This is just to report that Alex Jenter continues to make modest but steady progress on CintaNotes: the latest release is 3.13, and he says that he will issue version 4 (offering a much improved interface and some new features) later this year.

As I mentioned here earlier, I am trying to shift all my bibliographical references, now scattered throughout many apps, into a couple of sections in a CintaNotes notebook -- one for printed sources, the other for bookmarks. The work on this is going slowly, but I so far have about 5300 entries, and the material seems much more accessible than it used to be. CintaNotes is a fine little app if you are willing to accept its limitations (most conspicuously no images).

Hope he makes the left outline tree pane happen finally with v4 soon.

Also, without a really dark theme, or even better black theme, many including probably most coders will still not use it.

You can see an earlier prototype of version 4 that Alex posted on the CN forum:

http://cintanotes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2357

I too hope that we will be able to escape from the pure white note background. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about a black theme (though I know it's very fashionable right now), but I would be satisfied with almost any color other than white. My suggestion was a pale cream or gray.

Thanks for the link.

Those look pretty white to me, not dark at all.

I did a search on their forum and plenty of dark theme requests and discussions from 2013, 2009 etc. The admins just talk about it, saying vote vote.

Same thing with Markdown support. Saying for years, not now we are going Qt or this or that, vote vote vote. Or how to do MD dual panes since we don't want to? When a simple icon in the note's toolbar can switch between markdown preview/editor modes.

Plugging in one of MD flavors' libraries into a text editor and also a dark/black mode stylesheet is not exactly brain surgery. Numerous note apps have done it in a heartbeat. Not discuss them for over a decade. I think the two guys in charge need correct analyses of priorities and then move fast on decisions made, not wait for a decade.

I agree that CintaNotes's glacial pace of development is frustrating, but then that's true of some of my other software as well. These little one- or two-person operations, often in distant parts of the world (CN comes to us from Siberia, no less), can cause real annoyance by their sluggish upgrades.

I think the only way to approach these apps is to recognize their weaknesses and work around them. In the case of CintaNotes, I'm not persuaded it would be terribly useful as a full-blown note-taking program (though I suppose I could use it in that way if I absolutely had to), but for some specialized cases -- such as my huge bibliographical list -- that involve short notes and no illustrations, it seems to function brilliantly. (It has, for example, the best tagging and search system of any program I know.) In other words, I've just had to scale back my expectations and admit that no single app is going to meet all my needs.

I agree, I don't use it for full blown note taking. That's another issue. Markdown though will be useful in it, it's probably the future standard format anyway. He can just link in one of the MD flavors' renderers.

Yes some apps are slow in development but this is one of the slowest. Strategically, their slow approach above all, hurts the two owners.

I use two versions of this, standard plus older portable, for two different fields. However for fast notes refs etc, I'm increasingly using online pads and for more serious use yet, Joplin.

Joplin recently updated their dark theme looks to a proper one after listening to feedback.

They also very recently listened to my request and made the 2 left columns resizable on Windows which resizes all four columns too. Left outline tree (notebooks nodes), nodes/notes or files, markdown editor, markdown preview. It's now I've if the best outliner apps period, plus it's local and online.

The Joplin notebooks can also be local folders in the first column and second column can be notes or files within folders. All synced to personal private free Dropbox account online on multi platforms, not just Windows. And free plus open source.

For shorter fast sync, I also use an online free open source note taker, a personal notebook of pages with free account, one of my notes page bookmarked in Chrome on multi devices, not just Windows, for fast note/ref/link sharing.

So the two devs better get faster for their own sake. I know the dev moved back from Germany to Siberia and his German business partner moved there too. Maybe they're just too chilled in the nature there, can't blame them.

But a true dark/black theme and basic markdown render is a must nowadays, even for little note takers and a decade of talking and voting is too long for an applet's basic needed features.

Gboard auto typo re: Joplin:

It’s now I’ve if the best > It’s now one of the best

I have used CintaNotes v3.x for a bit yet keep going back to Personal Knowbase for daily note keeping. Knowbase seems to be faster with 15k or more records. Keywords and reports make it easy to find / narrow down the note. Does not do Markdown.