zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[JP Vossen <jp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/13/2012 02:57 PM, Jaap Karssenberg wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 12:08 AM, JP Vossen <jp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I recently switched to Zim from really old NoteCase, and I love it, but I
> > have a few quick questions.
> >
> > First, like someone else on the list I'm running a 0.56 instance on Windows
> > from the tarball using "zim.pyw".  That's so I can get the spell checker to
> > work, which it now does, but startup is slow and RAM use seems to be way up
> > over the "zim.exe" method.  Is there a better way? In-line spell checking is
> > a killer feature for me, as unfortunately, is Windows for $WORK (Ubuntu
> > otherwise).  (And I didn't upgrade to 0.57 due to reported PythonW
> > problems.)
>
> Seems pythonw works fine if you add the "--standalone" option, but
> afraid going to 0.57 will not help with the spell check support.

OK, will keep that in mind.  Now that you mention it, I think I did see 
that...

> Could you share how you got the spell checker to work in the first
> place? I haven't managed that yet. Maybe we can ask Brendan to compile
> it in if we know how to install it in the build environment.

I'm delighted to.  And it would really be awesome if spell-check 
"worked" out-of-the-box for the Windows installer/exe version.  I'm not 
sure what a feasible way to define "works" is though, given the other 
dependencies.  Anyway, what I did was:

x Follow https://lists.launchpad.net/zim-wiki/msg01458.html
    # Used existing Python 2.6.6 (c:\Python26\)
    x wget 
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.22/pygtk-all-in-one-2.22.6.win32-py2.6.msi 

    x wget 
http://pypi.python.org/packages/any/p/pyenchant/pyenchant-1.5.3.win32.exe
    x wget 
http://gramps-project.org/wiki/images/f/ff/PyGTKSpell-2.25.3.win32-py2.6.zip 

    x unzip PyGTKSpell-2.25.3.win32-py2.6.zip
    x Install the 3 things just downloaded above
        # Must have Python installed and working first, of course
    x wget http://zim-wiki.org/downloads/zim-0.56.tar.gz
    x Untar in "C:\Program Files\" = "C:\Program Files\zim-0.56"
    x copy zim.py zim.pyw
    x vi zim.pyw
        # Add "import enchant " per msg01458.html

And my "shortcut" looks like:
	Target: "C:\Program Files\zim-0.56\zim.pyw"
	Start in: C:\
	Shortcut key: none 		# (though thinking about that)
	Run: Normal Window

After that Spell Checking Just Worked.  But it takes several seconds to 
start Zim, while as I recall (portable) zim.exe started in <1 second. 
And I see more Python stuff using up much more RAM in the task list 
doing it this way.

I also had this at first but didn't need it this long:
	Target: c:\Python26\python.exe "C:\Program Files\zim-0.56\zim.pyw"

I forget why I removed the "c:\Python26\python.exe" part; because it 
worked without it probably.  And I can see where adding that back with 
the "--standalone" option could help for v0.57.

That all said, I know little about Python, especially on Windows (I'm a 
bash & Perl guy), so suggestions for improving what I'm doing are welcome.

(Mostly OT: That Python install got there so I could run Meld on 
Windows, via the "untar it and write a trivial batch file" method like 
above for Zim, which worked.  Very slow to start though, which I'd 
thought would be less now since I've got Zim already keeping a bunch of 
Python in RAM, but it's not.  I use BZR qtools a lot too, but those are 
Python/GTK exes somehow.)


> > Second, are there key-bindings for list types (on Windows)?  I'm aware of
> > "*" and ">" when text is selected, but unlike the CTRL-1, CTRL-B, etc.
> > bindings, those won't change from say checkbox to bullet, which I do a lot.
>
> There are menu options in the "format" menu, but no default
> keybindings assigned.

Yup.

> You can configure an key binding if you use them often.

How?  I know how to do that on Gnome/Ubuntu, but not Windows.


> > Third, I love the checkboxes, but it would be nice if there were more
> > options.  Specifically, I'd really like something for "in progress". And
> > maybe some others, in decreasing order of importance?
> >
> >          [~] in progress
> >
> >          [w] Waiting for someone else
> >          [#] Comment
> >          [!] Important (I use CTRL-U now)
> >          [$] Command to type
> >
> >          [?] Questionable
> >          [e] Incoming email
> >          [E] Outgoing email
> >          [p] Incoming phone call
> >          [P] Outgoing phone call
> >          [c] Con call
> >
> > These might be handy, but it also might get really tedious clicking through
> > all of those...  Just a thought.  I'd love [~] though...
>
> I've thought about it in the past, but so far I use tags to deal with
> status of tasks.

OK, I read about those, but I'm not clear on that and a quick review of 
the docs turned up these, which didn't help much:
	http://zim-wiki.org/manual/Help/Tags.html
	http://zim-wiki.org/wiki/doku.php?id=supporting_tags

That said, perhaps I need to elaborate a bit.  I have a Zim Notebook 
containing a ton of stuff, but I spend 98% of my time on the "Status 
Report" page which has the days of the week as Head1 and batches of 
lists (mostly checkbox) under them.  Stuff that I did I check off.  I'd 
like to have stuff in-progress so when I get interrupted I know where I 
left off, because I often need to jump around in the list so it's rarely 
"top-down, next un-checked item".  Stuff I didn't do gets moved to 
tomorrow or whatever.

At the end of the week that status report is summarized & reported, then 
archived in plain text (you see why I love Zim) by project and by week. 
 Next Monday I create a new days-of-the-week structure, populate it as 
needed with "left-overs" and go.  It's sort-of GTD-derived, is often 
heavily interrupt-driven :-( and is more copy-and-pasty than I'd like, 
but those archived docs have saved my bacon so many times it's not funny 
and I can't live without them.

So back to tags, since I'm jumping around in the "today" block of a 
larger single page, I'm not sure tags help much.


> Looking at your list of suggestions I can guess at the workflow, but
> not convinced these should be checkboxes. Sound more like tags that
> you may want to display as an icon. Is that correct ?  Or are these
> really task like ?

To me, these are "stuff I got done today (for my status report)" so they 
are tasks.  The email and phone call stuff can pretty easily be "[*] 
phone call with foo" so not big deal there.


Oh, one more, is there a way to turn off word-wrap other than using 
verbatim?  I have some long lines and often I'd rather they not wrap. 
It would have to be easy to toggle though, toolbar button and/or key 
binding...


Thanks,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|      http://bashcookbook.com/
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
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