Thursday, August 28, 2014

NoteCase Pro for Android v1.0.6. release

NoteCase Pro for Android v1.0.6. has just been released.
Download is now available at http://www.notecasepro.com/download.php

NoteCase Pro for Android is the companion app to NoteCase Pro desktop program, and supports the .ncdb and .ncde (encrypted) file formats, so the same files can be shared between desktop and Android editions.

It can be activated by buying the 2USD license through PayPal (use "Buy Now" at the http://notecasepro.com/buy.php page) or by using the "All OSes, lifetime" license for the desktop version of the program. When shopping, please leave your email, so that after the payment, I can send you the key file in the email.

Installation instructions for your Android device:
    - prerequisites: program requires Android 3.0 or newer
    - download the .apk file and transfer it from your to your phone's SD card
    - enable installing applications from unknown source ("Settings" > "Applications" > "Unknown Sources" check box)
    - use some file manager application installed on your phone/tabled to click on the Notecase.apk file to start the installation
      ("ES File Explorer" free file manager app is a good choice)
    - if you get problem installing the app, try uninstalling the previous version first
    - copy your license key to your SD card root folder (usually named "/sdcard" or "/mnt/sdcard")
    - start the app

Features:
    - uses .ncdb and .ncde file format identical to the one used in the desktop version
    - you can create a new document or open an existing document file
    - Tree Pane is displayed featuring the hierarchical tree of your document notes
    - basic note operations supported in the Tree Pane are: insert, delete, rename
    - short click on the note title in the Tree Pane open Text Pane featuring rich text formatting editor
    - there are two different GUIs, one for phones and one for tablets (landscape mode) embedded in the same app
    - in the file open dialog, there is an additional way to navigate to the parent folder by using the swipe from right to left gesture action
    - you can create a shortcut to selected document on your phone's desktop

Changes in the new release:
    - you can now exit "Tag List" view with right to left swipe, returning to Tree View
    - file dialog now supports file rename operation through list item context menu
    - Tag List view now has a title in the main action bar, not using separate label anymore
    - you can now add, remove or view note attachments through the Tree View context menu item
    - on Back button press in main form, ask user for close confirmation (preventing accidental closing)
    - support to insert pictures from file or from gallery (only from camera was supported before)
    - support to format text color and text background color using color picker window
    - new icons for formatting action buttons within the note text editor
    - support for "remove formatting" editor action
    - support for strike-through text formatting action (button visible only in landscape mode due to lack of screen space in portrait mode)
    - issues with applying colors on older Android phones, older versions of WebView chrome using special formatting tag: font class="Apple-style-span" color="#da2e2e" style="background-color: rgb(60, 210, 24);"
- show attachment icon in tree view next to the notes that have files attached
    - much faster saving changes for notes having the complex content with lot of formatting (test note saving time went from 1700msec down to 118msec)
    - add long-press tool-tips for rich text editor buttons (similar to ones already present for the icons in the action bar)
    - fix: links can not be activated if the note text is editable (added toolbar button, currently visible only in landscape mode, to activate link on text cursor)
    - add support for tags like: i style="background-color: rgb(187, 30, 30);" (fixes rare cases of issues with colors)
    - fix: when opening encrypted document, when the password input is closed with Back key, the behavior should be equal as if the Cancel was pressed
    - fix: important issue with sqlite database doing random "unable to open database file" errors
    - updated internal sqlite database to latest v3.8.6
    - fix: add support for text alignment formatting (left,right,center,justify)
    - Croatian translation updated
    - Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
    - Polish translation updated (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
    - French translation updated (work by Jeff Malka)
    - Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
    - Finnish translation updated (work by Ville Pilviö)
    - German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)

Feedback is appreciated. I am interested in your design and general ideas, bug reports, ...
If you would like to donate the program translation for your language, feel free to contact me.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Notecase Pro v3.9.3. desktop edition released

Notecase Pro v3.9.3. desktop edition has just been released.
Downloads are now available at http://www.notecasepro.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- add: check disk for available free space when trying to save the document
- add: new Lua method mimicking existing "Send via Email" feature (Nc_Doc_SendViaEmail)
- add: support for resetting sync admin password to default one (just start sync server with "NcSyncServer --reset-admin-password" command line)
- add: added "Insert Image" action to the Note Pane context menu
- add: new Lua methods to get last used note color formatting (Nc_Note_Last_Text_Bkg_Color_Get, Nc_Note_Last_Text_Color_Get)
- addd: new Lua method to list all task notes within a document (Nc_Doc_Task_Notes_Get)
- speed up Lua API that inserts new note for special case of adding at the end of the tree (adding 4000 notes sped up from 72 to 4 sec)
- when exporting to RTF with option "Mark strikethrough text as deleted", notes marked as done/finished now have the titles marked as deleted too
- remove several rarely used action buttons from default version of the toolbar, to make it look more tidy ("save as", "print", "superscript", "subscript", "align left/right/center/justify", "bullets", "note properties")
- fix: .ncdb file downloaded from sync server as .ncdb.ncd file (Windows only)
- fix: issue where export to LaTeX did not export entire contents of the note (part of the text was missing)
- fix: report warning on save action when we fail to create a backup file (due to insufficient disk space for example)
- fix: setting note's background color did not activate document modified state (user was not prompted to save the change unless he did other changes as well)
- fix: "Insert Date/Time" action does not support "Undo"
- fix: add missing support for removing color formatting in Lua methods Nc_Note_Format_Bkg_Color_Apply, Nc_Note_Format_Text_Color_Apply
- fix: revert moving focus to Text View after note insert, that might confuse users; old behavior can be activated by key "FocusTextAfterInsert=1" within [Operation] section of the .ini file
- fix: color picker (text and background color) should be initialized to the color used at current cursor position (or to the last used color)
- fix: issues with Replace dialog skipping some instances of matching text
- fix: if using Windows native File Open windows, folder selection mode does not work in this dialog, switch to using similar SHBrowseForFolder Windows API
- fix: Tree Pane column spacing changes were not saved when closing the document or switching to another document tab
- fix: within "Shortcut Editor" window, when assigning a shortcut that is already taken by other action, editor may fail to notify you of the fact (Mac-only issue)
- fix: hyperlink text color, when exported to RTF, should be blue, not black
- fix: when the string to be replaced is in a note title, the Replace button has no effect
- fix: if the string to be replaced in a note is the last word in a hyperlink label, the replacement is placed immediately after the hyperlink closing tag rather than inside it
- fix: search by date-only can loop forever (can be aborted though)
- fix: date picker window does not scale well on systems where users use large system fonts
- fix: for plugin developers: when locking a plugin (either through Lua or with lock button), new locked document should keep the old document ID value
- fix: hard-to-reproduce issue on failing to install new version of the plugin after plugin upgrade notification should be fixed now
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- Croatian translation updated
- Finnish translation updated (work by Ville Pilviö)
- French translation updated (work by Jeff Malka)
- Polish translation updated (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)

For a complete list of changes in this release, see change log at: http://www.notecasepro.com/history.php.
Thanks to everyone who helped during this cycle.

Note that Ubuntu 13.04 (end of life Jan 27, 2014), openSUSE 12.3 (end of life Sep 15th, 2014), Freebsd 9 (end of life March 31, 2013) and Gentoo (no downloads in last cycle) builds are being deprecated and will be removed in the next release. Let me know if you need any of those.