I've had a PDA of some sort or another for years. Never have come across the perfect note taking app. I usually wrote the note to a Post-it and stuck it to the outside of my Palm 5
as for using xml as a data-index file, well, i don't see the need for it. the data directory idea and storing the files and the structure on the filesystem is better.
Yes, there is no need if you really need only simple tree structure. If you need things like categories (i.e same note belong to multiple categories) or more sortable attributes then you must maintain the structure somewhere and xml might be good for this. But yes, using sqlite may be better then so why to use files. I only mentioned xml as index because it is incremental change to current design.
As for confusing the users I don't think it will be worse or that it matters. Even single XML has a little use for non-programmer. As for the backups it is not much harder to backup directory than backup the file. And you can integrate your data into maemo backup applet anyway for normal users.
nope the nodes won't have multiple categories. it's a notes app after all.
a problem with using plain files (the dir structure idea) arise when you try to search the contents. i'm leaning towards sqlite right now. also with sqlite it's easier to implement fancy stuff like spreadsheet notes etc.
but first i'll switch the gtkctree code to gtktreeview, then start experimenting with sqlite. i also want to experiment with using one unified widget for text and drawings. if it technically can work, then the user will select the i-beam or the pen, and according to the selection he/she can write on the document or draw on it. dunno, it's lots of work.
- upgrade to gtktreeview (in progress as of now)
- make the sketch stuff (gtkdrawingarea) into a SketchWidget class
- use sqlite
- save sketches
- fix sketches, test on a real 770 (5 days left)
- option to make node names as sketches (add SketchWidget to "New node" dialog, provide a tabbed selection)
- adjustable ink color and brush size
- adjustable text properties (formatting)
- richtext editing (read: allow formatting)
- make two toolbars one for text nodes (formatting etc) and one for sketch nodes (ink size/color)
- make fullscreen button toggle the tree (4 modes: plain document, document+toolbar, tree+document+toolbar, normal)
- fix the i18n or remove it altogether (well.. fix the i18n)
- keep last modified date for every node
- if no document (well, datafile) loaded, start out with a "New Document"
- Add about box
- Add search
- Test against low memory conditions and rewrite portions accordingly
Don't think of it as Notepad, think of it as Jotter
Ah, yes. On the Psion there was another app that was even better (Notes something ? I forget, my last one just died).
Originally Posted by
We've got text editors galore: Notes, Maemopad, vim, nano, ...
Do we now ? I have xterm, vim and nano, but that isn't my idea of quick and user-friendly note taking -- more like editing config files and scripts. I was under the impression that Hildon/Maemo was lacking a basic, native, Notepad-like text editor. What is maemopad ? It doesn't appear on the maemo wiki apps list, and even when you know it exists, Google turns up precious little. Just a very old .deb from before the 770 actually went on sale, and it doesn't install. Am I missing someting ?
thank you all for the comments.
the purpose of the xml file (or it could've been any other datafile) format is mainly the tree-structured view. i could've made it so you pointed a "data directory" and the nodes were simply files in that directory. i didn't because i liked the single-datafile idea better, it's tidy and easier to back up. to view the notes outside, an XSLT formatter would do the trick. you won't be able to view sketches with that tho, (i will save the sketches in png (or maybe pixmap) and uuencode/base64encode it into the xml stream) so will probably have to add functions to import/export sketches (and don't forget voice notes) in the future. or you could use clipboard functions, they will work.
... only with PyGtk under Hildon instead of PyQt under Qtopia, and extended to non-text content. The nice thing about TreeLine is that the same app runs under Linux/Windows, so you can share your data between the desktop and the PDA.
What is maemopad ? It doesn't appear on the maemo wiki apps list, and even when you know it exists, Google turns up precious little. Just a very old .deb from before the 770 actually went on sale, and it doesn't install. Am I missing someting ?
Thanks for the confirmation. So my point still stands : we have ebook readers and RSS readers and a del.icio.us reader and a bloglines reader and whatnot, but there isn't a simple basic notepad readily available to the 770 end user.
I definitely don't want to compile my own notepad, I just want to edit good old TXT files :-)
but the app installer (in the SDK) won't install the package. I was able to install it in the SDK by doing a fakeroot dpkg -i --force-all maemopad_1.4_arm.deb, if it helps.
Maemopad+ progress:
I did the GtkTreeView thing (took me a whole day), and sqlite3 support. it can also save sketches now, but that part is still buggy (and kinda slow)
The sqlite3 support turned out to be great tho, it only loads the node data when you activate the node. The sketch loading stuff is much slower now, but i'm going to optimize it. The text loading stuff works great, and it should now be able to handle several big documents. Still not ready for another release so i'm holding out on that, maybe tonight.
