Pierre, I see you came out yesterday with a new update of SQL notes. I tried to click through to the notes on the update, but was able to get the page to load.

Can you let us know what the changes, etc. are.

I also tried to click through to the roadmap, and it wouldn't load also, so again I wonder if you can share it here.

Thanks.

Daly

Sorry for the poor perfomance of the Mantis web site (www.mantis.sqlnotes.net). My web hosting is having database issues (The funny part is that the day they finally fixed the main web site performance problems, based on SQL Server, that same day, the Mantis site, based on mySQL, started to be unstable.)

It now seems to work fine, but summarizing the changes (>20 changes)
- Templates for HTML content
- relative links to file (before only absolute links were supported)
- Field management form improvements
- Better Grid management, including rename/delete bug fix
- numerous bug fixes

As for the roadmap, I'm more in a stabilisation phase, getting bugs ironed out, especially as the number of users is growing steadily. Nevertheless, main efforts will be focused on:
- Named filters (to quickly apply filters)
- Various Imports/Exports (to/from apps requested by users)
- Speed optimisations (in particular when running from a SQL Server back-end) as a preparation for the forthcoming database web-sharing feature
- Implement Sheets: Sheets (or combo-views) allow you to place multiple objects (grids, calendars, addressbooks, Gantts, etc.) and position them as you wish on the sheet
- Allow you to attach the HTML pane to the grid. This way, as you switch grids, the HTML pane would only show when desirable.
- And of course, the "can or worms" : the Calendar...

Pierre -

Just wanted to pass on a quick user experience note. I've been running the various incarnations of the SQLNotes beta. I'm quite impressed with the depth of features you've built into it, and you continued evolution of the capabilities is commendable.

Recently, I had a need to quickly develop an outline for a document. I was looking to "brainstorm" via the outline, and then flesh out the details of each area of the document once I got the outline organized. Knowing that SQLNotes has support for MS Word, I thought I would use SQLNotes to create the outline and also develop the document content.

To make a long story short, I finally had to give up and instead start with an MS Word outline. Why? Because the keystrokes involved to use SQLNotes in "outliner" mode were not intuitive to me and forced me to focus on the "how" instead of the "what" as I was brainstorming. Now it's quite possible that someone investing time to learn the way that SQLNotes wants me to enter data may eliminate the experience I had. But for some reason, the use of Enter, Tab and Shift-Tab seem to be "intuitive" to me (maybe because I'm used to Word Outlining mode?) For brainstorming, a simple data entry mode that leverages three key sequences would be useful:

1) Enter creates a new item at same level
2) Tab Indents an item one level
3) Shift-Tab "outdents" one level

I know from the SQLNotes forums that an "Ecco" mode has been discussed to allow quick outlining, and I agree that would be quite useful for me also. SQLNotes is a very powerful tool, but a simple "brainstorm" mode that lets me use the above keystrokes would help. I can even envision SQLNotes having a brainstorm mode that presents a simple outline screen with the three above actions available, with the ability for a user to define the keystrokes to Enter, Indent and Outdent when using Brainstorm mode. When Brainstorm mode is exited, the normal SQLNotes operations, keystrokes, functionality, etc would then apply.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw my two cents in on this. You've done a great job with SQLNotes, and I'm sure it will be very successful.

PIMfan

Hi PIMFan,

I'm glad that you even considered using SQLNotes! As it turns out, what you would like, that is:

1) Enter creates a new item at same level
2) Tab Indents an item one level
3) Shift-Tab ?outdents? one level

Is exactly the way it works when you set Tools > Options > General > Modes > Use the Tab key to indent/outdent

In addition, CTRL-Enter will create a sub-item.

Cheers!

Pierre,

In SQL Notes, can one have several paragraphs in one outline item? If so, what is the command to create a new paragraph?

As a very long time GrandView user, I used
Enter to create a new paragraph in the same outline item,
Ctrl-Enter to create an new outline item at the same level
Shift-Enter to create an outline subitem.

-c

SQLNotes follows what MS is currently using (though I could make that configurable, like just about all other shortcuts), namely:

Enter: Create a new item
Shift-Enter: Add a carriage return, to create a new paragraph within the outline item
CTRL-Enter: Create a sub-item

note: You can also insert a TAB to simulate indenting in the item.

Details here: http://sqlnotes.wikispaces.com/Formatting

Cassius wrote:

Pierre,

In SQL Notes, can one have several paragraphs in one outline item? If so,
what is the command to create a new paragraph?

As a very long time GrandView user, I
used
Enter to create a new paragraph in the same outline item,
Ctrl-Enter to create
an new outline item at the same level
Shift-Enter to create an outline subitem.

-c

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

SQLNotes follows what MS is currently using (though I could make that configurable,
like just about all other shortcuts), namely:

Pierre,

As another GV user I'd definitely vote for making it configurable. Then GV, Ecco, and MS-Word users would all be happy :-_

Derek

Hi,
I am new to SQLnotes and want to ask:
How do you export from SQLnotes to Microsoft Word??

On the wiki Screenshot page, it says

"In its simplest form, you can have a outliner notepad supporting rich text and exportable to HTML, Word, etc"

but I can't find out how to do this. I can see you can export to Excel, but this is very basic and does not retain text formatting.

SQLnotes seems like a great program, but at the end of the day, it's not so useful for creating documents if I can't export to MS Office or other formats that I can share with other people easily. Am I missing something? Please help (I've tried searching the wiki but no luck), or if this doesn't exist, can it be added in the future (this would make SQL notes SO much more useful and powerful!),
Thanks,

Hi Bill,

To export, simply select the items / sub-items and do an HTML Export. If you then use the "settings mode" you'll be able to set a number of options. The end result will be an HTML page, which you can paste, drag-drop into, or open in MS Word.

Issue 491 was created in Mantis to support direct export to MS Word : http://mantis.sqlnotes.net/view.php?id=491

You can track this issue to see when it will be implemented