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thp's Avatar
Posts: 1,391 | Thanked: 4,272 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Vienna, Austria
#1
I've come up with a new idea for a tablet-friendly note-taking application that zooms in to notes you are writing but allows you to "drag away" notes that you are not using at the moment for later use.

A video of the quick prototype I wrote to explain the concept can be found here, please have a look and give some feedback:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...78714653&hl=en


Do you think this could be some useful application on the NITs? Do you have suggestions how to improve that concept even more?
 
Posts: 425 | Thanked: 132 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ California
#2
Looks pretty awesome

A couple of suggestions

1) Maybe provide a way to resize the note manually? Rather than have the sizes correspond completely to its position on the screen? (Maybe a draggable lower-right corner?)

2) Custom note colors/pen colors?

Could your please provide a binary? I'd love to try this out
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Posts: 83 | Thanked: 27 times | Joined on Jun 2008
#3
Looks cool. I assume you plan to scale down the drawings so you can see the zoomed out notes (or maybe I just didn't see it doing that in the video)?

My only suggestion would be that you try to keep the code modular. By itself, I don't really need a note taking app, but I can see it being handy if it's easy to integrate either with the app or with other apps. Unfortunately, I don't really have any practical examples because all of the apps seem to be their own little world at the moment
 
Posts: 425 | Thanked: 132 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ California
#4
How about using it as a light-table style app for photos?

where your photos are stored in a side bar and you can drag them out and expand them and move them around (similar to the microsoft surface demo a while back?)
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Jaffa's Avatar
Posts: 2,535 | Thanked: 6,681 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ UK
#5
Personally, I've no desire for a notetaking app where I write on the screen: the size of the screen is physically too small and the accuracy of the stylus means it's not specific enough.

My ideal usecase for a note app is neatly encapsulated in Psion's old EPOC Jotter.

http://www.ericlindsay.com/epoc/bjot5.htm


The key features are:
  • Reopens with last-opened database automatically p[em
  • Rich-text editing
  • Always in "edit" mode

Nothing quite like it on Maemo, AFAIK :-(
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Posts: 70 | Thanked: 56 times | Joined on Dec 2007
#6
I generally like your idea

Suggestion:
- It is good that you can drag your notes around but to
minimize screen scratches, stylys wear and processor load ( ) and
to make your note handling faster perhaps
there should be a shortcut to automatically order/move your notes
as icons with preview to the left side "grid". Perhaps by double
tapping the green top left triangle program should move the note
to the next empty slot to the left side grid (and when there
are many notes program automatically decrease icon size/resize grid).
And similarly when you double tap the left side note icon
you instantly move the note to the topmost position to the right.
And hopefully program automatically saves the notes / loads
latest note set.
 
lcuk's Avatar
Posts: 1,635 | Thanked: 1,816 times | Joined on Apr 2008 @ Manchester, England
#7
Originally Posted by Jaffa View Post
Personally, I've no desire for a notetaking app where I write on the screen: the size of the screen is physically too small and the accuracy of the stylus means it's not specific enough.

My ideal usecase for a note app is neatly encapsulated in Psion's old EPOC Jotter.

http://www.ericlindsay.com/epoc/bjot5.htm


The key features are:
  • Reopens with last-opened database automatically p[em
  • Rich-text editing
  • Always in "edit" mode

Nothing quite like it on Maemo, AFAIK :-(


Jaffa, I am surprised by what you have said.
That actually looks like my ideal editor too.
Whilst I have been using liqbase for notes I have been considering the interface a lot.
The graffiti wall proves a concept, though after extensive use I am aiming towards continuous infinite paper where its not a separate step.

I write on my screen every single day, small hand written notes which are actually plenty, all I require for the continuous is a button at the bottom to say "move up now, im done with this".

Actual hardware keyboard support has been considered as well - the hardware keyboard on the 810 currently defines a single line to associate a sketch, but the long term aim is to simply allow hand written notes to be mixed up with keyed entry and code blocks or images etc.

I have found that the cradle I have made for my 810 ( http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/7...crateinkx8.jpg ) supports my wrist at the same height as the screen and so is more akin to writing on actual paper.

The effect is outstanding and I often catch myself sitting and doodling and writing little post it notes.

I hope to soon bring them all together as groups and tag similar threads to allow all those little notes to be useful and not lost.

Anyway, I'll stop talking for now - I hope I finish it all in time.
 
lcuk's Avatar
Posts: 1,635 | Thanked: 1,816 times | Joined on Apr 2008 @ Manchester, England
#8
thp,
im awfully sorry for that splurg i read the comments and said what I thought before your video had loaded.

I agree with ism that scaling as it stands is too fiddly and not preconfigured, maybe when you create a new item you fill the free space available?

Are you redrawing the sketch each time you adjust, or are you scaling a bitmap?

I hope its a sketch because you can get tremendous performance boost by filtering the points and removing duplicates or straight runs.
You gain an additional performance boost when shrinking them by only drawing some points (instead of every 1, draw every 2 or 3 or 4 and so on).

For obvious reasons I do enjoy sketching programs.
 
Jaffa's Avatar
Posts: 2,535 | Thanked: 6,681 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ UK
#9
Originally Posted by lcuk View Post
The graffiti wall proves a concept, though after extensive use I am aiming towards continuous infinite paper where its not a separate step.
The one problem I've had with other "infinite paper" approaches to note taking is I like having them segregated. For instance, when I last used my Psion I had separate notes for:
  • patents I was working on
  • Todo list for the day
  • Shopping list for the weekend
  • Phone number for a plumber
  • ...

The big problem with infinite paper is navigating between these and ensuring I've got the space to add to the earlier ones without colliding with another existing note.

Solve these problems and I may be convinced :-)

I write on my screen every single day, small hand written notes which are actually plenty, all I require for the continuous is a button at the bottom to say "move up now, im done with this".
Sounds good: I still haven't got round to giving liqbase a try - and will endeavour to do so ASAP.

As I said above, though, my biggest problem with other similar solutions (e.g. Horizon) was navigating back to individual specific notes for either review or modification at a later date.

I hope to soon bring them all together as groups and tag similar threads to allow all those little notes to be useful and not lost.
Sounds interesting.
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Posts: 5,795 | Thanked: 3,151 times | Joined on Feb 2007 @ Agoura Hills Calif
#10
I don't know that infinite paper means you can only have one note. If it does, I'm against it! It just means that you can make a note as long as you like without turning pages. You can start another note, I think!

Do take a look at the liqbase utube video.
 
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