Voodoopad 6 preview

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Posted by marlowe
Dec 31, 2019 at 12:29 AM

There’s a preview edition of VoodooPad 6 discussed on their support page.

Posted by Paul Korm
Dec 31, 2019 at 02:15 AM

“Preview” notes from the Support site. “Modernizing and simplifying” means “we’ve removed some major functionality that some users might miss” including removing support for scripts. So after neglecting this product for several years, Primate Labs decided to strip it down to its shell, throw some markdown tweaks on it, and call it it a “new” version.

—Primate Labs worte:

What’s New?
While we’ve made lots of small changes that should improve the performance and stability of VoodooPad 6, here are the major changes we think user will be excited about.

Unified Interface
VoodooPad 6 moves the most commonly-used palettes, the Page Info and the Page List palettes, from the floating palette window into the main window: Several palettes remain in the floating palette window. We’re currently exploring ways to integrate these palettes into the main window as well.

Markdown
VoodooPad 6 features improved Markdown support thanks to a new Markdown parser and a completely re-written Markdown highlighter. The new parser provides faster and more robust support for Markdown markup. The new highlighter generates better typography for Markdown pages:

Export
VoodooPad 6 adds a new “Export to Files” option which saves each item in its native format to a directory. This allows users a way to backup their data in a way that does not use VoodooPad’s file format.

VoodooPad 6 also features re-worked ePub, PDF, and Web export options that are both simpler and more reliable.

Dark Mode
VoodooPad 6 supports Dark Mode on macOS Mojave and later:

What’s Removed?
As part of modernizing and simplifying VoodooPad 6, we’ve removed some major functionality that some users might miss.

Scripting
VoodooPad 6 no longer supports scripting, either via JavaScript or AppleScript. If your VoodooPad documents contain any scripts these scripts are treated as plain text pages—the scripts will not be deleted but they also will not be executed.

Web Server
VoodooPad 6 no longer includes a built-in web server.

What’s Coming?
VoodooPad 6 isn’t done! Here’s what we’re going to add in future builds.

iCloud
VoodooPad 6 should “just work” with documents saved on iCloud Drive (in the same way VoodooPad 5 “just works” with Dropbox). Deeper integration with iCloud, along with macOS and iOS synchronization, is coming in future builds.

Posted by Simon
Jan 2, 2020 at 03:48 PM

I tried it and wasn’t too impressed. Considering the time they’ve had and promised to develop VP there are no real new features apart from an updated markdown set and UI upgrade. When both apps are open side-by-side there’s little difference. Opening the preferences side-by-side also yields almost identical settings.

Posted by bvasconcelos
Jan 5, 2020 at 12:32 AM

In my view, version 5 had a good set of features. I don’t know any other application apart from VoodooPad and DEVONthink 3 that has auto-linking (I love this) and the possibility of enhancing it using aliases — something easier to do in DT3.
All they had to do for a new version was some cosmetic changes to the UI, implement dark mode and perhaps renew the Markdown engine to the latest MMD. Instead, they removed a good number of features; updated the markdown in some way that renders no visible difference (to me it looks the same as before) and didn’t yet succeed in implementing dark mode (it is still very buggy).
In my workflow, this is an app that could play an important role, so I was eager to test version 6. I am somewhat disappointed. It feels almost like a downgrade.

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