I’m almost to a release point with a notepad designed around how I use them, and I’m adding in features that I’ve always wanted in a notepad (Adobe-style keyboard shortcuts for font size and kerning, for one 
). Now that I’m to the point of handling the nitty-gritty (like import and export) rather than the fluff (getting it working in the first place; Cocoa rocks) I have to ask:
What do you want in a note pad program?
So far I’ve got the following:
- Entries in a list, with color-coded categories (unlimited)
- Command-key shortcuts for almost everything
- Central database of entries so you don’t have to care about where to save it
- Full Cocoa text editing (graphics, styled fonts, etc.)
- Floating inspector with the following (toggle for live updating)
- Name
- Category
- Date created/modified
- Size in bytes
- Paragraph count
- Word count
- Comments
- Entry duplication, deletion, and navigation via keyboard shortcuts
- Rudimentary printing
- Rather decent homemade icons, for a change
I plan on adding:
- Export individual entries or the whole collection to text, plist, RTF, or RTFD (using categories as folders)
- Import from text, plist, RTF, or RTFD (investigating HTML, Word, and PDF)
- Decent printing support
- “Manuscript format” printing (since I know some people want it and no one else is doing it)
- Most every feature from Text Reader so that this replaces it (export as audio to iTunes, etc.)
- Database-wide search
- Services support (Mmmm)
- AppleScriptability (?)
- Quick paste via contextual/toolbar menu
Optional “mirror”Main data store in plist/RTFD format -for re-import- incase of corruption, obsoleteness etc.- Paste/drag-n-drop w/o attributes or attachments (preference or key combo?)
- Optional encryption (Blowfish?) or generic password-protection
- Rendezvous sharing of selected notes/categories
- .Mac/iSync integration between computers
Palm sharing(There is no iSync conduit for Palm notes, and I’m not writing it.)
Highlighted items were added since the first posting of this entry.
I absolutely must stop using Stickies, and until a decent program comes out I won’t be able to. xPad was good, but the combination of bad keyboard shortcuts and no updates what-so-ever since release kind of make me realize I needed to start on my own.
If you have ideas, leave a note.
Services. Let me import text and stuff from elsewhere. Long and complicated key sequences to let me “put the selected text onto a new note in category 1” = command option shift 1, or something like that. Global hotkeys.
I really like MacJournal. It offers many of the features you named. One thing it misses (and which is surely quite complicated to integrate) is Palm Desktop Notes Synchronisation (or at least something like import/export or read-only).
One nice feature you haven’t mentioned is encryption. Another one might be some rendez-vous stuff, would be cool to offer notes in a public folder – I guess that could be some kind of killer feature.
XML import/export would be great. Any kind of XML would do (for example Property List as Cocoa can read/write NSDictionaries in this format) as XSLT can take care of further transformations.
The ability to specify an XSLT to run the file through when importing or exporting, like FileMaker Pro does, would be gorgeous.
What I have been wanting almost forever is a simple TextEdit type thingie that has customizable contextual menus.
I want to be able to ctrl-click and add in the HTML that I want. As well as such things as my email address, or an email .sig file or anything else I like.
I’d like the contextual menu to be fully customizable and quick!
good luck in your notepad thingie – i’ll be watching
I’m not sure how important this is to others, but what I find vital is this:
Parallel folder structure, with notes in a future-proof format.
What I mean is, regardless of what database the notepad itself uses, there always exists a file on disk in some simple format, like plaintext, RTF, or HTML, with the contents of the note. That way, even if you stop developing your application, or my Powerbook explodes, or whatever, I can have a simple backup that will guarantee I can get at the information. Does that make sense?
I’ve used ‘iNotePad’ for that reason for awhile, because inside the package structure for the database are regular RTF files…
good luck and thanks!
mithras
Pasting text into a note without any formatting (I hate copying things from Safari and later noticing a jillion different fonts in a Stickie). A rock solid backend that won’t lose data if the program crashes. If it has multiple windows a la Stickies, they need to snap/dock together. I’m glad you’re working on this app; I’m not happy with any of the notepads available right now at all…
Good encryption is an absolute must, along with storing the password in the Keychain (optional) so I don’t have to type it in each time I want to decrypt it.
I also like Martin’s suggestion for Rendezvous notes. I’d love to be able to mark a note or a category as shared and get at the notes from another computer using Rendezvous. That would definitely be a killer feature.
I’ll add another voice on Rendezvous. It would be great to access the notes on multiple machines so that I don’t have to worry about if it’s on the laptop or desktop machine.
Other thing that would be nice once Tiger is out would be a dashboard gadget.
I second the MacJournal recommendation. Use it everyday on my G5, PowerBook, and iMac. Two killer features: (1) incorporation with Services in webpages is great (highlight text in a web page, choose Services:MacJournal:New entry with selection). (2) It has a command-line app, so I can SSH into my machine, open the MacJournal command-line app and read my journals remotely.
iSync compatibility. I want my notes on my Palm, and I’d love to ditch Palm Desktop.
something I am REALLY interested in is palm integration. I use my palm all the time to take notes.
iSticky integration would be icing on the cake
Main file format must be xml / plist. Please learn a lesson from OmniOutliner here… I will not use a tool which has its own file format, no matter how good it is at exporting. It’s fine to embed the rtf as a CDATA section or huge string in plist.
xml / plist saves my but in backup situations, and when I want to do behind-the-scenes modification of the documents.
Please use 1 file pr. document, not one combined file. Much better for e.g. Retrospect backup.
Encryption should be done seperately for each document, so they can have different passwords, and be unlocked one-by-one.
The notepads I use right now are Alepin ( http://www.macchampion.com/alepin_download.shtml ) and Sbook ( http://www.sbook5.com/ ).
My most important features:
1. Easy instant live search.
2. Easy import and export to standard document types for data portability.
3. multiple named pages. While drawers are the cocoaish way to do this, I would prefer an entourage-like pane with folders. A netnewswireish pane would also be ok.
4. The ability to quickly lock and unlock pages so they data can’t be erased (but it should be selectable/searchable/copyable)
5. A small footprint mode is always cool…
6. a menubar menu that allows you to go to a specific page/search would be cool
7. Plain text option for pasting and for quickly getting rid of formatting.
8. customizable tabs
9. option to see invisible characters
10. if you are doing html, a quick “pretty text” option
p.s. Also high on the list:
A real font menu (not the cocoa font panel!) with WYSIWYG fonts and a few popular sizes….
Have you tried Hog Bay Notebook? (I’m the author):
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com
It’s a pretty complete notebook/outliner that might be what your looking for. Some interesting features:
- full text search – wiki links – cloning of entries (multiple parents) – applescript
Or at least it can give you ideas for your own project. Don’t forget to try out our new alpha version. The download is available in our user forum:
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=6
Jesse
One of my favorite features of VoodooPad Lite, my current note-pad solution, is its export-to-iPod feature. Combined with iPodScripter, this lets me put my notes on my iPod whenever I connect it. I think I’d really appreciate any kind of notes app that can sync with a mobile device. The holy grail, o’course, would be synchronization with my Palm PDA… but Palm Desktop’s APIs might be prohibitive in that regard.