rednotebook-users team mailing list archive

[Jackson <lostpoetjj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jendrik and all,

I'm a poet and writer (and occasional programmer) using RedNotebook under
Linux as a journal, for 'sketching' both poetry and prose, and for making
notes and thinking about things. It's the best free software I've been able
to find for this task.

Recently I made lists of RedNotebook's good and bad (IMO) points,  and so I
thought you might be interested to read them. They're written using
RedNotebook, of course :-)

Keep up the good work!
Best regards
Jackson
Review of RedNotebook

Currently using RedNotebook 1.7.2 under Linux Mint 16
What I like about RedNotebook

   - Simple and fast
   - Files are stored as text (even if it is a baroque format).
   - The Calendar -- although a hierarchical blog-style calendar would be
   useful too

Bugs reported

   - Control-Z / Undo: cursor goes to the bottom of the text, while the
   window scrolls to the top of the page. Aagh! (REPORTED AS BUG 18/1/14)
   - Control-Z undoes a lot more than I expect from using other software!
   It should behave the same as it does in Word or OpenOffice or gmail or
   whatever. (REPORTED AS BUG 18/1/14)
   - In PDF export: When text is verbatim, long lines get truncated. It
   should wrap long lines (preferably with an indent at the beginning of the
   spillover lines). (REPORTED AS BUG 18/1/14)
   - Formatting does not work if there is a space between the formatting
   characters and the text inside them. eg *I want this in boldface* works,
   but ** I want this in boldface ** does not. This happens for boldface,
   italics, underline, strikeout, but not for Tiitles. (REPORTED AS BUG
   18/1/14)
   - Formatting does not extend over linebreaks. So if I want to, eg,
   boldface a whole section of text, I have to put formatting characters at
   the beginning and end of every line. (REPORTED AS BUG 18/1/14)

Other things that don't work properly IMO

   - When I click on a hashtag in the tag cloud, it doesn't take me to the
   part of the text where the hashtag is. IMO this should work just the same
   as when you search for a word and click on one of the entries, ie, take you
   to that part of the text and highlight the search item.
   - Minor bug: Searching for " " space to get a list of all entries, as
   suggested in the help, produces nothing

Other Features I would like

   - A 'poetry' or 'verbatim lite' text format that preserves newlines and
   whitespace and wraps long lines. But note: 'YAML’s line folding employs an
   intuitive method of handling line breaks. A single line break is folded
   into a single space, while empty lines are interpreted as line break
   characters. This technique allows for paragraphs to be word-wrapped without
   affecting the canonical form of the scalar content. ' (I guess this is why
   people send -- and display online -- poems double-spaced, even though it
   looks horrible.)
   - Highlighting in Edit mode (I can use custom code to set background
   colour to yellow, but the yellow is displayed only in Preview mode)
   - Hierarchical hashtags! #dream/recurring/houses (or some such syntax)
   and have a tree view mode in the tag cloud, with + and - to expand and
   close the categories
   - Preference to edit using $EDITOR (vi, in my case). And/or a WYSIWYG
   mode.
   - All options should appear in the Format menu: verbatim text, unparsed
   text, titles, numbered lists
   - Facility to define macros. LOL.

Things that bother me but probably couldn't be changed

   - Exporting is clunky (is there other software that could do it?)
   - An 'archiving' feature would be useful, where you can archive old
   journals so that they are not included in the current journal. The problem
   is, I don't want to see all my hashtags from 2 years ago in the tag panel!
   I can probably do this by hand, though, or use a script.
   - It could be difficult for people who come after me to deal with my
   notebook.
   - No drawing/handwriting facility! LOL
   - No themes/skins! LOL
   - It doesn't look like a book. LOL



--
*Jackson: Words with attitude & soul.*
I write and publish poems, songs and prose, perform poetry and music, and
edit and teach poetry.
proximitypoetry.com <http://www.proximitypoetry.com/> youtube.com/lostpoetjj
rawtext.blogspot.com facebook.com/lostpoetjj