alarm clock icon beside the paperclip, and if time has passed, display the top bar with a link to the note. They could be stacked upon each other too.

Good idea, but reminders will need to pop up even when CN is not visible itself. So I guess it'll have to be a separate popup window. Most of other applications do it this way as well.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi Alex!
I think this is a solution. Great! Can you expand this to other fields (where possible: tags, remarks, text .... )

I gave it a second thought and decided to implement a full-blown ability to add alternative values. This still however includes turning
"contains" operator into 'contains all" and "contains any". But the whole feature will become more visible. CintaNotes already has enough hidden features, so I'd prefer this to be visible.

The downside is that it will require more screen real estate. But since rules with many conditions are slow and discouraged anyway, I think it shouldn't be a huge problem.

Here's what it'll look like:

2016-05-01_14-25-47.png (31.44 KiB) Viewed 39662 times

[CintaNotes Developer]

Thomas, thanks for your comments!

The point is, that i want a way to save my changes and exit the dialog, without applying the rules.

It will be possible: just click "No" when CN prompts to apply changed rules to existing notes.

I think you already gave the answer. Allow me to either apply selected rules only or all rules at once. Also using a context menu, one rule only can be applied.

I think ability to apply selected rules should cover all the cases. Then Ctrl+A + apply selected will apply all rules.

Another request is to add a button "create backup now" inside the rule editor or add a confirmation-dialog "create backup", when i click "OK". Maybe add a checkbox "[X] create backup before applying rules".

So I think I'll add an on-by-default checkbox to create backup to the "Rules changed - apply to existing notes?" confirmation box we discussed earlier.

OK

Came to think about it a bit more, I still don't like abusing the backup system for this. I think I'll have to implement a proper undo possibility for rules. It will take a form of a "Rule Application History" dialog box, where executed rule actions are listed in chronological order. You'll be able to select any actions and undo them. This is also be very useful as a rules log, to simplify tracking down problems with rules.
What do you think?

Sorry, obviously it did not make it to the roadmap yet. However i was able to find the related thread here in the forum tag workflow

Ok then getting back to your problem:

The reason is, that an "on-event" action is not possible. For example, on adding tag "tasks/completed" remove any other tag "tasks/*".

Yes now I get what you mean. Since you don't know which tag was added more recently, you can't know which tags to remove. The only way it can work now is if you have a forward-only movement like "status/new => status/inProgress => status/completed". Then you can configure rules to remove tag "status/new" when any of the later-state tags are present, and the same for other tags. However if you want to return to an earlier state, you'll have to remove later-stage "status/*" tags manually. If this doesn't happen too often, it could be a good compromise.

Thanks i am aware of the Inbox. A new note is a note opened in the note editor and not saved at all.

Probably it could make sense to add a "Note status" pseudo-field with available operators "is saved", "is not saved".
But the main question here is why you want some rules to fire only once?

That's why i am asking to be able to apply a rule only, when the note has not been saved yet. Then i will be able to apply a rule only once the note is saved for the very first time.

Hmmm. maybe the rules are fundamentally wrong now? Would simply making all rules apply _only_ to unsaved notes work for you, for example?
With ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand?

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi Gunars,

Thanks a lot for your remarks!

1. Do the rules get backed up with each notebook? Will there be some way to export them or copy rules between notebooks?

Yes, they are backed up, and they will also be included into regular XML import/export.
Some time after the initial release I think we'll also add ability to export and import them to separate XML files, but this will depend upon user demand.

2. In the "Move to section" action, it would be convenient to be able to create a section if it didn't already exist, especially if the dialogue is modal.

Good idea. I think the least I could do is add ability to freely type in the section name. The section will be created not immediately however, but upon first rule application.

3. If a rule with "Move to section" is set up, then the section is renamed, the rule still contains the original section name. If a note is added to trigger this rule, it will actually recreate a section with the original name. Perhaps this 'side effect' could be used for item 2 if you would allow typing in the name of a section that doesn't currently exist.

I tend to see this as a bug. The section names in rules should automatically update when section is renamed. We'll fix this.
(And the same goes for tag renaming).

4. Add a scroll bar to Edit Rule in case there are many conditions.

Will do, but maybe a bit later. I want to discourange rules with many conditions, as they are slow and difficult to specify correctly.

5. Consider adding an action "Stop processing further rules". For example, "If Remarks is empty, skip further rules". Once you add testing of dates, you could have "If date is before xxx, stop processing rules".

No, I'm afraid I'm against this. I hold a strong opinion that Rules should be completely independent form each other (this is also why changing rule order is not supported). I agree that this ability gives you more power, but creates much more problems in the long run. For example, to determine why a certain rule is not firing for your note, you'll have to examine ALL rules which come before it, to check if they don't set this 'stop processing' flag.

6. The Move to Section on the context menu can get a bit confusing now. You can tell it to move selected notes to a different section, but it won't happen if a rule is telling it to move the note somewhere else. There should perhaps be a warning of what's happening. Not a big problem for me, but for those with large sets of complicated rules, it could be an issue.

Yes, this problem has already been mentioned. We decided that CN should display a small auto-hiding notification each time a rule is applied.

[Ovg]

Hi Alex!

I gave it a second thought and decided to implement a full-blown ability to add alternative values.

Sound very interesting! I'll wait with impatience. .

[Thomas Lohrum]

Came to think about it a bit more, I still don't like abusing the backup system for this. I think I'll have to implement a proper undo possibility for rules. It will take a form of a "Rule Application History" dialog box, where executed rule actions are listed in chronological order. You'll be able to select any actions and undo them. This is also be very useful as a rules log, to simplify tracking down problems with rules.
What do you think?

Interesting, though not easy to implement?! Also you might have to handle conflicts, in case the note has changed after the rule was originally applied. But that is true for restoring a database also. It's even worse.

Yes now I get what you mean. Since you don't know which tag was added more recently, you can't know which tags to remove. The only way it can work now is if you have a forward-only movement like "status/new => status/inProgress => status/completed". Then you can configure rules to remove tag "status/new" when any of the later-state tags are present, and the same for other tags. However if you want to return to an earlier state, you'll have to remove later-stage "status/*" tags manually. If this doesn't happen too often, it could be a good compromise.

Sounds rather awkward. Maybe this is something rules just can not handle.

Probably it could make sense to add a "Note status" pseudo-field with available operators "is saved", "is not saved". But the main question here is why you want some rules to fire only once?

For example i want to setup a rule that triggers section assignment to "development", when a tag "Delphi" is contained. Though this might be true in most cases, occasionally i want to change the section to something else, for example "journal".

Hmmm. maybe the rules are fundamentally wrong now? Would simply making all rules apply _only_ to unsaved notes work for you, for example? With ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand?

I can only speak for myself, but yes, that should fit my needs better. Also it does less harm!

Thomas

[Thomas Lohrum]

I gave it a second thought and decided to implement a full-blown ability to add alternative values.

Looks good to me. More flexible and powerful, still easy to use.

Thomas

[usbpoweredfridge]

Will do, but maybe a bit later. I want to discourange rules with many conditions, as they are slow and difficult to specify correctly.

I've just installed the beta to take it for a spin. The modal rule creation window I see as a problem, but you have already addressed that when Thomas bought it up previously (so thanks for that). Having a scrollbar will be nice - the first thing I did after opening the rule editor was to try and break it. Just kept hitting the + button to add more conditions, and after a dozen or so, the editor window had increased in size such that it had gone below the bottom of my screen. When I then deleted a number of the conditions, the + sign appeared again, but the window did not resize itself down, meaning that the 'Test Rule' button was still off screen below the taskbar somewhere. A fixed size window with scrollbar instead of a dynamically sizing window should fix this.

Anyway, more thoughts to come hopefully as I check it out further.

Chris

[usbpoweredfridge]

If this first one has been mentioned by someone else previously, apologies. When you click 'Ok' on a rule you have added, CN goes ahead and applies the rule to the DB. It does not give you a status report though once it has done so, eg how many notes were affected. If you click the 'Test Rule' button before you click 'Ok', you will know the status information - but if you don't click the 'Test Rule' button first, you won't. This would be a nice thing to add - not everyone is going to use the 'Test Rule' button.

This second one is kinda weird. I added a rule to add a tag to notes with attachments. First time in the rule editor, I clicked the 'Test Rule' button. It told me that it would match zero notes - that's odd, there are notes with attachments in the DB. I then clicked 'Ok'. CN said it was applying the changes. I then changed to another section in the DB, and went back into the rule editor, and edited the rule. I made no changes, clicked 'Test Rule', and this time CN said it would apply to 1 note (there was 1 note with attachment in that section, but more than 1 note with attachments in the entire DB). I then clicked 'Ok' (there was no pop-up from CN this time, as there was when I clicked 'Ok' when I first created the rule), and then went back into the rule editor and edited it. Again, I made no changes, clicked 'Test Rule', and this time CN reported 2 notes would be affected. I then clicked 'Ok' (again, CN did not pop-up anything saying it was making any changes). No actual rule changes were applied though, as none of the notes with attachments have the new tag.

I am just wondering if the first time CN decided there were zero matches has caused the subsequent problems. Even when there were going to be 1 and then 2 notes affected, I think CN has decided that the zero matches it counted the first time was correct, and thus when I have clicked Ok, has not actually made any changes.

Chris

[date]

I moved the notes first to examine what went wrong. The no_att tag had notes which certainly had attachments. I tried to isolate further, but found that my database which I exported and then imported didn't have this problem!!
As it solved those other unexplained/random problems, maybe these steps deserve a mention in a 'Troubleshooting' section in the help file?

I'd prefer still to get to the root of the problem. Do you think that the reason for this was some kind of database corruption?

What else could it be, if regenerating the database solves these things?
For the attachment rule issue in particular, after I found it worked properly after deleting a few notes, I managed to eliminate almost every note except just 20, and still have the attachment rule issue.
I can send you this database file, so you can reproduce yourself and probably see if it's a corrupted database or a problematic note or something else, but the NotesData_segments table seems to still contain a lot of data? Does this contain content from deleted sections?

Also as of this beta-version, CN doesn't maximize properly on windows 7 and 8? (XP is fine.) The scrollbar runs through the taskbar.

Can't reproduce on my Win7 x64. Can you post a screenshot please? Also, do you have Aero enabled? Do you maximize using the mouse, or using the keyboard shortcut?

Doesn't matter if Aero or not, or which method to maximize. XP if affected too, by the way. No arrow-down for scrollbar or tag list. But CN 3.1.3 (that is currently on the sites' main page for download) is perfecty fine for sure. So something must have changed.
Attached is a Win7 example. Am I the only one?

[usbpoweredfridge]

Am I the only one?

Can confirm the issue on Windows 10 (not using any theme hacks, just the vanilla Windows 10 interface). Version 3.1.3 stable is fine, so it was definitely introduced in this beta. Unintended side effect of the large DPI fixes perhaps? My DPI is set to the standard 100% by the way.

Chris

[CintaNotes Developer]

Interesting, though not easy to implement?! Also you might have to handle conflicts, in case the note has changed after the rule was originally applied. But that is true for restoring a database also. It's even worse.

Yes. The undo can't work in all cases, e.g. when you delete the note after a rule is applied. Also it should be smart and only undo moving to a section when the note is still in that section (user didn't move manually elsewhere afterwards).

Sounds rather awkward. Maybe this is something rules just can not handle.

Well, yes, the primary usecase for rules is auto-categorizing. This takes it a bit over the edge But I was the first who did it, with all that "features that can be emulated by rules" stuff

For example i want to setup a rule that triggers section assignment to "development", when a tag "Delphi" is contained. Though this might be true in most cases, occasionally i want to change the section to something else, for example "journal".

No problem - add the "section is not equal to 'journal'" condition to the rule.

I can only speak for myself, but yes, that should fit my needs better. Also it does less harm!

Interesting. Would anyone else vouch for this alternative implementation?

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your remarks!

I've just installed the beta to take it for a spin. The modal rule creation window I see as a problem, but you have already addressed that when Thomas bought it up previously (so thanks for that).

Yes, it will be modeless in beta 2 already.

Having a scrollbar will be nice - the first thing I did after opening the rule editor was to try and break it. Just kept hitting the + button to add more conditions, and after a dozen or so, the editor window had increased in size such that it had gone below the bottom of my screen. When I then deleted a number of the conditions, the + sign appeared again, but the window did not resize itself down, meaning that the 'Test Rule' button was still off screen below the taskbar somewhere. A fixed size window with scrollbar instead of a dynamically sizing window should fix this.

I'll try to squeeze this into beta 2 as well. However, for technical reasons it's not trivial to do - mostly because CN uses homegrown UI library which till this point didn't need to support having controls inside of a scrollable area.

[CintaNotes Developer]

If this first one has been mentioned by someone else previously, apologies. When you click 'Ok' on a rule you have added, CN goes ahead and applies the rule to the DB. It does not give you a status report though once it has done so, eg how many notes were affected. If you click the 'Test Rule' button before you click 'Ok', you will know the status information - but if you don't click the 'Test Rule' button first, you won't. This would be a nice thing to add - not everyone is going to use the 'Test Rule' button.

You're right, I'll add that.

This second one is kinda weird. I added a rule to add a tag to notes with attachments. First time in the rule editor, I clicked the 'Test Rule' button. It told me that it would match zero notes - that's odd, there are notes with attachments in the DB. I then clicked 'Ok'. CN said it was applying the changes. I then changed to another section in the DB, and went back into the rule editor, and edited the rule. I made no changes, clicked 'Test Rule', and this time CN said it would apply to 1 note (there was 1 note with attachment in that section, but more than 1 note with attachments in the entire DB). I then clicked 'Ok' (there was no pop-up from CN this time, as there was when I clicked 'Ok' when I first created the rule), and then went back into the rule editor and edited it. Again, I made no changes, clicked 'Test Rule', and this time CN reported 2 notes would be affected. I then clicked 'Ok' (again, CN did not pop-up anything saying it was making any changes). No actual rule changes were applied though, as none of the notes with attachments have the new tag.

Thanks for the report!
Did the rule only have the "Attachments is not empty" condition and nothing else?

[CintaNotes Developer]

What else could it be, if regenerating the database solves these things?
For the attachment rule issue in particular, after I found it worked properly after deleting a few notes, I managed to eliminate almost every note except just 20, and still have the attachment rule issue.
I can send you this database file, so you can reproduce yourself and probably see if it's a corrupted database or a problematic note or something else, but the NotesData_segments table seems to still contain a lot of data? Does this contain content from deleted sections?

This is a full-text index. I doubt that it contains the text of deleted sections, because it should only contain the index of the actual NotesData table content.

Doesn't matter if Aero or not, or which method to maximize. XP if affected too, by the way. No arrow-down for scrollbar or tag list. But CN 3.1.3 (that is currently on the sites' main page for download) is perfecty fine for sure. So something must have changed.
Attached is a Win7 example. Am I the only one?

Thanks for the screenshot. Well the tag list is not supposed to have a scrollbar. But the down arrow of the main scrollbar shouldn't be missing. I'll try to reproduce locally.

[Ovg]

Hmmm. maybe the rules are fundamentally wrong now? Would simply making all rules apply _only_ to unsaved notes work for you, for example? With ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand?

I can only speak for myself, but yes, that should fit my needs better. Also it does less harm!
Thomas

Interesting. Would anyone else vouch for this alternative implementation?

IMHO - only if this will be optional. I prefer automatic way of applying rules.

[date]

I moved the notes first to examine what went wrong. The no_att tag had notes which certainly had attachments. I tried to isolate further, but found that my database which I exported and then imported didn't have this problem!!
As it solved those other unexplained/random problems, maybe these steps deserve a mention in a 'Troubleshooting' section in the help file?

I'd prefer still to get to the root of the problem. Do you think that the reason for this was some kind of database corruption?

I'll be sending over the database with the attachment issue, usbpoweredfridge seems to have a similar issue as well.

Doesn't matter if Aero or not, or which method to maximize. XP if affected too, by the way. No arrow-down for scrollbar or tag list. But CN 3.1.3 (that is currently on the sites' main page for download) is perfecty fine for sure. So something must have changed.
Attached is a Win7 example. Am I the only one?

Thanks for the screenshot. Well the tag list is not supposed to have a scrollbar. But the down arrow of the main scrollbar shouldn't be missing. I'll try to reproduce locally.

I meant the wide arrow for a longer tag list, but the whole CN window is partially cut off from the bottom, and the hidden arrows are just a side-effect.
Hiding the taskbar and bringing it back up temporarily fixes this (until next CN start.) (Or auto-hiding in newer Windows versions.)

Hmmm. maybe the rules are fundamentally wrong now? Would simply making all rules apply _only_ to unsaved notes work for you, for example? With ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand?

I can only speak for myself, but yes, that should fit my needs better. Also it does less harm!
Thomas

Interesting. Would anyone else vouch for this alternative implementation?

The 'ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand' sounds like the possibilities are expanded (and not dumbed down.)
But if the rule functionality were to come to fruition in a stable version, I would use it mainly to apply rules to all (existing) notes for a consistent experience. Like a saved search.

Besides this, I think the rules dialog can be made more user-friendly, not sure how though. Perhaps by pre-listing the list of options (not crammed in a drop-down box) and pre-selecting the current section for the section condition.

[Ovg]

The 'ability to re-apply to selected notes on demand' sounds like the possibilities are expanded (and not dumbed down.)

I 'm agree and support!

[usbpoweredfridge]

I'll try to squeeze this into beta 2 as well. However, for technical reasons it's not trivial to do - mostly because CN uses homegrown UI library which till this point didn't need to support having controls inside of a scrollable area.

Cool, it's a low priority - I don't expect many people would really see this issue, unless they are using a low resolution screen, with much less screen real estate than what I have (my desktop is 1920x1200, so I had to put a lot of conditions into the rule to see this). I was also deliberately trying to break things (I do a lot of software testing, my usual first thought upon seeing something new is 'How can I break this?'), I wouldn't normally add that many conditions under normal use.

Thanks for the report!
Did the rule only have the "Attachments is not empty" condition and nothing else?

Yes, only that condition:
http://i.imgur.com/3EJzljh.png

Chris