Scratching my digital itches

2012-01-23T07:23:00.001+01:00

NoteCase Pro beta for Android is available for public testing

Thanks to a lot of feedback, an improved version of NoteCase Pro for Android has reached a beta stage and it is now ready for public testing.

The build will expire on March 1st 2012.

You can download the Android package here:
http://www.virtual-sky.com/get.php?android/Notecase.apk

Instalation instructions for your Android device:
- prerequisites: program requires Android 1.6 or newer
- download the Notecase.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

Changes in beta version:
- add: menu option in the File Dialog to show the hidden items
- fix: change the file dialog swipe (to go to the parend directory) to left to right
- add: swiping from left to right from the text view gets you back to the tree view (saving the typed note changes)
- fix: rename recent file list context menu item from "Delete" to "Remove" to be more precise
- fix: when rotating the device in Tree View, tree content dissapears
- fix: when rotating the device in File Dialog, new list is positioned in different directory
- add: implemented Tags View and List View
- add: context menu item in the recent files list to permanently delete the selected file
- fix: report error when the document fails to load
- fix: clicking on the expander in the Tree View sometimes triggers the item editing (along with branch expanding)
- add: support for large screen devices in landscape mode (custom layout showing both tree view and text view at the same time)
- add: support to create home screen shortcut to the document listed in the recent list
- add: move note up/down/left/right operations
- add: support to open email links ("mailto:")
- add: support for Holo theme on newer Androids
- Chinese Traditional translation created (work by Richard Sun)
- Czech translation created (work by Adam Zivner)
- Croatian translation created
- Italian translation created (work by Fabio Iannone)
- Polish translation created (work by Kamil Dembkowski)
- German translation created (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Chinese Simplified translation created (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation created (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Finnish translation created (work by Ville Pilviö)

Features:
- uses .ncdb file format compatible as used in the desktop version
- you can create or open 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
- 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
- swipe in Tree View to go to the Tags View
- click on a tag in Tags View to go into the List View with all matching notes listed

Feedback is appreciated. I am interested in your design and general ideas, bug reports, ...
If you experience crash, please send me the file "ncpro.log" found on your SD Card that describes the crash in some details.

If you would like to create a program translation for you language, please translate the phrases written in this file and mail me translated file (for example as "strings_it.xml" for Italian translation):
http://www.virtual-sky.com/download/translations/android/strings.xml
Currently, the file contains only 36 phrases to be translated.

Graphics (program icons) still needs polish, and the next phase will concentrate on this.
If someone is good at this department, and wants to cooperate, please contact me.
In return for you work, I can offer you free Notecase Pro license or some similar deal.

I expect a final release version within a month or so, so your feedback would be valuable here.

2011-12-20T11:57:00.003+01:00

NoteCase Pro for Android alpha version has been released for public testing.
The build will expire on February 2012.

You can download the Android package here:
http://www.virtual-sky.com/get.php?android/Notecase.apk

Installation instructions for your Android device:
- prerequisites: program requires Android 1.6 or newer
- download the Notecase.apk file and transfer it to your phone's SD card
- enable installing applications from unknown source ("Settings" > "Applications" > "Unknown Sources" check box)
- use some file manager application to click on the Notecase.apk file to start the installation

Features:
- uses .ncdb file format compatible as used in the desktop version
- you can create or open 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
- 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

Feedback is appreciated. I am interested in your design and general ideas, bug reports, ...

If you would like to create a program translation for you language, please translate the phrases written in this file and mail me translated file (for example as "strings_it.xml" for Italian translation):
http://www.virtual-sky.com/download/translations/android/strings.xml
Currently, the file contains on 30 phrases to be translated.

As you can see, graphics (program icons) is the area where I need a lot of polish.
If someone is good at this department, and wants to cooperate, please contact me.
In return for you work, I can offer you free Notecase Pro license or some similar deal.

2011-12-08T10:25:00.002+01:00

Windows theme problems

Paul Merrell did the test of the themes shipped with the latest Notecase Pro v3.5.7 release for Windows.

Apparently these themes might cause you stability problems and their use is not recommended (they will be removed in the next release):
- Amaranth
- Delightfully Smooth
- Lush
- Nuvola
- Smooth Funky-Monkey
- Smooth Line
- Smooth OkayIsh
- Smooth Sea Ice
- Smooth Tangerine Dream
- Smooth Winter
- Unity
- Wasp

2011-12-06T09:37:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v3.5.7. has just been released

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

Major changes in this release:
- GTK library for Windows was updated to 2.24.8; this release fixes the issues with tree reordering using the mouse, drawing artefacts when resizing the window and possibly many others; note that some GTK themes were removed because they did not work well with this version
- improved export to RTF code, added support for internal hyperlinks in the exported RTF document
- you can now assign shortcut keys to registered scripts and plugin actions using a new page of a "Shortcut Settings" window
- improved default algoritm to select word in text view by double-clicking it, allowing digits and the underscore character to be the part of the word
- add support for links to Outlook items (as created by "Linker for Windows" software), links should work on other, unknown link types too
- support to import Leo outliner files (http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html)
- support to import Toodledo XML export (http://www.toodledo.com), requires .toodledo file extension
- "Copy Link" item in the note title bar context menu allows you to quickly create a link to the current document note (or get the set of "breadcrumb" links if that mode is switched on)
- new action "Remove Link" added to the Text Pane context menu to quickly remove the link under the mouse pointer
- added "YYYY.MM.DD" format in the list of dates
- support to automatically create telnet:// and ssh:// hyperlinks while typing
- when importing a document, you can now choose to import its contents as descendants of the currently selected note (check box option is placed in the "File Open" window for the Import action)
- improved network proxy support protocol to be compatible with squid proxy program
- option to force note clones to share the same title as their original source (does not modify data in the existing documents, untill the clone/note is being renamed or created); see "Global" option page for setting
- integrated LuaFileSystem library v1.5.0 directly into the program (http://keplerproject.github.com/luafilesystem/)
- in "Shortcut Settings" window, when assigning already used shortcut key for some action, allow user to use this keys anyway ("Grab" it from the action that currently uses this shortcut)
- increased maximal count of documents opened at the same time from 10 to 20
- maximal number of registered scripts (in the "Scripts" menu) increased from 30 to 70
- size of a crash log buffer was increased to 100kB
- fix: Gstreamer and similar crashes on Linux were caused by new compile flags needed for Lua to support loading external modules; Lua module loading support is now temporary removed (will be fixed in the next cycle)
- fix: "Link Properties" when started from the Text Pane context menu no longer requires that the text cursor (caret) is placed within the target (existing) link to be edited, it now detects the link by mouse pointer position
- fix: when saving to an .ncdb or .ncde file format overwriting the already existing and loaded document file, program will wait forever until the file is released (use 5 second timeout instead)
- fix: add support relative links to a note inside a document (before, only absolute links were supported for links to note)
- fix: for speed reasons, Notecase does not copy text to clipboard as RTF by default anymore, only as text + HTML (you can enable RTF with the .ini file key "PutRtfToClipboard=1" in "[OTher]" section)
- fix: on Windows use Unicode version of program's command line to improve opening the files with non-ANSI characters in the name
- new build targets: Fedora 16 (32-bit and 64-bit), Mint 12 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- help file update (work by Birte Wenning and Daniel Hertrich)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Finnish translation updated (work by Ville Pilviö)
- many 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.

Note that you can download several Notecase Pro plugins (free and commercial) at:
http://www.hermocom.com/products/notecase/plugins

Another news: I expect to have alpha version of Notecase Pro for Android ready in approximately 10-15 days.
Since this is a completely new project, I'd appreciate testing, ideas and feedback regarding this public (test) release.
Your thoughts can help me to shape the product and make it better.
Once released it will be announced through Twitter, Blog and Google Group for Notecase Pro.

2011-10-05T22:33:00.002+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.5.1. has just been released.

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

Major changes in this release:
- support for "Notecase document"-based plugin system
- "Separate Tags Pane Column" option enables showing the Tags Pane in a separate vertical column (suitable for users using large number of tags in their documents)
- new Tag Panes context menu "Show Current Note Tags Only" to allow displaying only tags that are assigned to the currently selected note
- detect if the document file was modified outside of the Notecase Pro program and offer to reload the document
- Ctrl+Click on a note now toggles its "marked" state
- when saving the program configuration to the .ini file, create a backup of the previously existing file to preserve data in case of write error; use backup if .ini file does not exist or its size iz 0
- when inserting/pasting an image, suggest last used file format for a new image or PNG as default (better quality)
- added "None" button in color picker windows to support removal of the current text/background color without defining a new one
- two new Lua methods to get/set "modified" state of the document: Nc_Doc_IsModified_Get/Nc_Doc_IsModified_Set
- new command line parameter "--disable-sound" to disable loading Gstreamer sound library (useful when debugging if the library causes problems to the program)
- new Lua methods to query/set if the spellchecker is enabled (Nc_App_Spellcheck_GetActive, Nc_App_Spellcheck_SetActive)
- set of Lua methods to do the RSA public/private key operations: Nc_Util_RSA_Sign, Nc_Util_RSA_Verify, Nc_Util_RSA_Encrypt, Nc_Util_RSA_Decrypt
(this can be used to implement licensing system for commercial plugin documents)
- new sample script to demonstrate RSA encryption APIs ("44_Rsa_Encryption.lua")
- support to load lua dynamic libraries
- when crash log files are detected on a PC, offer to upload them to the author's site for analysis
- fix: detect the GStreamer-bug related crash and automatically disable sound on restart to prevent such bug to happen again
- help file update (work by Birte Wenning and Daniel Hertrich)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- many bugs fixed

The new plugin system was designed in collaboration with Daniel Hertrich.
He plans to release some NoteCase Pro Plugins in the near future:
http://www.hermocom.com/products/notecase/plugins

For Ubuntu 11.04 users, I've created experimental GTK3 builds. I am interested in your feedback here, because some smaller features might not work correctly
(tree background color for example).

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.

2011-08-08T08:49:00.001+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.4.8. has just been released

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

Major changes in this release:
- import for ActionOutline HTML export format (file needs to be renamed to have .htmao extension)
- you can use Ctrl+Double-Click on Tag Pane to remove matching notes from List Pane (similar menu item added to the context menu)
- support for more than one script to be assigned to a a single application event
- new application event "Before list sorted"
- new application event "After note moved"
- new Lua method to get the detailed info on the note that was moved (Nc_Event_AfterNoteMove_GetInfo)
- new Lua method to return the file size of the specified document (Nc_Doc_FileSize_Get)
- new Lua methods to get/set task repeating field (recurrence): Nc_Note_Task_Repeating_Get, Nc_Note_Task_Repeating_Set
- new Lua method to modify the target of a hyperlink (Nc_Note_Link_SetTarget)
- 4 new Lua methods to work with app event registration/unregistrations (Nc_App_EventScripts_GetCount, Nc_App_EventScripts_GetByIdx, Nc_App_EventScripts_Add, Nc_App_EventScripts_Remove)
- new Lua method to check if "Show line numbers" feature is switched on (Nc_GUI_LineNumbers_IsVisible)
- fix: program crashes on startup on the new OS X v10.7 (code name Lion)
- fix: when importing a Notecase file into the current document, the embedded icons are not being imported
- fix: in the File Save window, show file name without the extension (extension is defined by the selected file filter)
- fix: umlaut in export file name crashes NoteCase Pro
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- many other bug fixes
- deprecated following build targets: Debian 5 and Fedora 13 builds

Important note: the next release will probably be released in two months. I want to take the extra time to start the Android version of the program.
The requests for this version seem to be high, so I will start working on it now.
If you have ideas or you are interested in Android version please give me a note. I want to be able to measure how big is the need for this.

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.

2011-07-08T08:04:00.000+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.4.5. has just been released

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

Major changes in this release:

- option to setup Clipboard Monitoring to be started when the program starts (with optional custom target document/note)
- clipboard monitor now has an option to store all clips into a single note (if defined, it stores them directly into the parent note, else it creates a new note)
- support for using Web Proxy when checking for updates, opening from web and embedding images found in the pasted content (see "Network" page in the Options window)
- added basic authentication support for Web proxy
- add: Lua method to get the name of an note attachment (Nc_Note_Attach_Name_Get)
- add: Lua method to run the "Compact Document" action on a specified document (Nc_Doc_Compact)
- add: new Lua method to get the (per-document) setting for the backup folder (Nc_Config_BackUpFolder_Get)
- add: new Lua method to define a clipboard monitor target (Nc_Config_ClipboardMonitor_SetTarget)
- add: new Lua method to start/stop clipboard monitor (Nc_Config_ClipboardMonitor_Start)
- add: new Lua method to convert normal note to the clone (Nc_Note_NoteConvertToClone)
- add: new Lua method to get the folder used to store the configuration file (Nc_Config_ConfigDir_Get)
- add: new application event "Before note deleted" allowing the user to abort the operation using the new Lua method Nc_Event_BeforeNoteDelete_Abort
- add: new menu item "Custom Formatting" placed under "Notes" > "Properties" (context menu too) for quick access to custom note color/font formatting features
- fix: do not offer to load the alread-loaded document twice, just switch to the previous instance
- fix: modified recent script menu to include embedded scripts too in the list
- fix: when exporting a document as HTML with tree view, embedded picture having an umlaut in the name will not load correctly when the HTL is opened in Internet Explorer
- fix: when using a feature to unload encrypted document on inactivity, it was possible that only first such document got unloaded (it the user aborts the password entry for reloading the first unloaded doc.)
- fix: disable Clipboard Monitor action when copying from within the Notecase itself (can lead to unwanted results)
- fix: reordering notes with mouse drag in the Tree Pane gets stuck after going to List pane and back to Tree Pane (Linux fix, GTK for Windows still has a bug in tree reordering)
- fix: a number of items were missing an entry in the Shortcuts Editor window ("Add Marked Nodes to List", "Invert Marked Nodes", "Check New Version", "Clear List", "Join Marked Nodes", "Split Node", "View Attachments Pane", "View Tags Pane", "View Toolbar Audio", "Add Node to List", "List All Notes", "Delete Document")
- add: Audio options page has a presets list with hard-coded entries "Voice recording" and "HiFi recording" for quick setup of the common recording values
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- many other bug fixes
- deprecated following build targets: Ubuntu 9, Centos 5.5, Slackware tar.gz version and PCLinuxOS 2007 "no GnomeVfs used" builds

Important note: my plans are to deprecate Debian 5 and Fedora 13 builds unless there is someone using one of them.
Feel free to contact me if you are using one of those.

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.

2011-06-14T14:15:00.000+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.4.2. has been released.

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

Major changes in this release:

- support to create a hyperlink out of the embedded picture
- Lua wrappers for basic network socket API functions (net.connect, net.bind, net.accept, net.read, net.write, net.close), see new test script #43
- new menu item "Set Note as Clip Parent" (under "Tools") enables setting the parent document/note for new clips created by clipboard monitor
- Clipboard Monitor now gives more meaningful titles to the generated notes, using first 30 characters of pasted text as a title (if text was on the clipboard)
- new search target "Listed Notes" in the Find window
- new Tree/List Pane column "Clone Source Path" to display the path to the clone's orignal note
- Tag Pane got a "Frequency" column to see the number of occurences of the tag in the document
- new program event "After document saved"
- new Lua methods to manipulate status and priority fields of the task notes (Nc_Note_Task_Status_Get, Nc_Note_Task_Priority_Get, Nc_Note_Task_Status_Set, Nc_Note_Task_Priority_Set)
- make Tag Pane sortable by clicking the column headers, add context menu option to show/hide "Frequency" column
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- (partial) French translation update (work by Gérard Toulgoat)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- German "Tip of The Day" file update (work by Daniel Hertrich)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- fix: only 10 Lua scripts could be registered in the Scripts menu
- fix: when using two instances of the program, new instance asks to delete autosave file of the first one, even if that instance is still alive (Windows only)
- fix: clipboard monitor crashes on Linux when an image is copied to the clipboard
- fix: Windows build fails to load/save the file having non-ASCII characters in the name
- fix: when searching custom properties, notes that don't have any custom property are matched too
- many other bug fixes
- new build targets Scientific Linux 6 (RHEL 6), Ubuntu 11.04, Oracle Solaris 11, Mageia 1 and Fedora 15: 32-bit and 64-bit packages
- deprecated following build targets: Fedora 12, Open Suse 10.3, Open Suse 11.2, Ubuntu 8 and Maemo OS2008 (Chinook)

Important note: my plans are to deprecate Ubuntu 9, Centos 5.5, Slackware tar.gz version and PCLinuxOS 2007 "no GnomeVfs used" builds unless there is someone using one of them.
Feel free to contact me if you are using one of those.

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.

2011-04-11T12:58:00.000+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.3.7. has been released

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

Major changes in this release:
- Trial mode implemented (user can test advanced features of the program, but it can not load/save or export the document having more than 10 notes)
- add "Store data source URL when pasting" support for Linux too (support when copying from Firefox only)
- support to link to Lua scripts embedded within Notecase documents from the toolbar buttons and in "Register Scripts" and "Script Events" windows
- new program event "Pre application close" (called afer any unsaved files being saved)
- warn user that the license file will expire soon
- "Are you sure ... " message, started when deleting the note, now has additional check box "Do not ask anymore"
- option to automatically check for updates on startup (weekly)
- initial implementation of importer for MindManager (*.mmap) document format (http://www.mindjet.com)
- initial support to import Basket file format (*.baskets)
- implemented "--viewer" command line parameter to start the program in the viewer mode (document can not be edited, many menu items and toolbars hidden)
- new menu item in the Tag Pane (when List Pane is displayed) to insert a new tag and assign it to listed notes ("Listed Notes - Add New Tag")
- finalize port to GTK3 (tested on Fedora 15 alpha)
- 3 new CSS style sheets donated by Daniel Hertrich are shipped as default sheets offered for HTML export styling (replacing old "template1.css" sheet)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- French translation updated (work by GĂ©rard Toulgoat)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- fix: exporting the note branch to HTML with tree view broken since the last release (tree view empty)
- fix: when exporting the file to HTML with CSS, try to link to CSS file using the relative path if possible
- fix: when exporting the file to HTML with CSS, allow the usage of http:// URLs to the remote CSS file
- fix: when applying alignment formatting and there is no text selection, the formatting should apply to the paragraph where cursor is placed
- fix: when opening hyperlink on OSX, quote file path being opened (fixes problems for files having spaces as part of the file name)
- fix: applying a style was not stored to .ncdb/.ncde formats
- fix: change of the GUI theme now requires restart (to prevent possible crashes)
- fix: when the invalid date is entered in the Task Property window, program should display the error message when closing the window
- fix: when exporting to HTML with tree view, enable resizing the width of a tree view
- many other bug fixes
- new build target Debian 6 32-bit and 64-bit packages
- new build target Open Suse v11.4 32-bit and 64-bit packages
- deprecate the following (old) targets: Fedora Core 9/10/11, Moblin, Maemo Bora and OSX 10.4.

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.

2011-03-03T13:47:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v3.3.4 has just been released.

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- enable selecting multiple files at once when opening new document, adding files to AutoComplete, AutoReplace lists, to list of files to be loaded at startup and attachment list
- task priority, status and all task date property fields can now be changed by clicking directly to its Tree/List Pane cell
- new "Custom Property Value/Key" search target added in the Find window
- option for audio note recording to define the sound system (mono/stereo), sample rate and bitrate
- layout when exporting a single branch/note to HTML was redesigned, now we export the "root" note contents first, then optional TOC with the rest of the notes
- (hidden) option to activate custom syntax highlighting color scheme (use "SourceStyleScheme" key inside the "Display" section of the .ini file, for example: "SourceStyleScheme=cobalt")
- implemented "quick search mode" for Tags Pane (type few first characters to quickly jump to the matching tag name in the list)
- fix: add warning message in OSX builds that it is best to switch off the global menu integration before trying to customize program shortcuts
- fix: change shortcut defaults for OSX platform to use "Cmd" instead of "Ctrl" key modifier
- fix: speedup the process of embedding images found into the pasted HTML content
- fix: when displaying note, validate if the content is correct UTF8 string, warn of possible errors and automatically strip the offending characters
- fix: removed "unassigned" task priority value (new tasks should have "normal" priority value)
- fix: disable GTK menu mnemonics on OSX (they kill the shortcuts in some cases)
- update gtksourceview library on OS X to version 2.10.4 (this brings in the AutoComplete support)
- new "Export" option "Export note Tags as CSS class names" where tags are written as <dl class="nc_level01 tag1 tag2 ..">
- Export window now automatically lists all .css files found in the html_css folder (for HTML export format);
one template CSS file is now being shipped with the program (work by Daniel Hertrich)
- new sample Lua script to import a directory filled with RTF files (one RTF file becomes one note)
- add: new scripting events "Post AutoReplace group loaded", "Post AutoComplete group loaded", "Post note title changed"
- help file and "tip of the day" file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- Croatian translation updated
- Russian translation updates (work by Maxim Matrosov)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- French translation updated (work by Gérard Toulgoat)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Italian translation updated (work by Fabio Iannone)
- a number of different new Lua methods created
- many bug fixes

For a complete list of changes in this release, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

Important news:

Unless someone is using one of the folowing builds, I plan to deprecate these (quite old or not used) platforms in one of the next cycles:
Fedora Core 8/9/10/11, Maemo Bora and Maemo Chinook, Moblin and OSX 10.4.

Smaller number of builds are missing and they will be built by tommorow.

Thanks to everyone who helped during this cycle.

2011-02-01T07:30:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v3.3.0 has just been released.

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- Auto-Complete word as you type using the predefined word lists (UTF8 encoded text files with one-word-per-line format)
- Lua scripts now can be embedded into the document (note text is a Lua script)
- support to execute the embedded scripts through autoreplace mechanism (just type abbreviation to activate your script)
- list pane (temporary storage) is now stored per-document (not global anymore); when switching between multiple open documents, your list pane view is not lost anymore
- Tree Pane is now also sortable by clicking the header column (Click sorts only siblings of the selected note, Ctrl+Click sorts entire branch). Warning: this will modify the document tree (sorting the List Pane does not modify the document)
- rewrote tree sorting feature to be more elegant and more powerful (1 menu item instead of 4, dialog offering choice of sort parameters like recursive sorting or sorting by columns other than "title"). Note: sort now sorts the siblings of the selected note (before you had option to sort root notes or children of the selected note)
- support for regular expressions in Find/Replace operation
- in the dialog to define the new title of the inserted note, show "create task" check box to be able to quickly create a task out of the new note
- make "Sort" menu item and dialog work in the context of List Pane too
- Sqlite based file formats now use less memory when loading a note with big attachments
- support to correctly parse Chinese and Japanese text when importing from RTF document
- support to use Cmd key in Shortcut Settings Editor (OS X) (I need feedback on this one)
- opening large document by clicking on file in Finder crashes the program (OS X)
- do not create uninstaller and program groups/links when installing the portable (Windows) version
- fix: when inserting the transparent image into the document, transparency is lost
- fix: activating text syntax highlighting crashes the program on Windows (fixed by finding the better build of "libxml2.dll" library)
- fix: Natara Bonsai import improved (import item and task related dates, keyword, category and priority fields; priority is mapped to Notecase Pro range of values; categories are added as tags)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- Croatian translation updated
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- French translation updated (work by Gérard Toulgoat)
- new build targets Ubuntu v10.10 32-bit and 64-bit (Ubuntu 10.04 has some noted incompatibilities to Ubuntu 10.10, so it is better to have both)
- ancient build targets removed: Fedora 6, Fedora 7 and OSX 10.3.x
- large number of different new Lua methods
- many bug fixes

For a complete list of changes in this release, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

Thanks to everyone who helped during this cycle.

2010-12-23T23:59:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v3.2.7 has just been released.

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- implemented AutoReplace feature (can be used to expand abbreviations or auto-correct common spell errors as you type)
- support to embed external picture assigned to the note (tree view) icon directly into the document
- support for importing CSV export file of BestJotter for S60 (*.csv)
- implemented custom color picker buttons for "Note Properties" > "Formatting"
(GTK picker button widget does not allow showing the palette)
- visualize when the current document/note is read-only by setting the different (customizable in Options window) background color to the note title bar
- when selecting internal note link target within the Link Properties window, you can quickly select the note name by typing its name
- temporary disable print preview (for builds using GTK >= 2.17.x) until the GTK developers fix the bugs related to this feature
- if you select a single picture in a document, when copying to clipboard, copy the data as picture (not as HTML)
- plugin loading mechanism changed, now you need to explicitly select plugins to be loaded in "Plugins" page (Options window)
- as a way to customize HTML export, new app event was created "Pre note HTML exported" being triggered once for each note in the document (part) being exported
with a set of Lua methods to customize HTML being exported: Nc_Doc_ExportHtml_CurNoteID_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportHtml_CurNote_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportHtml_CurNote_Set, Nc_Doc_ExportHtml_Type_Get, Nc_Doc_ExportHtml_RootNoteID_Get
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- German translation and a "tip of the day" file updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- several sample online scripts created by Daniel Hertrich and Paul Merrell
- bug fixes

For a complete list of changes in this release, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

Important note: my plans are to deprecate Fedora 6, Fedora 7 and OSX 10.3.x builds unless there is someone using one of them.
Feel free to contact me if you are using one of those.

As always thanks to anyone who helped in any way.
I wish you happy holidays and the best wishes for the new year.

2010-12-02T07:14:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v3.2.5 has been released

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major changes in this release:
- improved Freemind import by adding support for hyperlink notes
- improved XMind import by adding support for note formatting
- support to import HP Palmtop Note Database file format (.ndb)
- moved load/save/attach/import operations of the HTML based formats in a seperate thread (cca 10% speedup)
- added Column Bar Editor, ability to reorder columns and support to add note's Custom Property key as column
- support for RTF clipboard format (preserves formatting when content was copied from WordPad into Notecase)
- many new Lua methods created to help you automate your work in Notecase Pro
- new application events "Post content pasted", "Post note text typed", "Post audio played", "Post document imported"
- report errors from audio player/recorder thread, audio support is now considered stable
- new "Toolbar Audio" created
- Note Title Bar, when in "show hierarchy" mode, now allows clicking on the individual note titles for faster navigation
- Win32/Win64 installers now ask you to uninstall the old version before proceeding
- when starting Pro fro the first time, detect if free version of Notecase was used and try importing settings from its configuration file
- menu items reorganized
- new build targets Fedora 14 32bit and 64bit
- Ubuntu 6 and 7 builds are not built anymore
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- German translation and a "tip of the day" file updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Chinese translation updated (work by Stephen Zhu)
- several sample online scripts created by Daniel Hertrich and Paul Merrell
- numerous bug fixes

For a complete list of changes in release 3.2.5, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

Additionally you can find some interesting .lua scripts created by various authors at:
http://www.virtual-sky.com/scripting.php

One of them will enable you to turn your Notecase Pro into a typewriter, by simulating the typewriter sounds while you are typing in the text view.

Big thanks goes for everyone who helped with improving the program, either by sending their feature wishes, reporting the issues, helping with the documentation, donating scripts or translationg the program to their native languages.

2010-10-02T02:15:00.001+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.1.8 was just released.

Major changes in this release:

- numerous bug fixes
- experimental support to record audio notes (stored as attachment of the note)
- support to play audio files attached to the document note
- support to import XMind document format (http://www.xmind.net)
- many new Lua methods added
- add "Clipboard Monitor" menu item to the tray icon menu
- support quick search mode within a List Pane too
- you can now select an icon in icon list of the Icon Select window by quickly typing the letters of its name
- tagging feature in now enabled in the unregistered version too
- Chinese Traditional translation updated (work by Richard Sun)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)

For a complete list of changes in release 3.1.8, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php
You can find your NoteCase Pro packages at: http://virtual-sky.com/download.php

2010-09-27T14:20:00.002+02:00

An interview

I just got interviewed regarding my NoteCase Pro project by www.FamousWhy.com

You can read the interview at:
http://download.famouswhy.com/publisher/miroslav_rajcic/

2010-07-17T20:02:00.000+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.1.2 released

Major changes in this release:

- numerous bug fixes
- created new license type (single OS, valid for lifetime)
- new build for Open Pandora Linux
- support to set custom font, text and background colors for the note title (available through the Node Properties dialog)
- support to highlight all search matches in the current document (plain text search only)
- support to use boolean search and regex when searching in note tags too
- integrate theme/gui font selector to change the global program looks ("Configure Notecase Pro" window > "Display" page)
- Windows 32bit installer now ships with large number of GTK themes (allowing for styling the looks of the program in a wide variety of ways)
- support to import Keepnote file format
- created new document event "Post note inserted"
- option to select a folder as a link target in the Link Properties window
- Find window has two new search targets: "Current Node's Children only", "Current Node's Descendants only"
- new Lua scripts implementing these features: get note ID, copy hyperlink to note on the clipboard, copy List Pane notes as a list of hyperlinks to clipboard, write current crash log content to the file
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- French translation updated (work by Henri Spagnolo)

For a complete list of changes in release 3.1.2, see change log at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

2010-06-18T19:59:00.001+02:00

Notecase Pro v3.0.9 released

Major changes in this release:

- numerous bug fixes
- new OS X installer with GTK embedded (no more separate GTK install) and better OS integration
- support for Maemo 5 PR1.2 build
- Fedora 13 i386/x86_64 and Arch 64bit packages
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- Romanian translation updated (work by Alexandru Bogdan Munteanu)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- add: new action to clone entire branch
- numerous Nokia Maemo 5 build improvements including kinetic scrolling and some GUI layout redesigns
- add: improve OPML import/export by adding support for OPML values used by Projekt program from www.kylom.com (_category1, _category2, _date, _status)
- Dutch translation updated (work by Lennart Aangeenbrug)

For a complete list of changes in release 3.0.9, see: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php.

2010-05-18T08:04:00.002+02:00

New Notecase Pro v3.05 has been released!

Highlights:
- Clipboard Monitoring mode to automatically grab new clipboard contents into the current document (as a new note)
- added approximately 100 new internal icons that can be used through the Icon Picker window
- Icon Picker Dialog now can list icons in an arbitrary directory
- support to use internal icon as the Toolbar Button icon ("Configure Toolbar" window)
- import Palm Memo file format (tab delimited text export format having note contents as the first field and categories as the second field; .palm extension required)
- RTF export now supports note numbering option in "Configure Notecase Pro" window ("Export" page)
- correctly scale pictures embedded in imported RTF document
- "Add Marked Nodes to List" menu item to fill the List Pane with marked items from Tree Pane
- "Clear List" option to clear the List Pane contents
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

2010-04-17T09:31:00.001+02:00

The new release v3.0.1 is out!

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php
If you are using Windows build, it is highly recommended to uninstall previous version before installing the new one
(GTK layout was changed).

Major news are:
- add: added support to import images embedded into the RTF
- fix: change default GTK theme on Windows from "Raleigh" to "MS-Windows" (better looking one)
- add: support to export images from Notecase document into RTF (embedded images)
- add: support to import HTML files
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- fix: make Windows installer work even for restricted users (not having Administrator rights), program suggests different install folder for this install mode
- add: new build targets OpenSuse 11.2 64bit and Arch Linux 2009.08 32bit
- changed the Windows installers to copy GTK libraries directly into the app folder, Notecase does not use launcher applications anymore (for portable mode start with "notecase.exe --portable")
This should make the program less vulnerable to so called "DLL hell"
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- updated GTK for Win32 to latest version 2.20.0
- add: new Lua script to change Read-Only flag to entire branch under currently selected note ("24_SetBranchReadOnly.lua")
- add: tags that are assigned to the currently selected note are now painted with underlined text in the Tags Pane
- optimize saving a Sqlite based document (cca 7% faster now)
- fix: when dropping a single image file into the text view, insert the picture into the note text instead of adding it as an attachment
- add: double-clicking the note in the tree view shows Note Properties window (clicking the icon still shows the icon selector window)
- add: experimental Windows 7 integration code for adding recent files list into program's jump list
- fix: use device's Volume up/down keys on Nokia Maemo platform to enter/exit full screen mode
- add: use accelerometer chip information on Nokia Maemo v5 platform to adapt application window to current device orientation (portrait/landscape)

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

For those not being in the loop, here are some online resources related to NoteCase Pro:

a) Google group http://groups.google.com/group/notecase-pro
converse with other users, post support requests and feature suggestions

b) Twitter http://twitter.com/NotecasePro
tracks the development of program

c) Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Notecase/151626410312?ref=mf
consider enlisting as a fan of Notecase, or read some news

As always any feedback is welcome.

PS. Few additional news:
I am working on a OS X Snow Leopard installer, there is an experimental build available that uses GTK build with Quartz support (no X11 server needed), feedback if higly welcome.
It requires installing GTK from: http://notecase.sourceforge.net/temp/gtk2-2.18.8.dmg
Then, the Notecase is installed from: http://notecase.sourceforge.net/temp/notecase_pro-3.0.0.dmg

Another news is that I would like to start deprecating support for really old distros like
Fedora Core 6 and 7 and Ubuntu 6 and 7. If someone is using one of these let me know.

2010-03-10T18:09:00.002+01:00

The new NoteCase Pro release v2.9.8 is out!

Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major news are:
- option to perform auto-save directly to the main document file (as opposed to using a temporary crash-protection copy)
- improved RTF export adding support for bulleted list, hyperlinks, text color and text background color
- support for one-click installation on Nokia Maemo (using .install file pointing to the apt-get repository)
- new build targets: Centos 5.4 x86_64, Debian 5.0.4 i386 and amd64
- GTK for Windows 32bit upgraded to version 2.18.7, for Windows 64bit build upgraded to version 2.18.6
- updated translations for Croatian, Romanian, German and French language (many thanks for all volunteer translators)

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

As always any feedback is welcome.

2010-02-18T07:29:00.002+01:00

Notecase related article/review

I've just spotted a flattering review of Notecase.
The author prefers Notecase to highly popular Evernote.

You can read the article at:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/69354.html

2010-02-10T19:35:00.002+01:00

Notecase Pro v2.9.6 released

The new release is out!
Downloads are now available at http://www.virtual-sky.com/download.php

Major news are:
- implemented text search mode using logical operators (example "friend AND NOT (Bob OR Jack)" )
- RTF export support (WARNING: still experimental, missing support for fonts, colors, bullets, links)
- two new Lua scripts implementing loading/writing note text to the predefined file (linked file name is stored in the note as its custom property named "ExportFile"). This enables users to keep the code snippets in the note and to quickly dump them to the predefined file.
- 475 TIMES faster first-time save to .ncdb file format
- speed up paste text action with "automatic links recognition" option switched on (from 40sec to 0sec for 600kB test file)

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

2010-01-09T18:41:00.002+01:00

New release

Hi everyone,

I've just released Notecase Pro v2.9.4.

Important info for Windows (x86) users:
please uninstall and make sure the files of the old version of the program are removed before doing new install. This is needed because new version uses latest GTK v2.18 instead of the older v2.16.

Another important news is that since this version, installed Notecase Pro will work even if you did not registered your copy. The unregistered version (called "Lite") will have some advanced features locked, but the program will be usable allowing the user to save the document into the .ncz file format (other formats can be loaded, but they can be saved back only as .ncz).
Feature comparison table will be online tomorrow.

News:

- important bug fixes (major changes related to Maemo and Win64 platforms and bulleted lists)
- new "Add Node to List" method adds the selected node in a Tree Pane into the List Pane
- created builds for Gentoo (Sabayon) Linux distro (with great help with testing and editing .ebuild file by Christoph Zauner)
- List Pane now also supports node marking
- created "Remove Marked Nodes From List" command for List Pane only (context menu)
- when loading Sqlite based file format, warn user if the file is fragmented (fragmentation higher than 15%)
- help file updates (work by Paul Merrell)
- approximately 80% faster save operation for .ncd/.nce/.ncz formats
- French translation updated (work by Pierrick Pinot)
- add: free (unregistered) version, add message box on startup: "Some features are disabled unless and until you have registered ..."
- fix: changed "Section" field value for Maemo .deb package to "user/office"
- fix: assign Alt+Up Arrow and Alt+Down Arrow keyboard shortcuts for navigating between the panes that appear in the Tree Pane column (Tree/List, Tags, Attachments).
- it is now possible to see a list of pending tasks through "View"/"Pending Tasks"
- fix: support to open document files when clicked in File Manager on Nokia Maemo platform
- German translation updated (work by Marcus Hennig)
- fix: "optify" the package for Maemo platform (using "/opt" as installation prefix) to save space on root partition
- redirect GTK warnings/errors into the NoteCase Pro crash log

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

As always feedback is welcome.

PS. Mandriva 64bit and Gentoo packages will be released tomorrow.

2009-12-05T22:11:00.001+01:00

Notecase Pro v2.9.1 release

I am now uploading the latest Notecase Pro release

News:

- some important bug fixes
- save algorithm for .ncd/.nce/.ncz formats is now 60x faster (from 30:35.500 to 29.546 on 75MB test file)
- help file improvements (work by Paul Merrell)
- new "Save all on minimize" option to save changes for every document when program is minimized
- Lua script that takes a list of tags from clipboard (one tag per line) and adds them to the current note
- support to store custom properties (name+value strings) in the document file (per-document or per-note properties)
- support to abort loading html based format files (.ncd, .nce, .ncz)
- crash log for Linux now includes crash backtrace in the log
- support aborting the "List all notes" operation

You can read detailed list of changes online at: http://virtual-sky.com/history.php

2009-11-14T08:18:00.002+01:00

Moblin build

I am looking into creating a support for Moblin based Linux distros.
Is any of Notecase Pro users using Moblin on his/her netbook PC ?

I could use some help with testing so give me a mail if you are interested :)