Friday, July 20, 2012

Notecase Pro v3.6.8. has just been released

Downloads are now available at http://www.notecasepro.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- "Register Plugins" window has evolved into "Plugin Manager" with option to list and install plugins from the online repostory
  To disable automatic online check if the "Plugin Manager" list of plugins has changed, you can use key "FeedAutoPoll=0" placed in the "[DocPlugins]" section of the notecase_pro.ini file
- improve exporting font information when doing HTML export (use em for size, break font info into separate sections for size, bold, italic, font family)
- improve sorting to group the titles having the same case (currently all instances of "Test1" are not grouped together when sorting the set containing "test1", "Test1", "TesT1", ...)
- new Lua method to present a selection dialog with Lua table as an input (Nc_GUI_SelectionDlgTbl)
- new Lua method to get the main window layout type (Nc_Config_MainLayout_Get)
- new Lua method to get the screen size in pixels (Nc_Env_DisplaySize_Get)
- new Lua methods to get/set the width of List/Tree Pane columns (Nc_App_List_Col_GetWidth/Nc_App_List_Col_SetWidth)
- new Lua methods to help querying list of registered plugins (Nc_App_RegisteredPlugin_GetCount, Nc_App_RegisteredPlugin_Path_GetByIdx, Nc_App_RegisteredPlugin_Name_GetByIdx)
- new Lua method Nc_Event_Current_GetShortName for script to know if it was called within some program event
- new Lua method Nc_Script_Path_Get for script to get it's own file path name (.lua file or NoteCase document where the script is stored)
- new Lua method Nc_Tag_LastActivated_Get to get the activated tag when processing the "After Tag Activated" event
- new Lua method Nc_App_List_Note_FindByID to get position in the List Pane (if exists) of the note specified by its ID string
- new program event "Before header Tex exported" with new related methods Nc_Doc_ExportTex_Header_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportTex_Header_Set allows you to customize document header when exporting to LaTeX
- new program event "Before note Tex exported" with related methods to allow you to customize note contents exported to LaTeX (Nc_Doc_ExportTex_CurNoteID_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportTex_CurNote_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportTex_CurNote_Set, Nc_Doc_ExportTex_Type_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportTex_RootNoteID_Get)
- new program event "After Tag Activated" triggered after (Ctrl+)Enter key press or double click on the tag in the Tags Pane
- Lua method Nc_GUI_InputDlg got two new optional parameters to define dialog width and height in pixels
- Lua method Nc_GUI_Note_Select got another parameter (and return value) to optionally add an extra button to Note Select window
- fix: possibly wrong document can be closed when clicking on a tab's "x" button
- fix: when doing "Save As" operation, the resulting document must get new Unique ID value
- fix: improve Keepnote import to add support for new, modified XML format
- fix: special French characters were incorrectly exported to RTF on Ubuntu when system GUI language was not set English
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Finnish translation updated (work by Ville Pilviö)
- Dutch translation updated (work by PhpFox Holland)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Polish translation updated (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
- help file update (work by Daniel Hertrich)
- other bugs fixed
- removed following deprecated builds: Fedora 8, Fedora 15, Open Suse 11.4

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 the site http://www.NotecaseproPlugins.com has been redesigned.
That site is now a central place to search for (free and commercial) Notecase Pro plugins and scripts.

Note that I plan to deprecate Ubuntu 10.04 and Open Suse 11.4 builds in the next cycle. If anyone needs to use those, let me know.

Friday, July 13, 2012

NoteCase Pro for Android v1.0.0. has just been released

Downloads are now available at http://www.notecasepro.com/download.php

NoteCase for Android is the companion app to Notecase desktop, and supports the .ncdb file format
so the same files can be shared between desktop and Android editions.

Compared to the Lite edition, the major feature that the paid Pro version brings is an access to encrypted file format (.ncde).

Note that initially I did not plan for Android version to use license system as used on desktop, but to sell it through some
app store. The reasons are following:
- Android apps have lower price (planned initial price for this version is 2USD) and thus higher volume of licenses sold
  Generating license keys "by hand" for such volume would take a lot of my time
- payment processing site that I use for desktop licenses does not practically support 2USD licenses (transaction fees are high for this price)

Unfortunately, I seem to have issues with app stores when trying to do business from Croatia
(Google Play does not support sending payments to Croatia, AndroidPit does, but it requires that the app is on Google Play too, that makes a "dead-lock" situation).
While trying to resolve that, I decided to release the program now, rather than making you wait.
For now, you need to own one of "all OSes, valid forever" license keys to use the program.
When I resolve the app store issues you'll be able to buy the app from the app store too.

Instalation instructions for your Android device:
    - prerequisites: program requires Android 1.6 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" is a good and free file manager app choice.
    - if you get problem installing the app, try uninstalling the previous version first
    - copy your "all OSes, valid forever" license key to your SD card root folder
    - start the app

Features:
    - uses .ncdb and .ncde file format compatible as 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

Major changes compared to NoteCase for Android Lite 1.0.1:
    - support for encrypted file format (.ncde)
    - fix selecting note after being created
    - fix button to cancel revert note editing to show warning prompt
    - fix: add program name and version to the crash log file
    - "Save As" (Tree Pane options menu) saves a copy of the document under new name or format
    - fix: document shortcuts created on the desktop area have old icon
    - crash log dialog now has a edit widget to type the optional description
    - context menu in File Dialog to delete file from disk
    - Croatian translation updated
    - Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
    - Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
    - French translation updated (work by Jeff Malka)
    - Polish translation updated (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
    - Dutch translation created (work by Martijn Steur)
    - German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
    - Chinese Simplified translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
    - Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
    - program can be licensed by installing your "all OS, valid forever" license key on your SD card root folder

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.