New Notecase Pro release is approaching

I am working hard to iron the last problems with the new Pro release.

The release should be impressive, with major features:

• two new file database-based document formats (encrypted and unencrypted). This will allow for creating and using really huge documents.
• text font formatting support
• text background color formatting
  
• option to automatically generate links while typing URLs ("http://", "https://", "ftp://")
• added "Read-Only" document property
• MAEMO platform support (Nokia N800)

Thanks to Peter Pregler who is helping me to test Maemo port, I've managed to fix some platform related problems and improve .deb instalation.
The only Maemo-related problem is that when using "maemo-custom" file open/save file choosers, application keeps crashing.

If someone can help me with the problem, you can find both latest code for Notecase and the .deb file at http://notecase.sourceforge.net/temp/

Wind of change

I hope you like the latest speed of changes, here is another one :)

Few days ago I've read a great tutorial on how to develop for Nokia Maemo (Nokia N800) platform using a SDK on your Linux distro. You can find the tutorial here.

The result is a Notecase port to Maemo platform (see the screenshot below) !


The only strange thing that I've noticed is that the toolbar is placed at the bottom of the screen. I've yet to see if this is my error, or something else.

This is a completely new platform for me, so I am very interested if someone could give it a try, test the program, and give me an opinion.

Binary .deb and sources are available at the standard (pre-release code) storage: http://www.sourceforge.net/temp/

Project feedback

We users are interesting creatures.

Sometimes, we do not like how some part of the program works. Or we have some cool ideas that would make it 100 times better!

But usually we keep the ideas for ourselves. Or we speak to the wrong people.

Being curious about what users think on Notecase, I run a thorough Google search from time to time.

And this thing always amazes me: you can find a lot of ideas and bug reports in some blogs, forums, newsgroups that were never pushed upstream to the project's author.

Even worse: you can a number of distros that patch the Notecase code but they never try to work with me to push those changes upstream.

It appears that this is a more rule that exception in a open source world. Maybe the users are afraid to have the idea rejected. That's one possibility, but this is also a chance to make the program that you use better and more suited to your needs.

I always kept an open ear to the user suggestions. I don't plan to stop now :)

Did you know that you can be notified when new Notecase is released?

Every project that is being hosted on sourceforge.net has a mechanism to notify users when new files are relased.

To do this, you need to do following:

• register as new user at sourceforge.net (it's free)
• make sure to fill in your real email in the user settings
• after logging in your SF account find out project summary page at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/notecase
• click on the green section link titled "Download NoteCase" (see picture below)
• on the next page, click the "Monitor" icon (icon of an envelope) to subscribe yourself for a notification (see image below)

This way you'll get an email each time Notecase is released.
If you wish to unsubscribe this notification, just click the same monitor icon once more.

Release day

I've just made a double release!
Notecase v1.6.1 and Notecase Pro v1.6.4 are out.

New things in Notecase:
- Macintosh OS X port
- support to execute links for Linux systems that don't have GnomeVFS (thanks to Barry Kauler from Puppy Linux for a suggestion)
- "Change password" feature for encrypted documents
- added support to execute your own external script to process exported file (post processing)
- import from text file
- import: if unknown format, ask user whether to import as text file
- optional "close to tray" feature (when clicked "x" on window title, minimize to tray instead of closing)

Notecase Pro ships with previously listed features and these major new feature:
- spellchecker support (based on aspell)
- bulleted list support
- hyperlinks now can point to the node inside another Notecase document
- there is a new view - flat list view - that can be filled by a search action
- option to edit picture in external image editor

This Notecase Pro release has been one of the release with a biggest number of code changes. I hope you'll like the speed of the changes :)

I am very eager to hear your ideas and thoughts on the future of this program.