Respect, @Maurice!

Just a small heads-up; I’ve found that backlinks tend to disappear from Zavala whenever I run a general cache-clearing session (which I do fairly regularly, because my machine is operating at the limits of its storage capacity and in any case, I like to keep it trim). I don’t know if this is something you’ve encountered?

But it’s a great app and has become my go-to outliner.

Cheers!
Bill

Maurice Parker wrote:

I have no plans to ever try to monetize Zavala. I’m retired and I
work on it and NetNewsWire, just to keep myself busy.

I’m pretty happy with the second version of Zavala. I spent a lot
of time making the Editor faster and removing edge-case bugs. I also got
some design help from a real pro. This release is much more polished
than the previous ones.

I’ll post more on the Zavala blog soon about the process of
building this release.

That’s bad. I’ll look into it immediately. Are you using a specific app or command to clear the cache?

I use a couple: CClean (the new version has just come out and is quite good), OnyX, and occasionally TrashMe 3.0. I’m running on macOS 12.1

Maurice Parker wrote:

That’s bad. I’ll look into it immediately. Are you using a
specific app or command to clear the cache?

Would you please email me about this issue at mo@vincode.io? I have additional questions to try and track this problem down and don't want to clog up this forum with them.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I use a couple: CClean (the new version has just come out and is quite
good), OnyX, and occasionally TrashMe 3.0. I’m running on macOS
12.1

Maurice Parker wrote:
That’s bad. I’ll look into it immediately. Are you using a
>specific app or command to clear the cache?

Sure, no worries.

Maurice Parker wrote:

Would you please email me about this issue at mo@vincode.io? I have
additional questions to try and track this problem down and don't want
to clog up this forum with them.

MadaboutDana wrote:
I use a couple: CClean (the new version has just come out and is quite
>good), OnyX, and occasionally TrashMe 3.0. I’m running on macOS
>12.1
>
>Maurice Parker wrote:
>That’s bad. I’ll look into it immediately. Are you using a
>>specific app or command to clear the cache?

I wrote a blog post about blogging using Zavala and Micro.blog. I also use Zavala to blog to GitHub pages. Any blogging platform that has an API or already has Shortcuts support could be published to from Zavala by writing a Shortcut for it.

https://zavala.vincode.io/2022/02/10/Zavala_and_Micro.blog.html

I guess the comparisons to Drummer are inevitable. Zavala and Drummer are both outliners that can be used to publish blogs. They are very different though.

All of a blog in Drummer is in one OPML file. Zavala assumes one outline equals one blog post. Drummer is more like a public daily journal with multiple entries per day. Zavala works like your typical blog where a post is like an article. The Drummer editor is available on all platforms. Zavala is only available on Apple platforms. Drummer provides a web editing experience. Zavala provides a rich text editing experience.

The list goes on and on. They are two very different applications. They will interoperate using OPML files as long as you stay away from formatting, links, and images. Drummer and Zavala have both extended OPML to handle these features, but not in compatible ways. I would have emulated how Drummer handles these things in OPML, but the way Drummer does it just wouldn't support Zavala's rich text editing capabilities.

I'm excited about using outliners as blogging tools and as basic word processors in general.

I had a quick exchange with Maurice Parker today. Very fast response and very helpful. (I had not realized files could not be moved to iCloud with the "Open Quickly" window...
I have started using Zavala regularly and find it perfect for my needs ; syncing via iCloud is almost instantaneous and I can write indifferently with my various Apple devices.
Please, keep it simple, thanks.

Eh, you just got lucky that I couldn't sleep last night. :-)

I do plan on keeping it simple. There are a lot of features that I have planned that will make Zavala more powerful, but I'm not interested in making it complicated or bloated. It won't be easy to do both, but I'm willing to put in the work to make it happen. I suspect that eventually I will mostly just be updating it to take advantage of the latest iOS and macOS release features.

Interesting video on using Zavala with Craft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6mOfKmrKUU

@satis Thanks for posting the link to the YouTube video. It was nice to see a different way someone might use Zavala. I also commented on the video about things the content creator pointed out about Zavala.

Zavala 2.1 is now in TestFlight for both macOS and iOS. https://testflight.apple.com/join/iFbND23m

The biggest change is that the iCloud syncing engine was rewritten. It is now much smarter about merging changes when one or more devices were offline while changes were being made. In some cases this could cause data loss because parts of the outline could get overlaid. Zavala now determines which changes were made by which device and sews them all together.

This iCloud rewrite (and some personal issues) was the main reason this release took so long. iCloud doesn't behave as described in the developer documentation and I had to open an issue with Apple to resolve it. An Apple support developer had to read the iCloud code to confirm the undocumented behavior. Once I actually knew what was going on, I had a lot of labor intensive work to get around this undocumented behavior.

Some nice quality of life changes:

* You can now choose the amount of indent spacing and row spacing. You can choose Small, Medium, and Large. I don't want to allow it to be specified in pixels to keep things from being too fiddly. I would like to hear back on how the 3 presets work for people to see if they need adjusted.
* Drag and Drop had a lot of elbow grease put in it. I think it works a lot better now. Before you might rows moving around as you were trying to drop on them.
* I made a small change that makes Hook integration better if you are using it
* I cleaned up the Help menu and made the About box more attractive and useful
* There are a bunch more toolbar buttons on the iPhone and iPad to make Zavala easier to use without special modifier keys.
* Lots of bug fixes and other little enhancements

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. iCloud testing with devices both online and offline would be a big help.

Marvellous! Thanks, Maurice, for this update – very reassuring, I’d noticed the data loss issue, which had rather baffled me, but would love to keep using Zavala.

Cheers,
Bill

I'm glad you are still a user Bill! The 2.1 Beta is probably safer to use even as untested as it is. Because I don't get a lot of help testing Zavala (it just doesn't have a large or active community), I'll probably release sooner rather than later and just try to fix any regressions as fast as possible.

Hm, because it’s you, I might have to become a Testflight user (I stopped using Testflight a little while ago)! I’ll check it out and let you know!

Maurice Parker wrote:

I'm glad you are still a user Bill! The 2.1 Beta is probably safer to
use even as untested as it is. Because I don't get a lot of help testing
Zavala (it just doesn't have a large or active community), I'll probably
release sooner rather than later and just try to fix any regressions as
fast as possible.

I released Zavala 2.1 and did several smaller bug fixes to it. Hot behind it is Zavala 2.2. Some of the code that is in 2.2 I already had written before I released 2.1, so this one is coming out faster than usual.

Probably the new feature most requested is Focus (Hoisting). I’d really like to get some feedback on if I missed some feature of Focus or just about the design in general. I didn’t look at a lot of other outliners to create it, only Bike, and may have missed the mark. The implementation isn’t much like Bike’s except for the keyboard shortcuts. I think my interpretation fits well with Zavala’s clean and easy to use approach, but a developer never knows until someone else has tried it out.

Settings were rewritten to make it easier to add them. They look more like the newer style used on the Mac for Settings, so it could be a little controversial to some. I personally like it and especially like the fact that the code is now shared between the Mac and iOS.

Another new feature that I think is original is Automatically Change Link Titles. If you paste a web link into Zavala, it will go out to the web and grab that links page title and replace the text of the link with it. I find this very helpful when doing research, say for Christmas or something else I would like to buy. This feature is opt-in, per outline, since you might be a researcher working on a sensitive subject. In that case, you might not want your outliner going out and making web requests that could falsely incriminate you. There is a global app setting to make it default to on for new outlines.

A couple other little things. You can now disable animations in the Outline Editor. The Editor width is now restricted to a readable width. Word count is available under an Outline’s Get Info dialog. And of course, some bug fixes.

If you would like to help test and shape Zavala, just use the link below. I take feedback seriously and most of these 2.2 features come from community feedback.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/iFbND23m

Hi Maurice, congrats on Zavala's perfect 5.0 score in the App Store! I was using it lightly on my Mac for a few months and finally experimented with it on my iPad yesterday.

You might consider including an outline containing a manual or intro or FAQ. It would help people understand the app (Search vs Find, filters, etc) while showing users how it can be used.

Thanks Satis! I'm not sure that Zavala quite deserves that rating. I think that the people who like it, really like it, and are going out of their way to write reviews. I also think there might be more lenience when it comes to negative reviews when the app is free. I'd be more likely to write a negative review if I had paid for software that disappoints me than free software.

I'm on the fence about providing a default outline. In the past, I'd considered the Help documentation where a user could get that information. Besides, when a default document has been provided to me by an app, I always wonder if I can or should delete it? For some reason, probably because I didn't create it, I feel weird about deleting it. I know it isn't logical but I wonder if other users feel the same way.

I think the problem with people not reading the help, is that it is so bad or non-existent for so many apps. Maybe on first launch, I should pop up a dialog that says something like, "New to outlining? Check out the Zavala Help in the Help menu to learn why outlining is so popular".

I like the clever way Ulysses handles this: they include a multi-section/document introduction to Markdown and Ulysses embedded in the app, and users can delete it... or hide it in Preferences > Sidebar via checkbox

Show: Introduction

which is described as "Short feature introduction and sample playground"

Users can even delete the files, and later that can recoconstitute them in the sidebar by clicking that checkbox.

Curio is much the same way. Two projects ship with Curio, a user guide and a getting started/tutorial walkthrough.

I think the unflattering nerd lingo for that is eating your own dog food.

But in this case the dog food looks delicious. I've never tried Zavala but will rectify that today. I hope you have a tip jar somewhere.

No tip jar. Money just complicates open source projects the size of this one and is more work than it is worth. Zavala is free and always will be. I just wrote it for some friends because I enjoy programming.

I feel like Focus was the last big missing feature for Zavala. At least when I compare it to other outliners that is. There are plenty of other features to add, but I'm trying to keep Zavala as beginner friendly as possible. I don't want to overwhelm the UI with a kitchen sink approach. Looking forward to the next release, I'm trying to decide what to implement.

I'd be interested in hearing what show-stopper features are missing from Zavala. What feature is missing that would prevent you from ever using Zavala because it isn't there or is implemented wrong?

Zavala v2.2 is now out. Check it out on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zavala/id1546457750

I'm pretty pumped about this release. Focus is a major feature addition and I think Automatic Link Title Changing is something original in the outliner / PKM field (I'm probably wrong). I updated the online help too for new features and some other areas that needed better documentation. https://zavala.vincode.io/help/Zavala_Help.md/

I didn't include a starter outline in this release. I have thought a lot about it and am warming up to the idea. I just want to make sure I execute it right. I'll probably do this in the 2.3 release.

Zavala is free and always will be. Zavala respects your privacy and will never track you. Because of this, I have no idea who or how many people are using it. The project basically runs on dopamine. Drop me a line to tell me about your experiences with Zavala, even if you hate it. I need some kind of motivation to keep these releases coming out in a timely manner.

Outstanding! Thanks, Maurice, I’ll take a look.

The only thing that still seems peculiarly variable is the insertion/removal of backlinks. But I’ll write to you about that separately.

Cheers!
Bill

Zavala version 2.3 Beta 1 is now up in TestFlight for both macOS and iOS. https://testflight.apple.com/join/iFbND23m

There are some new settings in the 2.3 release. I really try to keep the number of settings to a bare minimum, so adding this many is a big deal to me. Some users had to work at it to get me talked into these, but I happy with them now that they are added.

You can now set spell checking preferences on a per-outline basis. That allows you to completely disable spell checking and autocorrect for an entire outline, which wasn't possible before. Before, it was on a row by row basis and was non-persistent.

There are now a couple of different max editor width options. The Normal option is about 44em, which is considered by some to be the widest readable width for text. The Wide option is around 30% wider than that. There is also a Full Width for those who like to hold a ruler up to their 27" monitors to be able to read stuff.

I got a couple of requests about font color that I rolled together. One was for color theme support and one was more of an accessibility issue. The accessibility issue was that the user was having trouble seeing the Notes fields because they are too dim. I take accessibility very seriously, so I knew that was something I needed to work on. Since I had to do that, I added some theme-like functionality with it.

You can now specify what color you want your font to be in the Font Settings. The number of colors is limited to a set that will self adjust based on if you are in dark mode or light mode. Still, there are enough of them now that you can absolutely make your eyes bleed rainbow tears if you want.

One new suggested option that I just made as a default is autocompleting parent rows. If a row has children that are all completed, it will complete itself with out a user needing to do anything. The opposite also happens to completed parent rows that have uncompleted children. They become uncompleted. I'd appreciate any feedback on if I got the behaviors correct. It works how I expect it too, which means I probably missed something. :-)

The document Find function has also been rewritten to use the new native Find Interaction controls. On iOS that means the Find area is attached to the keyboard instead of at the top of the outline. You can also do whole word or case sensitive finds. Since I was in there mucking around, I also added the Replace functions as well.

I also spent some time trying to make Zavala feel snappier. Creating new empty rows is one area that is noticeably quicker.

All-in-all this is a pretty solid minor release.

Zavala 2.5 - Beta 2 is now available in TestFlight. https://testflight.apple.com/join/iFbND23m

I continue to make frequent, smaller releases. The 2.4 release had a lot of enhancements around Collaboration. The big change was that the Collaborate functionality was moved to the Share Sheet instead of being a separate function. 2.4 was also a very big bug fix release. Lots of stuff got fixed.

The 2.5 release adds the ability to enter Outline Mode to select and deselect rows. It also adds keyboard shortcuts (the up and down arrow keys) to do selection with. I also changed how the ^- keyboard shortcut works. If a note has already been added this keyboard shortcut will jump the cursor back and forth between the Row's Topic or Note fields.

Bill, I fixed a couple things based on your feedback. It should be faster to switch between Outlines now. I have a hard time telling on my newer computer, so let me know if you still see an issue there.

I also figured out why sometimes when using Search and then selecting an Outline, it would deselect that Outline. That was happening when the field was auto correcting something, like capitalizing a word. The act of auto correcting would execute the search again which deselects the current Outline. I just disabled auto correct on the Search field and this doesn't happen anymore.

I expect to release 2.5 next week unless I encounter any problems or get feedback on recent changes. Thanks to everyone who has reported a bug or provided feedback on Zavala!