I'm playing around with Rightnote at the moment, and I'm struggling to adjust the fonts for my aging eyes. This evening I finally figured out how to enlarge the fonts (and change the background color) in the tree panel, but I still haven't found the formula for enlarging the fonts in the resource panel.

Are there any expert Rightnote users here who can offer advice? I'll be very grateful for any suggestions.

Wish I could help. I'm actually waiting for RightNote to return to bitsdujour at its 50% off deal.

I see that on its own website the professional version of RightNote is being offered at a 30 percent discount and the standard version at a 20 percent discount.

For whatever it's worth, I should add that I wrote to RightNote support twice last Wednesday and have had no reply. I've also since then discovered a serious bug in RightNote's indexing of linked PDF files, and since that is what I primarily wanted to use it for, my enthusiasm has cooled and I have not bought a license after all (as I was almost ready to do).

Some other hiccups with RightNote were also mentioned in this thread:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4150/20

WSP wrote:

For
whatever it's worth, I should add that I wrote to RightNote support twice last
Wednesday and have had no reply. I've also since then discovered a serious bug in
RightNote's indexing of linked PDF files, and since that is what I primarily wanted to
use it for, my enthusiasm has cooled and I have not bought a license after all (as I was
almost ready to do).

The developer is on vacation and is supposed to return tomorrow, October 9.

Can you tell me the problem you encountered with PDF indexing?

Jon

WSP wrote:
>For
>whatever it's worth, I should add that I wrote to RightNote
support twice last
>Wednesday and have had no reply. I've also since then discovered
a serious bug in
>RightNote's indexing of linked PDF files, and since that is what I
primarily wanted to
>use it for, my enthusiasm has cooled and I have not bought a
license after all (as I was
>almost ready to do).
>

Jon, what happened is rather mysterious and difficult to describe, but here goes:

I created a new file and linked a couple of dozen PDF files of books. Then I did a series of test searches, and at first I was very pleased with the results. RightNote provided a column of search results, with the search words shown in context and highlighted. But as I was playing around with this, I realized that one of my PDFs was in fact not searchable. I therefore closed RightNote, opened the PDF in PDF-Xchange viewer, and did an OCR of that file. When that was finished, I saved the file and went back to Righnote.

I then discovered that if I searched on any word that happened to appear in the newly-saved PDF, RightNote would no longer show words in context but would show only the file title -- and this was true of all other PDF files in which the word appeared. If I searched for a word or phrase that did not appear in that one PDF, then the search results were displayed normally.

I deleted the link to the problem PDF and then relinked it. That did not solve the problem. I rebooted. That didn't help. I reindexed the RightNote file through the "file cleanup" menu command. It made no difference. I suppose the next step would have been to reinstall RightNote, but I began to lose interest by that point. I concluded that RightNote was buggy and was not worth any further expenditure of effort.

I hope you or someone else will tell me that I am wrong, because I liked what I saw until things went screwy.

Bill

I have no clue. I tried to duplicate what you did and used a scanned document that was OCR'ed. It worked fine. I then used a complex pdf (pictures, tables, columns) that was just short of 20MB. Again, it was fine (but it took a while). I can even see the text of these respective documents (click open text).

I am worried that I might run into problems and not realize it. However, I think the pdf parser used by RightNote is the same as that used successfully by other programs (UR?). Perhaps yours was a one off anomaly. I hope so.

Jon

I did another experiment this evening -- very interesting. Once again I created a new file and started linking PDFs, and for a second time I discovered that one of my linked PDFs was not yet searchable. In other words, this was exactly what happened before. But this time I made absolutely certain I had unlinked it, and then after doing the OCR, I relinked it. Everything worked fine.

I assume that what happened last time is that I failed to unlink a file before I ran OCR on it, and that somehow corrupted (permanently) the Rightnote file. I'll do a few more tests tomorrow, but this is promising because it suggests that the bug -- if that's the right way to describe it -- is easily avoidable.

Bill

Thank you Bill. That is encouraging. Please post any additional experiences.

Jon

A modest PS.

I bought the RightNote license and like it very much, but I continue to have the problem described above -- and this time I can't blame some belated indexing. Still, it's an excellent program. I'm especially impressed by the virtual notes; I used them years ago in Keynote, and I had forgotten how convenient they are. With RightNote it's easy to create virtual links with a set of .txt notes and live completely in the world of plain text if you want to.

I also eventually heard back from the developer about changing the font size in the resource panel, and he says that he will make that possible in a future version. Very pleasant and helpful.

Bill

WSP wrote:

Still, it's an excellent program. I'm especially impressed by the virtual notes; I
used them years ago in Keynote, and I had forgotten how convenient they are. With
RightNote it's easy to create virtual links with a set of .txt notes and live
completely in the world of plain text if you want to.

Can you explain the concept further? It may be clear to those who have used them before, but I can't understand what you are describing.

I should add that I am lately looking at anything plain text related.

In RightNote you can drag and drop a plain text file from Windows Explorer into the tree panel; at that point one of the choices you are offered is a virtual attachment. That means you can view and modify that file/note to your heart's content within RightNote, but it is not actually imported into RightNote; it is still in its original place on your hard disk. In other words, you now have all the advantages of a two-pane outliner (good search, hierarchical tree, tags), but the individual documents retain their integrity.

One small discovery I made this afternoon is that you can paste a URL into RightNote, and that URL is underlined and becomes clickable. But (assuming it's in a virtual note) if you go back to look at the document with a text editor, the URL will just appear to be ordinary text. That strikes me as a clever trick.

Bill

OK, got it, thanks!

This is the way that programs like Knowsynotes and Outwiker work; in fact, they rely on separate files for the content of their notes. I am getting quite fond of this approach, because it allows me to access my notes outside the Windows system, e.g. in Linux or on the web via Dropbox.

Are you still having the PDF indexing problem with RightNote?
It's up on BDJ for a discount and I'm hoping in the year since the original thread that the kinks in the 6.0 release have been all worked out.

I'm looking to use it to gather and outline some research materials and outline some thesis materials. The web capture and outlining seemed pretty solid.

Can any RightNote v6 users chime in - any remaining annoying bugs or problems? Do you still consider it a worthwhile acquisition?

Thanks in advance,
d

WSP wrote:

A modest PS.

I bought the RightNote license and like it very much, but I continue to
have the problem described above -- and this time I can't blame some
belated indexing. Still, it's an excellent program. I'm especially
impressed by the virtual notes; I used them years ago in Keynote, and I
had forgotten how convenient they are. With RightNote it's easy to
create virtual links with a set of .txt notes and live completely in the
world of plain text if you want to.

I also eventually heard back from the developer about changing the font
size in the resource panel, and he says that he will make that possible
in a future version. Very pleasant and helpful.

Bill