Friday, July 19, 2013

NoteCase Pro for Android v1.0.3. has been released


Download is available at http://www.notecasepro.com/download.php

NoteCase Pro for Android is the companion app to Notecase desktop, 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 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 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:
    - major news is that the Android Lite version (available through Google Play) is discontinued now. It proved too much work to maintain two Android apps,
      so I merged two Andorid edition into the single Pro edition. This means that the new Pro version now also works without license key, with some features being disabled in that case.
        (for now, the difference is that the registered user can use .ncde encrypted file format)
    - fix possible crash when uploading crash log to author's website (upload must be done in the background thread on newer versions of Android)
    - preserve expanded/collapsed state of the note branch
    - improve text font/font size handling
    - fix: do not save note if the note was not modified
    - SDK version moved back from 11 to 10 to force "menu" button to appear as soft key on newer versions of Android where such hardware key is missing (needed for settings menu etc.)
    - fix: correctly refresh settings page to show program version and a name of the registered client
    - added support to connect to sync server and download a document file from it
    - added sync settings into the settings page
    - support to create desktop shortcut to the exact note in the document (through the context menu in the note tree view)
    - more precise error message when the program fails to find the license key file (show expected path)
    - fix crash when trying to insert picture from the camera on a device that does not have any camera app installed
    - disable note text input if there is no note selected in the tree view, do this after note delete action too (needed for tablet mode when both views are visible at the same time)
    - fix possible crash after deleting a note
    - fix crash when note text editor changes an orientation while editing
   
I hope to finish sync feature in the new cycle. Once done, the price of the license might rise to 3-4 USD, so now is the chance to buy a license with the old price.

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.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Notecase Pro v3.8.2. desktop edition released

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

This release is mostly a bugfix release, with some important bugs fixed.

Major changes in this release:
- add links to common pages of the "Insert symbols" dialog
- make SyncAdmin program start as service by default (and fallback to console if service is not installed); service name is "NotecasePro Sync Server"
(to install service use "-install", to uninstall "-uninstall" server command line parameters)
- window "Document List", opened by menu item "Synchronization" > "Available Documents", now has a checkbox to enable you to load all documents you've downloaded (once you close the window)
- allow "Synchronization" > "Available documents" to be used in Lite/Trial mode too, but only for files smaller than 1MB
- Lua method Nc_GUI_InputDlg got new optional parameter to enable text wrapping
- enable "Address Space Randomization" and DEP security mechanisms in all Windows builds (program, sync admin and server)
- fix: possible freeze on startup (when downloading the plugin list information in the background thread)
- fix: move code to update document format for Sqlite-based documents into the background instead of doing it on document load (so that the app does not get perceived as stuck)
- fix: blocking on waiting clipboard results can cause the data not to be pasted when text only content is available on clipboard
- fix: improve support for bold formatting as pasted from OneNote (tag contents broken in half with new line character)
- fix: sync server password setting ("General Settings" window) should be obfuscated in the config file
- fix: upon launch, the app should put the focus on the document that had the focus when the user closed the app
- fix: when exporting to HTML, do not generate jascript method LinkWarning() if there is no need for it (if all generated hyperlinks are valid)
- fix: improve NoteCenter import (use correct code page to correctly import accented letters, few other bugs)
- fix: Clipboard Monitor did not work when no explicit document target was selected (recent regression)
- fix: .pdb file (optionally needed to resolve crash function backtrace) was missing in the Windows 64-bit installer
- fix: Lua method Nc_Note_Title_Set should not modify read-only document/note
- fix: "Check for Update" window did not show any text when the newer version was found online
- fix: when switching to another document tab and back, expansion state of the document tree may not be correctly restored
- fix: Lua method Nc_App_List_AddNote always adds the note at the end of the list
- fix: add support for descriptive HTML font-size parameter values like 'medium', 'large', ... (this fixes the possible issue of having pasted text being invisible until you perform "Remove Formatting" action on it)
- fix: if needed, update hash values in the background for each note of the HTML based document format
- fix: "Copy Link to Clipboard" context menu item could copy wrong link if "(Show) Line Numbers" option was active
- fix: new status bar message when the note is selected: "Child notes: 12 (total descendants: 22)" (replacing old message speaking about "completed" notes, that message was removed in the last cycle)
- fix: a problem when expanding bulleted list having text formatting inside (bold, italic, ...)
- fix: prefill default value for sync server port in the "General Settings" window
- fix: allow sync server password to be left as blank, when syncing bring up a password dialog box to enter the password
- fix: do not try to update file format for encrypted plugin documents (faster loading)
- fix: when pressing a history forward/back in the List Pane, if the item is missing in the list, switch to Tree Pane to complete the navigation
- fix: when loading more than one document at a time, trigger possible tasks expired window after entire group of docs have been loaded
- help file updates (work by Daniel Hertrich and Paul Merrell)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Finnish translation updated (work by Ville Pilviö)
- Polish translation updated (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
- French translation updated (work by Jeff Malka)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Dutch translation updated (work by PhpFox Holland)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- other bugs fixed

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.

Some new builds were added (Fedora 19, Debian 7). I've removed support for Maemo repositories (leaving only standard .deb download),
because my logs show that they are not used anymore. The following builds are now deprecated and will be removed in the next cycle, unless someone needs them:
Ubuntu 11.10 (end of life), OpenSUSE 12.1 (end of life).

There is a news on Android version too: I plan to discontinue Android Lite edition (available on Google Play) and merge it into Android Pro (available through my website).
The reason is that I don't have enough resource to maintain two versions in parallel.
The new merged version (named Pro) will have some advanced features locked (.ncde file format mostly for now) unless you have a license installed on the device.
I expect to have the new initial merged version released in 2-3 days (and Lite version removed from Google Play).
This has delayed the sync for Android, but I'll concentrate to get this feature
done in the new cycle.

PS. Few remaining builds should be done by tomorrow.