I’ve been thinking of the direction I want to take Notae recently (after fixing that damned speed problem with Leopard that Apple seems to want to ignore). I want to do the following things:

• .Mac Sync of notes and tags.
• Cleaner tags. Right now, while it works, it feels a little off when you use the tag palette to find things. It could be exchanged with another GUI element that makes it easier to manage tags as well as organize by them.
• Easier multiple-note editing. Since you can have several documents open and then open several note windows on top of that, it can get a little cluttered. Perhaps tabs? Perhaps more.
• GUI cleanup. I’ve added a lot since Notae 1.0 but haven’t changed the UI much. I like the reductionist aspect of it (and so do many of you, it seems) so I’ll keep that, but the menus are getting a little large. I need to see what features should be maintained and which should be pushed aside (removed or moved to a non-prime location).

To that end, I’m seeing that the easiest way of handling this is to move to a one-database-per-user approach like many other programs. This solves a problem with .Mac Sync (which document to sync? And which document receives synced notes?) as well as the window clutter problem (one window with either tabs or child windows). Obviously, it would import Notae 1 and 2 documents into the main database if I went this route.

So, does anyone use the multiple document aspect of Notae? Does anyone save their documents on removable drives or similar? How about email them around?

I’m thinking that I could make the one database with top-level folders for organization rather than the documents concept to cover that concept and then let people pick where to keep the main database (a la iPhoto).

PS: Also, who is using Notae in Tiger still? I’m pondering moving to Leopard-only for Notae 3 to clean some things up in the program and want to know what would come of that.