Mini Note Input window

Ok, I unchecked zero-link, and rebuilt it. Let me know if that works.

It's an independent application, so you just need to un-zip it and double-click on it.

Hope it works. :)

Yes that works great. The app launches and works as expected. Yeah! Mori's first stand alone add on :)

I really like this idea for a simplified interface for getting notes into Mori. My only feature request would be to allow resizing of the window; depending on what I'm viewing I might want the window to be thinner or flatter.

Next, this isn't even a request but an idea: would it be possible to use the list features from TextEdit that Mori uses?

A couple of questions: Am I right that Note-chan sends notes to the currently-open folder? And is "Make New Note" the best text for the button? How about "Send New Note to Mori"?

I'll add resizing to the features that might be implemented. I tried to make the window as small as possible and still allow for the three buttons along the bottom.

Note-chan sends the note to the front document to a folder at the root level titled "Inbox". If there isn't one, it will make one. Another setting I thought of this morning was to make the destination folder able to be user set.

As for the button label, I was trying to keep it short, so that the interface could be minimized. I think after the first couple of times you click it, no one will actually read the button anymore. I was actually, thinking of changing it to "Send Note", "Make Entry", or just "Send".

Great, thanks for considering resizing. I think 'Inbox' makes sense, but it would be cool if the user could navigate the Mori folder hierarchy from within Note-chan and choose a folder.

'Send Note' or 'Send' are both great ideas. Here are two other alternatives: 'Add to Mori' 'Send to Mori' (since Note-Chan is a Mori-specific app).

I've added version 0.3 to the page. this includes resizing and an option to "float" the window above all other windows.

Thanks to Jesse for the help tracking down all the methods and constants.

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure how many people were finding this useful. I've been working on a newer version, that has some of the features mentioned above: user-set transparency, adjust the window display, different colors for clipboard and comment text when sent to Mori. I'll try to post it next week.

thanks, BMEguy, its very useful!
1) What i m desperatly missing is: set to "where" send the note: Mori´s notebook and folder. Would be great, if that´s possible;)

How to make it a small killer app?;)
I m still using HBN as my writers tool, because Mori lacks some features i need. But I use Mori as a search tool in older versions. Started with a GTD notebook and some others special notebooks. Waiting until i can change.

2) I m using Devonthink Pro as my Archiv. Where I also collect notes (ideas) i later need in HBN and/or Mori too. Hence I would like to set (Prefs?) where my notes should go: folder of Mori, HBN , Devonthink or other apps...

3) I would like to send also (small) sound-notes (files) (URls) and Pictures.
Dont know if thats possible? I m nearly a scripting analphabet...
I would donate/pay a shareware fee for such a small killer app.

thanks in advance
wolfgang

I've converted the application into a full Cocoa app, and I'm just getting to interfacing that with the applescript calls back to Mori (another possiblity would be to make it a Mori plugin). If the cocoa-applescript calls are not that difficult, I'll try to add one for HBN. I don't have/use Devonthink so that one is a little less likely, though I could certainly release the code to someone who wanted to try.

As for non-text notes, I assume your talking about things that you are clipping, and not actually generating pictures inside Note-chan. All non-text clippings should be handled in the next version, but I doubt that sound recording or drawing within note-chan will come anytime too soon.

Thanks,
Jeff

All that sounds great I m waiting...;)

wolfgang

Not yet, but I'm working on the next version that will. Maybe by next week.

thank you for replying so quickly. great news!

Do you know if this will soon be a main Mori feature?

What do you mean by a main Mori feature? I've thought of making in a plugin, but also if it's a separate application it could maybe send notes to Hog Bay Notebook. (see wolfram's comment above.) But considering some of the problems I'm having getting rich notes in, it might just be easier to make it a plugin.

Did you ever have any luck using NSPerformService? That seemed like a nice way to integrate Note-chan with Mori and other apps without having to treat each app as a special case.

No, with all the applescript discussion, I forgot to follow-up on services. Services do import nicely formatted text so it should be ok. I guess I remember thinking that there might not be a good way to move it around automatically (e.g. to a designated folder) once it got into Mori. I could search the service folder for a note with the same title and creation date to get a handle on the new note.

Don't say that (beyond your skill). The code itself is pretty modest, if you take out all the error checking I've been screwing with the whole thing is like 10 lines of code.

I spent a good chunk of last night on IRC asking around about my "problem" with cycling the server, but we really don't need that. It's just bugging me. I'll wrap it up and maybe you all will have some good ideas.

Yes, that sounds like a good feature to add. As long as I can find the right calls (windowShouldClose, I think) I'll put it in the next version.

Thanks for the feedback.

Jeff

Thanks, Jeff.

While I've got you in a good mood, maybe I should ask you about another feature thought/request: Any chance of hiding/invoking note-chan with a hot-key combo? (If this request is outlandish, please bear in mind that I know nothing about programming!)

When note-chan becomes a Mori plug-in, it will be easy to add a hot-key to open a new notechan window, if Mori is the current application.

If, on the other hand, you want to be able to activate note-chan from within any application (e.g. Preview, Safari, etc) I would recommend using the utility Quicksilver. You can of course add it to your catalog and it will be found by typing the first few letters of the applicatin name, or you can make a "trigger" that is essentially a hot-key combination that will open note-chan automatically.

There are some more details here:
http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/triggers

and here:
http://vjarmy.com/archives/2006/01/quicksilver_gold_trigger.php

It's beyond my current programming knowledge to add a system-wide key-combo, and quicksilver is so useful for so many other things.

Thanks, Jeff, and again, great job on Note-chan.

Great plugin.

However, the preference to where to send the note does not seem to work. The default is the inbox but my notes end up going to the top level. Also, I can't change the location in the "Send note to " box

It's not a problem, as much as an unimplemented feature. As I noted in the first post, the destination folder can't be set yet--everything goes to the top level. So that text field is not yet editable, since it doesn't do anything yet. Hopefully, I can get that added within a week or so.
I updated the pref panel to refect this. Thanks.

The plugin works very well! Thanks, and congrats!

Now that Note-chan is a plugin rather than its own app, I wonder if the title bar could be made into the half-height variety, much like Note-chan's own Preferences menu. It seems to me that the Note-chan window should be as compact as possible.

In the interest of making the window as compact as possible, I wonder if you could use the toolbar toggle button to show/hide the buttons. (I'm referring to the oval-shaped button on the top-right of most OS X windows; clicking on it shows and hides toolbars.) After all, once users have things set up properly, they may likely not need to access any of the buttons. Even Send Note can be accessed with option-return.

In fact, if you resize the Note-chan window to its smallest, over half of the Note-chan window is taken up by the title bar and the buttons at the bottom. I think these suggestions could make Note-chan's footprint on the screen considerably more streamlined.

Second, I noticed that all three colors in the Prefs were black by default, even though the Note-chan window's background remained white. As soon as I clicked on the background color selector, Note-chan's background went black -- easily fixed by selecting white again.

Lastly, how cool would it be if installing the Note-chan plugin also added a Note-chan icon to the Mori toolbar! Clicking on it would open Note-chan (perhaps toggle it on/off). The icon could be easily dragged off; or alternatively, the icon wouldn't be added to the toolbar automatically but rather would be added to the selection under Customize Toolbar.

A program that works great with this plugin is WindowShade X. Windowshade allows you to collaspe the window to just the title bar by double-cliciking on it (this concept actually pre-dates OSX and I'm glad to see it implemented by a 3rd party). With Windowshade, I can float Note-chan on top and by collasping the window it takes very little room but is always ready to go to add a new note

One thing I would like to see changed in the plugin is what happens when you ckick on the floating window. On my computer, the focus switches back to Mori whenever you start typing into Note-chan. It would be nice if clicking on the Note-chan window would NOT move the program focus. For example if I'm trying to write a note from a web page, I would like to see that web page as I typed into Mori.

When you say that program focus changes, do you mean that the menu changes back to Mori, or that other Mori Windows come to the front and obscure your browser window? On my system, I can have note-chan float over Safari or Preview and allow me to activate the note-chan window and type in and send notes without loosing sight of the webpage or pdf I'm looking at. The menu changes back to Mori but the windows don't change their arrangements.
I'm not sure if it's possible to have a window receive commands without shifting focus. Of course, Quicksilver is able to do it, so it must be possible somehow. Any suggestions from anyone?

I'm not sure if it's possible to have a window receive commands without shifting focus

I think this is only possible to do per application (you add a key to the applications plist). So if Note-chan is implemented as a plugin I don't think this would be possible.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into hiding the buttons and just showing the text field. I'm not sure if I can do that with an oval toolbar button or not (because I haven't made that an official NSToolbar.) Also, I'm not sure if panels (which is what the preference widow with its thin title bar is) can have toolbar buttons.
I'll see if I can shrink it, though. Also see the comment below about WindowShadeX.

About the default colors: I'm really somewhat confused, the nib file in Interface builder has non-black/white pref's set, and I thought that those would be taken to be the defaults, but somehow everything becomes black and white. Anybody know?

I'll definitely add a tool bar button, if just because I want to use it that way too. I wanted to get this initial version posted so people could use it, and then I'll look for a toolbar example in the Mori code to model note-chan after.

Yes, I didn't think of that. Sorry, I'll take care of that with the next release this weekend.

Thanks for the feedback.

In the "Build" tab of the Project info make sure that the "Architectures" setting is "ppc i386". And make sure that that is set in the "Release" configuration.

Version 0.6 lists in Finder as a univeral binary. Please let me know if you have any problems running it on an intel mac.

It works for me on my Intel iMac!

I have installed the note-chan plug in and it looks great, everything works -- except when i click Send Note nothing happens. Using Powerbook G4 with latest System and version of Mori. How do I get anything from the Note-chan to appear in the Mori Notebook?

Let me double-check which version of Mori you're using: Mori 1.1.3 (39) or the preview release Mori 43 (which would say 1.1.3(43) in the about Mori window.)
Note-chan should work fine with 1.1.3, but there seems to be an issue when running it under the 42 and 43 preview releases. I'll have to wait for the 1.2 release to fix it.

Should I change back to 39 and try again? I know when I put in version 43 (as an overwrite of the previous app file) none of my previous notebooks would open, and I had lost the very app which would do the trick. Nothing fatal, since I haven't been putting critical stuff in there. If there is a newer Mori version due soon perhaps I should just wait a bit.

Yes use 39 for real work right now. note-chan should work fine with that version.

42 and 43 are previews of upcoming features, but are not meant for real work which is why they won't open your previous notebooks. As soon as the code for Mori 1.2 (which is what 43 will become) settles down, I'll change note-chan to work with it.

good luck
Jeff

I for one am still interested in Notechan. I think what sets it apart from what Mori alone offers is that you can have one window open and send multiple notes through it into the inbox.

I just downloaded 0.7 and tried installing it in 1.2 (v.50) [I dragged it onto Mori and restarted Mori], but it's not loading. Mori Preferences > Plugin Config shows that Note-chan Plugin is not loaded. Also not loaded are: Mori Text File Import, Mori Folder Support, Mori OPML Support, Mori HBN Support, and Mori 1.1 Support. Does that indicate that something bigger is amiss?

I don't think so. Plugins load on demand, the import plugins should load when you try to import something. I Notechan doesn't load because I changed some of the names of the plugin extension points (sorry), but now that Mori sources are available again I think it shouldn't be to long before Notechan is up and going.

Sorry.

I tested it with v48 because I haven't gotten around to getting v50 yet. Note-chan 0.7 works with v48 but doesn't load with v50. I'll change the extension point names some time before the weekend.