Gnote 0.8.2 released

Gnote 0.8.2 "Lil' early XMas gift" have been released!
You can download it here.

New Features:
* Added template bar to template notes
* Integrated with GtkApplication (#640430)
* Gnote remains present while at least one window is present
* Panel applet disabled by default
* Added option for status icon to preferences (#663817)
* Added background mode
* Return ordered note list when using D-BUS search (#662246)

Fixes:
* Fixed keys in GSettings schema descriptions
* Manual fixes
* Updated man page to current behaviour
* Do not open Search Window in status icon mode (#653447)
* Fixed special XML character encoding
* Make sticky note importer support special chars
* Show in all desktop environements (#664609)
* src/notetag.hpp must include

An old Gnote XML encode bug

It was just recently discovered, that Gnote has a bug regarding special XML characters.

It appears, that a function, which was supposed to encode characters like '<', '>', '&' to '&lt;', '&gt;', '&amp;' does not work!

The affect to application was quite small, thus it was not discovered earlier.

It's hard to tell yet, how many places were affected, for now the only known place, aftected by this is:

gnote --new-note='&bug'

This fix and some more to come to you with 0.8.2!

Gnote 0.7.6 and 0.8.1 released

Gnote 0.7.6 "Steve Jobs" have been released!

You can download it from here.

Fixes:
* Optimized note creation, renaming and deletion (#660653, #660663)
* GetNoteContents D-Bus API returns wrong text for notes not displayed
(#647888)
* SearchNotes D-Bus API works incorrectly for case-insensitive search
(#662426)

Translations:
* Updated translations:
- French (fr)
- German (de) manual
- Latvian (lv)
- Lithuanian (lt)
- Indonesian (id)
* Added translations:
- Turkish (tr)
* Added Danish (da) manual

Thanks:
Casey Harkins
Debarshi Ray


Gnote 0.8.1 "Dennis Ritchie" have been released!

You can download it from here.

New features:
* Removed case-sensitive search from Search All Notes window
* Focus chain for Search All Notes
* Optimized note creation, renaming and deletion (#660653, #660663)
* Search in notebook suggests to search all notes, when there are no
matches

Fixes:
* Open note action availability
* Program name in about dialog
* Help for --start-here
* Don't change content modification time when autolinking
* Link not created when linking to existing note
* Broken link activation does not make link normal
* GetNoteContents D-Bus API returns wrong text for notes not displayed
(#647888)
* Case-insensitive search via SearchNotes D-Bus API (#662426)
* Added -Wformat-security to compilation flags (#662490)

Translations:
* Updated translation:
- Czech (cs)
- Danish (da)
- French (fr)
- German (de)
- Hungarian (hu)
- Indonesian (id)
- Japanese (ja)
- Latvian (lv)
- Lithuanian (lt)
- Polish (pl)
- Russian (ru)
- Slovenian (sl)
- Spanish (es)
- Swedish (sv)
- Ukranian (uk)
* Added translations:
- Turkish (tr)
* Added Danish (da) manual
* Added Lithuanian (lt) manual

Thanks:
Casey Harkins
Debarshi Ray

Upcomming Gnote updates

Just recently Gnote 0.8.0 was released. But it's time for more frequent releases, isn't it?

So what's new for Gnote 0.8.1:

• Significantly optimized note creation, renaming and deletion. When hundreds of notes are present, any of these actions could take up to several seconds. Now, thanks to Debarshi Ray, it should no longer anoy users.
• Search All Notes window made cleaner removing a feature no one needs:
  

• Search was also improved. Now when you search in a notebook and get zero results, we inform you about that:
  

In addition, there will be a new release of 0.7 series. The 0.7.6 will get the optimizations of 0.8.1.

Happy note-taking!

Gnote 0.8.0 released

0.8.0 "We believe in GNOME 3" have been released!

You can download it from here

New features:

* Ported to GTK 3.0
* New documentation in Mallard format
* Handle x-scheme-handler/note mime-type
* Use pkg-config for uuid (#649486)
* Build only shared libraries for addins (#620015)
* Search window context menus rework (#601852)
* Disabled GtkSpell
* Ported panel applet to libpanelapplet-4 (#639779)
* Ported configuration to Gio::Settings
* Status icon presence is now configurable
* About dialog is now a child of Search All Notes
* Added replace title addin (#639938)
* Changed search to prioritize note titles
* Ported D-Bus support to Gio::DBus (also fixes #618330)
* Open all selected notes
* Show note title when deleting only 1 note
* Removed minimum size on Search All Notes Window
* Set min width of note title column to 150

Fixes:

* Place user local addins in addins subdirectory (#619867)
* Change tomboyimport according recent Tomboy
* Import sticky notes when Tomboy is not installed (#605382)
* Use actual visibility of status icon (#650001)
* Fix dragging notes to Unfiled notes (#655208)
* Fix command line option --new-note with argument
* Fix delete key behaviour in bulleted list
* Don't create nested links

Translations:

* Updated translations:
- Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)
- Czech (cs)
- French (fr)
- German (de)
- Hebrew (he)
- Hungarian (hu)
- Lithuanian (lt)
- Polish (pl)
- Russian (ru)
- Slovenian (sl)
- Spanish (es)
* Added translations:
- Czech documentation (cs)
- French (fr)
- German documentation (de)
- Latvian (lv)
- Ukranian (uk)
- Serbian (sr)

Thanks:
* Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse
* Paul Bogmat
* Pierre-Yves Luyten

Prepare for Gnote 0.8

This is primary intended for Gnote package maintainers accross distributions.

Gnote 0.8 has it's shape and I don't plan any more major changes for it. There are some small things to fix or improve, but no significant changes. Below is the list of significant changes, that packagers should be interrested in.



Requirement bumps:

• Glibmm 2.28


• Gtkmm 3.0

Removed dependencies:

• dbus-c++ - we use D-Bus API from Glibmm now.


• gconf - configuration was ported to GSettings.


• gtk-spell - does not support GTK+ 3.0. We may re-add this, when possible.


• libpanelappletmm - we don't need this anymore, see below.

New dependencies:

• libpanelapplet-4 (optional) - support for panel applet in GNOME 3.

Changes in installation:

• GSettings schema - replaces GConf schema.


• gnote-introspect.xml - make sure you install it, it's required for D-Bus support.


• New manual in mallard format.


• Replace title add-in.

As you see, there are quite a few changes. I plan a new release to be available for GNOME 3.2.

Gnote 0.7.5 released

Gnote 0.7.5 "Little things matter" have been released!

You can download it from http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnote/0.7/

New features:
 * If Search All Notes dialog is shown, make about dialog a child of it
 * Show search window when launching
 * Improved Search All Notes context menus (#601852)

Fixes:
 * When dragging notes to Unfiled notes, the note view is not updated (#655208)
 * When closing Search All Notes dialog, use actual visibility of status icon (#650001)
 * Remove usage of GConf and depending on Tomboy, when importing sticky notes (#605382)
 * Change tomboyimport according recent Tomboy
 * Fix build on FreeBSD and OpenBSD (#649478, #649481, #649472)

Translations:
 * Updated translations:
 - Czech (cs)
 - Hungarian (hu)
 - Japanese (ja)
 - Portuguese Brazil (pt_BR)
 - Russian (ru)

Notes:
 * Distributions, using GNOME 2.32 may want to apply this patch: http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=178554

Thanks:
 * Paul Bogmat
 * Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse

Unity vs. GNOME Shell

As opinions on both Unity and Gnome Shell are contraversal, I'd like to state mine.
I already blogged about Gnome Shell, however it has changed a lot since then.
In short, I used Unity for about an hour using live CD and my impressions were mostly negative - I found Gnome 2 being better for me. In case of Gnome Shell, I used it for some time in the past and am using the final release for some time now. I also tried final version of Gnome Shell via live CD before upgrading to Fedora 15 and impressions were mostly positive.

Unity impressions:

• Positive things
  
  
  
  • Looks like more of screen space is used for usefull part of window compared to Gnome Shell
  
  
  
  


• Drawbacks
  
  
  
  • Too much stuff in dash
  
  
  • Not completely clear, what the button in top left corner is supposed to do
  
  
  • Application launcher is not comfortable: it appears to be based on search function, browsing categories via drop down is usability drawback
  
  
  • Places: same issues as with application launcher
  
  
  • Workspace switcher based on window movement, I like GNOME Shell version better - I use this for moving window to other workspace, not for changing it's coordinates
  
  
  • Not sure I like the single menu at the top panel
  
  
  • Alt+Tab is not very usefull with all windows from all workspaces being there
  
  
  
  

Gnome shell impressions:

• Positive things
  
  
  
  • Overview mode is great
  
  
  • Alt+Tab is awsome
  
  
  • Workspace management is great
  
  
  • Notifications at the bottom of screen are very comfortable
  
  
  
  


• Drawbacks
  
  
  
  • All application view is bloated and takes long to load
  
  
  • Pressing Alt to shut down is both unintuitive and unuseful
  
  
  
  

To summarise, I like Gnome Shell and certainly believe it's better than Gnome 2. Although I have used Unity for only about one hour, but that was enough for me.

Search notes context menu rework

Here are some improvements to context menus in Gnote Search All Notes dialog.

What's wrong with existing ones?

• You can create new notebook via context menu, but not new note, which makes the two panes inconsistent


• When you have a lot of notebooks so there's no empty space to right click on, it's not possible to create new notebook

Improvements

• 
  Added New Note item to context menu in notes list:
  
  
  


• Right click anywhere in notes pane now brings context menu, as New Note item is always available


• 
  When a notebook is selected, creating new note from context menu adds it to selected notebook
  
  
  


• 
  Added new notebook item to notebook context menu:
  
  


• Empty space context menu was removed from notebooks pane, there's only one context menu for entire pane now


• In both panes the items above separators apply to selection, items below apply to entire pane

In future versions of Gnote the Search All Notes window will be the main application window.

Gnote 0.7.4 released

Gnote 0.7.4 "The 80 YO Mr.Spock" have been released!

You can download it from here

New features:

* Show addin categories and versions in addin preferences tab (#620402)
* Implemented notebook rename (#610194)
* Drop dependency on Boost filesystem (#641416)
* Require Glibmm 2.18 or newer

Fixes:

* Do not crash when $XDG_DATA_HOME is absent, create configuration
directories as S_IRWXU (#631408)
* Fix documentation for creating notebook (#633976)
* Instance save addin preferences (#637051)
* Use only icons of certain size in tray (#594932)
* Do not lose notebook using notebook toolbar button (#585048)
* Fix --highlight-search with non-uri --open-note (#608713)
* Fix paste of URL part (#633951)
* Fix paste of link part (#634026)
* Fix template note rename (#627539)
* Fix redo with multiline paste and bullets (#588098)
* Fix undo with multibyte characters (#641545)
* Backlinks doesn't work with newer versions libxml (#638321)
* Select new note body selection whith default content (#627073)
* Select new notebook note body selection whith default content (#627075)
* Fix template note selection on creation (#627418)
* Fix notebook template note selection on create (#627417)
* Upgrade to newer boost.m4
* Add missing #include to make translations work (#646051)
* Some GTK 3 compilation fixes (without affect to dependencies and
behaviour)

Translations:

* Updated translations:
- Arabic (ar)
- British English (en_GB)
- Catalan (ca)
- Czech (cs)
- Danish (da)
- French (fr)
- German (de)
- Hebrew (he)
- Hungarian (hu)
- Korean (ko)
- Lithuanian (lt)
- Polish (pl)
- Portuguese Brazil (pt_BR)
- Simplified Chinese (zh_CN)
- Slovenian (sl)
- Spanish (es)
- Swedish (sv)

Notes:
* Distributions, using GNOME 3 might consider adding --search option
to .desktop file
* Distributions, using GNOME 2.32 may want to apply this patch

Thanks:
* Debarshi Ray
* Kjartan Maraas

How to make translatable software

As a software translator myself, I sometimes face difficulties, when translating software to Lithuanian language. For this reason I've collected the following guidelines for software developers.

• Do not concatenate translatable strings
  
  
  
  • In some languages words change their form depending on context. Expecting, that several words, translated to other language and put together, will result in grammatically correct statement in that language and will be as meaningful as in original language is doomed to failure.
  
  
  • Typically there is one phrase to translate with one result. As in some language phrase might be different depending on context, it's not possible to translate it properly.
  
  
  • Separate phrases are difficult to translate (remember, translators don't see your code).
  
  
  • Exception: in case you enforce some text format, it might be convenient to provide different parts separately, such as <what happened>: <explanation>.
  
  
  
  


• Use plural forms
  
  
  
  • The number of plural forms is different in different languages. While English has two (singular and plural), some other languages have more. Having statement like '%d error(s)' is impossible to translate properly to some languages, so that it would be correct in all possible cases.
  
  
  
  


• Avoid assumptions on width of resulting text
  
  
  
  • When text gets translated to other language, it's difference in width from original is unlimited. The other language might miss a word for direct translation and use a short phrase instead.
  
  
  • A statement of few short words in one language may be a statement of more and much longer words in the other.
  
  
  • If you do restrict, comment it, so that translators are aware of this.
  
  
  
  


• Expect the different formats
  
  
  
  • Number and date formats are different in different locales.
  
  
  • Currency symbol is placed before or after the number depending on locale.
  
  
  
  


• Do add comments for translators
  
  
  
  • Translators typically don't see the code.
  
  
  • It's difficult to translate, when you don't know the meaning of phrase, where and in what context it is used.
  
  
  • When a string is parametrized, provide the meanings of parameters, '%s is %s' - which parameter is what?
  
  
  
  

Help to test Gnote

Please, help to test few Gnote patches!



Port panel applet to D-Bus (libpanelapplet-3.0):

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639779



Undo/redo with bulleted lists:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588098





How to test

You need to be able to build Gnote from source code!

You need to either get the fresh copy of source code from git:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gnote

or to perform a distclean and pull the latest changes from git:

make distclean

git pull



Download all 3 patches from 2 bugs above and apply them:

git am 0002-Port-panel-applet-to-D-Bus.patch

git am 0001-Add-is_bullet-to-NoteBuffer.patch

git am 0002-Fix-redo-with-multiline-paste-and-bullets.patch



Now build Gnote as usual:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

make

su -c 'make install'



What to test

• Use panel applet - you will test the port of applet to D-Bus.


• Use bullets, copy&paste and undo/redo functionality in all ways you imagine. Everything should work well.

Notes

• Pasting a piece of formatted text is not single operation in terms of undo/redo, it's a lot of primitive operations at the moment. This might be improved in the future, but we need to solve present problems first.


• Report noticed bugs to appropriate bugs.


• For some reason bugzilla didn't treat applet patch as text is is not showing a diff.

I'll be running Gnote with these patches on my machine for about a week, so that's the testing period. Thanks in advance!