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nvALT 2.1 in the wild

nvALT 2.1 in the wild Tagged:

nvALT users have waited a while for this version, and Elastic Threads and I are excited to finally be posting it for you. It’s also available through automatic updates, so current users should be seeing an internal notice soon as well.

This version adds a plethora of new features, including better MultiMarkdown 3 support, Simplenote tag sync1 (and a fix for Lion syncing), the ability to lock a note to the preview window while editing another, auto-pairing and wrapping and quite a few bug fixes.

The current features of nvALT are going to be merged into the main Notational Velocity trunk. nvALT will exist as a “cutting edge” development channel. We’re excited about this change and about bringing the additional features of nvALT to the wider NV audience.

Version 2.2 will follow much more quickly than the time between 2.0 and 2.1. There are many more additional features in progress, including baked-in MMD3 support, fixes from the main NV 2b5, Lion fullscreen, bounceback scroll, and other 10.7 compatibility stuff (fixed Find…). Snazzy new menubar icons will be included, too. Promise.

Go get it!

  1. Darryl Thomas has done the development for the sync. It’s in preliminary stages, but is working. It does not handle incremental/progressive sync yet, so very large note collections with many tags can see unusually long sync times. ↩

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 at 6:39 am and is filed under Blog, Code.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Tagged:

61 Responses to “nvALT 2.1 in the wild”

  1. af says:
    July 29, 2011 at 3:04 pm

    New nvALT wont launch on os x 10.5.8. Are you phasing out support for leopard?

    Reply
  2. mwschmeer says:
    July 29, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    I’m having the same problem–it won’t launch on 10.5.8 on an Intel Core Duo iMac.

    Reply
    • Brett says:
      July 30, 2011 at 11:57 am

      We’ll look into it. I believe the final build was created with 10.5 as the minimum SDK, but we don’t have Leopard machines to test on. 10.6 will soon be a minimum requirement, though, just FYI.

      Reply
  3. vascouno says:
    July 29, 2011 at 7:05 pm

    I have been using altNV for months, and just downloaded 2.1 and Marked. I use both on three Macs and sync with Simplenote, but wonder about best location for Notes Folder. I have been using common Notes Folder on Drop Box for all three Macs by changing Preference, and don’t notice a problem.

    Thoughts or recommendation? Thanks for great work.

    Reply
  4. Paul DeCarli says:
    July 30, 2011 at 11:39 am

    nvALT 2.1 is great but I’ve found what might be a bug. When trying to save a PDF (via preview/print/Save as PDF…) it results in a plank page. I’m running 10.6.7

    Reply
  5. sunwook says:
    July 30, 2011 at 9:26 pm

    Thanks for the great update. Yet, I see a possible bug when looking up a word. When looking a word, the dictionary pops over and doesn’t go away at all unless I restart the nvALT app. Or, sometimes the app crashes if I keep looking up other words.

    Reply
  6. Nick says:
    July 31, 2011 at 7:11 am

    Hmm, doesn’t look like it actually syncs to Simplenote in Lion anyway. I have iPad with Simplenote right in front of me and I am keeping eye on it all day, waiting for notes to appear, but nothing is happening.

    Reply
  7. dev says:
    August 2, 2011 at 8:16 am

    after upgrading many entries have been modified, resulting in the “modified date” to be screwed!

    sorting by date is now a mess, and is very hard to find my last notes, having hundreds of them…

    Reply
    • Brett says:
      August 2, 2011 at 8:18 am

      Our implementation of tag sync currently sets a modified date when it syncs the tags. That may be the culprit, and I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about it. We’re working to fix this behavior, and moving forward it should have less affect on your notes, but I apologize for the initial problems it caused.

      Reply
      • dev says:
        August 2, 2011 at 8:27 am

        I can downgrade to 2.0 and use a backup (luckily I use dropbox and I can rollback to previous db versions).

        perhaps I will wait till 2.2.

        thank you for the prompt answer

        Reply
        • elasticthreads says:
          August 2, 2011 at 8:39 am

          We haven’t actually established that Simplenote tag syncing is the cause of this issue. Would you mind doing a test of 1. Opening up nvALT 2.1 and turn off Simplenote sync, then quit nvALT. 2. rollback your db to previous version. 3. re-open nvALT. Do your modified dates change again? Or are they correct?

          Assuming tag sync is the issue: I’m not super familiar with the tag syncing implementation, but I think it will be difficult to NOT modify note dates when syncing tags (because note dates SHOULD be modified if the note body gets changed during sync). Its unlikely this fix will make it into 2.2. I think what we can do for 2.2 is add a preference setting to sync tags or not (but still sync notes). That way you (and anyone else who depends on Modified Date metadata) can upgrade to 2.2 and get all the upgrades except tag syncing.

          Reply
          • dev says:
            August 2, 2011 at 9:09 am

            It’s definitely the sync, I did this test:

            • close nvalt
            • restore db
            • start nvalt 2.0
            • disable simplenote sync
            • close nvalt 2.0
            • start nvalt 2.1

            • wait a while… nothing happens, notes are ok

            • close nvalt

            • restore db
            • start nvalt 2.0
            • enable simplenote sync
            • close nvalt 2.0
            • start nvalt 2.1
            • wait a while… notes’ last mod date is changed

            Can I suggest to sync content and metadata separately ? 1) When you sync content, edit the last mod date 2) When you sync metadata, don’t touch the last mod date

            Alternatively, ask the user if he wants to update the “last modified date” when metadata is changed, with an option as you suggested.

        • elasticthreads says:
          August 2, 2011 at 9:33 am

          There’s a bug in this site’s CSS that’s hiding the Reply link to your step by step report below. So i’m commenting here.

          The ideal sync is definitely to sync note and meta separately and only modify dates for modified notes. I’m just saying that it will be difficult to implement, probably not going to get done by 2.2. so that in the interim we’ll likely add an option to sync tags or not and then you can upgrade without screwing up your metadata.

          Reply
  8. Alex Popescu says:
    August 2, 2011 at 8:18 am

    Elastic threads doesn’t have commenting enabled, so I’m posting my suggestion for the Safari extension here.

    Currently “Create note from selection” results in a new note with the title extracted from the selection and the following body:

    From <url>:

<selection>

    I’d suggest making this more “Markdowny”:

    From [page_title](url):

> <selection> // proper Markdown blockquote indenting

    For this I have updated global.js:

    else if (event.command === "selToNV")
{
    if(event.userInfo.href==""){
        title = safari.application.activeBrowserWindow.activeTab.title; //titleFromBody(body);
        url = safari.application.activeBrowserWindow.activeTab.url;
        url = "From ["+title+"]("+url + "):";
        url = encodeURIComponent(url);
        //title = encodeURIComponent(title);
        body = event.userInfo.selection;
        if (body) {
            body = "> " + body;
        }
        body = body.replace(/(\r\n|\n+|\r)/gm,"\n");
        body = body.replace(/\n/g,"\n> \n> ");
        body = encodeURIComponent(body);    
        body = url + "%0D%0D"+body;
        nvText(title,body);
    }else{
        title = event.userInfo.selection;
        title = titleFromBody(title);
        url = event.userInfo.href;
        nvLink(url, title);
    }
}
    Reply
  9. elasticthreads says:
    August 2, 2011 at 8:30 am

    Good point. I think I’ll make it so if you turn on (in nvALT) “Convert imported URLs to Markdown” this happens. That way importing urls or text into nvALT gets converted to markdown.

    Reply
  10. a guy says:
    August 2, 2011 at 8:52 am

    02.08.11 15:35:47 nvALT[6978] com.apple.console collector-Fetcher(5FB8E0, https://​simple​-note​.appspot​.com/​a​p​i​2​/​d​a​t​a​/​X​X​X​_​P​E​R​S​O​N​A​L​_​D​A​T​A​_​R​E​M​O​V​E​D​_​XXX returned Interner Serverfehler

    I can not get it to sync with Simplenote. I am on Macbook1,1 1.8GHz CoreDuo, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.6.8

    Also, if I select to show nvALT on “All Spaces” it still only shows up on “Space 1″

    Reply
  11. a guy says:
    August 2, 2011 at 8:53 am

    Sorry, forget the last error. After restart it showed up on all spaces, as configured in the system prefs. Still, no sync.

    Reply
  12. Paul DeCarli says:
    August 2, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    It seems that “Check Spelling While Typing” causes autocorrection (damn you autocorrect) of words even when “Use Automatic Text Replacement” (under the Edit menu) is turned off. Is this a feature or a bug?

    Reply
    • Sam says:
      August 16, 2011 at 2:18 pm

      Yeah… I’m experiencing this too. I’m thinking this is bug. Help?

      Reply
    • Chris says:
      September 10, 2011 at 4:17 pm

      Experiencing this too and it’s insanely annoying. Is there a way to actually disable, or do I have to switch back to NV? The autocorrections are so bad I can’t keep using the app at this rate.

      Reply
  13. a guy says:
    August 3, 2011 at 12:40 am

    I have forgotten to add, that the note-files (I save them as rtfd) are not being read from local storage, except the newest one. However, nvALT is aware of them, as I can see it mentioning them in the log:

    03.08.11 07:34:07 nvALT[393] com.apple.console FILE WAS MODIFIED: Lemmings Level 9 Code– OKJOLHCKCR.rtf

    I don’t know what changed them, it sure was not me, and not all notes got changed, but this is just to show, that nvALT is aware of the files, still does not load them (except first one) and does not sync with Simplenotes.

    Reply
  14. Tom says:
    August 5, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    “The current features of nvALT are going to be merged into the main Notational Velocity trunk. nvALT will exist as a “cutting edge” development channel. We’re excited about this change and about bringing the additional features of nvALT to the wider NV audience.”

    Is there a roadmap/a more detailed announcement?

    Tom

    Reply
    • elasticthreads says:
      August 5, 2011 at 4:20 pm

      No roadmap or detailed announcement yet. Zach aka Scrod, the developer of NV, has added Brett and I as contributors to the NV source. We’re still working out how it will all play out.

      We’re talking about nvALT as a (Google Chrome style) “dev” or “beta” channel. Hopefully, not too buggy, but an opportunity for NV/nvALT developers to try out features, UI, and other ideas. Eventually the successful ideas will filter down into NV.

      Some of this has been happening since my early, “NV” betas (before Brett and I joined forces), but we might eventually get more involved in NV’s code base. And Scrod may get more involved in nvALT’s code base.

      The next, very important, step is for Brett and I to bring nvALT up to NV’s current code base. We’ve been a step behind for a while, NV is currently at b5. nvALT is based on NVb4 (though we have selectively added some of b5’s features). Until that happens, its hard to argue that nvALT is ahead of NV.

      Reply
      • elasticthreads says:
        August 5, 2011 at 4:22 pm

        I should add that bringing nvALT up to b5, along with some Lion goodies, are the two priorities for 2.2. Which we hope to release faster than 2.1

        Reply
  15. jebni says:
    August 19, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    Hey Brett, I’ve found a weird Simplenote syncing bug in 2.1: I use Markdown’s “+” syntax (rather than “*”) for lists, and have found that these sync to Simplenote as spaces. The characters remain correct in my local Notational Data files, so its only NValt pushing the incorrect characters to Simplenote.

    Is this some kind of weird sanitisation bug? When I switch to my copy of Notational Velocity (which uses the same Notational Data folder) and force a sync by editing any of the files affected, they’re restored to their proper state in Simplenote.

    Reply
    • Brett says:
      August 20, 2011 at 9:12 am

      We’ll have to look into it. If the bug has been fixed in NV, then the problem will be quickly corrected as we begin the merge with the current codebase.

      Reply
      • jebni says:
        August 20, 2011 at 5:01 pm

        Thanks, Brett. I should note that this bug seems new to 2.1, as it modified a bunch of old files (created in NV, SimpleNote and NValt).

        Reply
  16. Dennis says:
    August 27, 2011 at 5:01 pm

    any one having an issue with ‘Find’ on Lion, i have new macbook air and nothing is happening when hitting command-F

    thanks for any help

    Reply
  17. eli says:
    October 11, 2011 at 8:43 am

    A big “Thank you!” for the great work and a feature request: would it be possible to run multiple instances of NV/nvALT on the same machine?

    This would be very useful if you had two different usage modes for NV. For instance I would like to use one instance as a daily journal and another instance as a data repository. Having these two types of notes mixed together can get a little confusing.

    I tried running two copies at the same time, but they both look for the “Interim” file and one copy asks to quit the other as soon as it is launched.

    Reply
  18. Alan says:
    November 3, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    It’s been a while since the original post. I figure it’s time to check in and see if an estimated time line for 2.2 has been developed yet.

    If you need beta testers, I’d be happy to volunteer.

    Reply
    • Brett says:
      November 3, 2011 at 9:31 pm

      It’s mostly feature-complete at this point, but I have a slew of bug reports to handle. The slow progress is my fault, just too many irons in the fire right now. Soon, though… I’m working on it as much as possible this week.

      Reply
      • Alan says:
        November 3, 2011 at 9:37 pm

        You’ll get no greif from me about the number of irons in the fire. And also no rushing. I’m eager, but enjoying Marked more than enough to appreciate what you do beyond nvAlt.

        Reply
  19. Jean says:
    November 22, 2011 at 3:04 pm

    I love it. But I think the ability to search the bunch of texts in the nvALT folder or in the database by tag would be a great feature. Anyway, by looking for this feature on the net, I found a little app to do this on my computer and it does a good job: [TagLists](http://​hasseg​.org/​t​a​g​L​i​s​ts/ “Open the webpage”). Hope this kind of feature for the next release.

    Reply
  20. Coolspec says:
    December 4, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    Hi Brett

    Would it make sense if I mix all of my notes inside my documents now that I have everything tagged? I would set preferences to : Read notes from Documents: What’s your take on this?

    Claude

    Reply
    • Brett says:
      December 5, 2011 at 8:21 am

      Do you mean convert from database to text files? If that’s the question, then I highly recommend it. It makes integration with other tools much easier, and your tags will remain in place (and also be applied as OpenMeta tags on the files themselves).

      Reply
      • Coolspec says:
        December 5, 2011 at 9:50 am

        I already have converted to text file. My data is in the notational folder; I now want to swing all the individual files in “my documents” folder (I don’t have subfolders anymore) to make one big data base and read from there.

        Reply
  21. Coolspec says:
    December 5, 2011 at 9:54 am

    Hi Brett

    I already have converted to text files. I now want to throw everything into My Documents so I have only one large base. (Please note: I don’t have subfolders anymore in my documents since I started tagging). In other words, rather than reading from the Notational folder, I would read from documents. Does that make sense?

    Reply
    • elasticthreads says:
      December 5, 2011 at 10:35 am

      You can try it. However, the more files in your Documents folder (including non-.txt files) the worse nvALT will perform. I’d recommend backing up your current notes folder before doing this.

      Reply
  22. Alex Sa says:
    January 28, 2012 at 5:57 am

    Brett, thanks for your brilliant work!

    However, you do mention ‘Lion fullscreen’ among the newest features. But when using nvALT in fullscreen it’s completely impossible to switch to other [fullscreen] applications or to call out Mission Control.

    Don’t you plan to add that kind of OS X compatibility?

    Thanks once again,

    Alex

    Reply
  23. tim says:
    March 6, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    same problem here…

    anyone have a link to the older nvALT 2.0 version?

    Reply
  24. dev says:
    March 7, 2012 at 4:27 am

    tim: http://​tiny​.cc/​n​v​a​l​t​2​-​zip

    Reply

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