CintaNotes Forum

Well, it's not really a suggestion since I intended to eventually do it right from the start, but still - rules are rules and I'm no exception

I really need this functionality myself, and it got plenty of votes in the first feature poll, so I plan this for M10 or M11.
The point of this topic is more to discuss the implementation details.

Ok, overall description first. What will it be? The tabs will be the way to divide your one notebook into several, and the main point here is to support _projects_. The main difference to tags is that a given note can have several tags, but it can belong to one and only one tab. Example: you are looking for a new job and would like to keep the interesting job postings as notes. And you'd like to keep them really separate from all other notes. No problem! You create a new tab named "New job" (or whatever), and put freshly taken job-related notes there.

So, reiterating: tabs will be used for project-based categorization, leaving other kinds of categorization (general subject, keywords, status, location, etc) to tags.

But there are a lot of questions I need to have answers to in order to start doing this thing. These are the questions I'd like to discuss in this topic.

1. To which tab should the freshly clipped notes go to? The currently active? Or to a predefined "Inbox"-like tab? Or maybe the user should be able to assign an "inbox" marker to any tab? Should it be configurable?
2. Should the search be local to the currently active tab? But then there will be no way to search the whole notebook. Should it be global and concurrently filter all tabs, displaying the number of matches in the tab's header? Or should there be a special "All" tab, which will show notes from all tabs and which can be searched like any other?
3. What about tags, should they be local to the current tab, or global? Or should there be two kinds of tags - local and global? Should they be in different lists then?
4. Should there be one "Default" tab right off the bat? Or zero tabs, and you have to explicitly add them?
5. Should the filter settings be shared between tabs, or preserved? Or just clearing on any tab-switch would be ok?

As you see, there are a lot of possibilities and I really would like to strike a balance between power and ease of use. Please speak your mind!

WOW Alex, now we have an ideal of how you have to work out a lot of options just to implement a seemingly simple feature! Here are my thoughts:

1. I personally would like these to go into an "Inbox" this functionality would fulfill something from one of my posts a few months ago to add new clips to a specific note. In this case it goes into an inbox instead. Configurable options would be nice, but I would think that having a default would be best and less confusing to new users. I can see a "where did my new note go?" kind of forum post.

2. Again, thinking of ease of use, I think it would be best to do a global search, and display number of matches on the tab header. I kind of like the idea of an "All" tab, but would it be better to have an option to turn off tabs temporarily instead? I can't think of a reason to only search the current tab if the search does them all. You just ignore the other tabs...

3. I like global tags, seems like local could be confusing. Could you elaborate on reasons for local tags?

4. In the spirit of keeping things simple, how about a default tab, which would also be the inbox. The user would then manually add tabs. I think this would give you the option, and if the user adds tabs later they would have more understanding of their use.

5. For the same reason as in 2 and 3 I think filters should be shared between tabs.

I think that all of the options have merit, and the challenge is how to create a final product with the broadest appeal - enough features for power users, but still simple enough for a new user to master the basics quickly. My vote is to implement the basics, and put tab specific features into an "advanced" mode that would have to be turned on.

Before I do anything else I’d like to understand tabs, and how notes get into tabs. Are they just special tags? For example, I start off with a load of un-tabbed notes, some with the newjob tag. I create a newjob tab, and all those notes with the newjob tag go into the newjob tab, and the remaining notes go into another tab named default or unnamed or un-tabbed or something else.
If this is not how it works then can you explain how notes get in to tabs?
But however it works I can see many uses. Bring it on.
Nod

Hello Alex,
It would be a nice and welcome feature

1. To which tab should the freshly clipped notes go to? The currently active? Or to a predefined "Inbox"-like tab? Or maybe the user should be able to assign an "inbox" marker to any tab? Should it be configurable?

The clipped note should go to the active tab. If it didn't do so the user would be disoriented and would ask himself where the note is. Another problem would be: a user is working to a project so might have a tab for this project and probably some consecutive clipped notes would be related to this project. So the user would need to select and move all the notes related to the project from the Inbox tab to the project tab if the clips went to the Inbox

Still I like the idea of a Inbox like tab. You might consider to send the clipped note both to the active tab and automatically to a special Inbox-global tab (see also point 2)

2. Should the search be local to the currently active tab? But then there will be no way to search the whole notebook. Should it be global and concurrently filter all tabs, displaying the number of matches in the tab's header? Or should there be a special "All" tab, which will show notes from all tabs and which can be searched like any other?

I think the search should be global so we can see results from the whole notebook and applied concurrently to all tabs. The idea of a All tab is really nice to have a global view of the whole notebook, the All tab might be populated with all notes from the other tabs (so from point 1 clipped note to any tab is also here). In this way you might combine the Inbox tab and the All tab in one so we have only one (easier for the user) special tab with a different meaning from the others. This is the only problem I see: the Inbox-All tab, should be a kind of read only tab auto populated from the other tabs, the user shoudn't add notes directly to it so the all tab can be always "the sum" of the other tabs and not having more notes on his own. You might have an option to show or hide this special tab

3. What about tags, should they be local to the current tab, or global? Or there should be two kinds of tags - local and global? Should they be in different lists then?

I like customization but maybe for starting it's easier to have and to handle one set of global tags, it's easier for the user and has a more predictable behaviour for the user. With local tags a user might ask himself, why tag xyz is not here? I had it! withour remembering he defined it locally for another tab

4. Should there be one "Default" tab right off the bat? Or zero tabs, and you have to explicitly add them?

There should be a default tab. So that the user can start using the software immediatly. I think a good principle is: no need for configuration before use, but customization later if needed. But a needed feature would be the ability of renaming the default tab (and also other tabs)

5. Should the filter settings be shared between tabs, or preserved? Or just clearing on any tab-switch would be ok?

I didn't understand very well different options sorry

I think the new notes should go to an 'inbox' . one of the best things about CintaNote is the 'Fire and Forget' method of note taking. If you have to open the window select the tab then clip the note cinta will lose its flexability and speed. If it goes into an inbox you retain the speed with the ability to sort your notes later ( maybe with a reminder before exit that you have unsorted notes in the inbox?).

I'm still thinking about the inbox but let's focus on fuctionality and behaviour and not names

Let's imagine a new user, which just downloaded CN and starts the application. I absolutely agree everything should be ready out of the box, without configurations or questions, so there should be 1 default tab (as opposed to 0 tabs and the need to create one)

The user doesn't know at the beginning the possibility of more tabs or tags or any other function, the core functionality is creating new notes by clipping or manual creation and they should go to the default tab we have. At this point the user doesn't know anything about tabs, he just is able to create notes (in a fast way) and is happy

Later in the same session he learns about tabs probably by creating a new one. He now has two tabs, he learns to switch from one tab to the other and back as he does for example in his tabbed browser. Now in the same session, when he switched to a fresh created tab I think we all agree a new note, by means of manually inserting, should go to the new focused active tab. Now the user switch applications and goes to his browser and push the hotkey to clip a note. Where should this note go? to the active tab or to a hypothetical inbox tab? I think it should go to the active tab he left in CN for two reasons: the previous manually inserted note went to the active tab and we can't have two different ways to create notes send notes in different places without an explicit choice or desire of doing so (IMHO it would be a bad design). The second reason is: if we have an active tab, and only one active tab at a time (I think it's a good thing), it means the other tabs are inactive, and sending a note to an inactive tab (although special or different) is a bad design because it's inactive

The question arises when the user closes CN and open it again for a new session, now we should think which is the best choice for the active tab: it might be the last one before the user shut down CN last time or there might be a marked-chosen tab for being so. If the user didn't create more tabs it's easy, the one out of the box is also the marked one. If the user created more tabs we need a default behaviour (I mean there must be a default behaviour without need of configurations) and there might be options if needed to override the default behaviour. The abilitity to clip notes in a fast way is always preserved because obviously there's always an active tab, I think we just have to undestand which one would be the best active tab in a new session

I want to say I'm not pushing a feature or another, it's just feedback and brainstorming for Alex and everything is fine for him it's ok for me

toddclausen wrote:I can't think of a reason to only search the current tab if the search does them all. You just ignore the other tabs...

One of the reasons could be that search inside of a tab can be much faster since less notes can be inspected.

toddclausen wrote:3. I like global tags, seems like local could be confusing. Could you elaborate on reasons for local tags?

I think the best explanation would be an example. Say I have a "cintanotes" tag, which "contains" all notes related to CN. This is the kind of a main project-like tag and it would be converted into a tab as soon as this functionality is available. I also have a bunch of tags which are used only together with the "cintanotes" tag, like: "feedback", "req", "review", "bug", "marketing". These tags are really noise outside of CN context.

Noddy330 wrote:Before I do anything else I’d like to understand tabs, and how notes get into tabs. Are they just special tags? For example, I start off with a load of un-tabbed notes, some with the newjob tag. I create a newjob tab, and all those notes with the newjob tag go into the newjob tab, and the remaining notes go into another tab named default or unnamed or un-tabbed or something else.
If this is not how it works then can you explain how notes get in to tabs?
Nod

Tabs are in a way just special tags, but the important difference is that tabs "own" their notes, that is, a note can only belong to one tab.
It is really like a section in a notebook. Notes get into tabs via cut-and-paste, or, more conveniently (but also more difficult to implement), via drag-and-drop onto tab header.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Noddy330 wrote:Before I do anything else I’d like to understand tabs, and how notes get into tabs. Are they just special tags? For example, I start off with a load of un-tabbed notes, some with the newjob tag. I create a newjob tab, and all those notes with the newjob tag go into the newjob tab, and the remaining notes go into another tab named default or unnamed or un-tabbed or something else.
If this is not how it works then can you explain how notes get in to tabs?
Nod

Tabs are in a way just special tags, but the important difference is that tabs "own" their notes, that is, a note can only belong to one tab.
It is really like a section in a notebook. Notes get into tabs via cut-and-paste, or, more conveniently (but also more difficult to implement), via drag-and-drop onto tab header.

I’m not disagreeing, just generating discussion to ensure the best solution. I’m still thinking it would be more an elegant solution if the tab names were just user selected tags, rather than introducing a new category (tag name) to be associated with each note. This way you could slice and dice your notes in many ways, have notes in multiple tabs, insert notes into tabs and move notes between tabs very easily. Nod

Noddy330 wrote:I’m not disagreeing, just generating discussion to ensure the best solution. I’m still thinking it would be more an elegant solution if the tab names were just user selected tags, rather than introducing a new category (tag name) to be associated with each note. This way you could slice and dice your notes in many ways, have notes in multiple tabs, insert notes into tabs and move notes between tabs very easily. Nod

Great, I like such discussions )
Now let's return to the root of the feature - what problem it is intended to solve.
I want it to solve the "I'd like to keep unrelated notes separated" problem, not the "I want to have shortcuts to different tag sets" problem.
Tabs will lower the brain strain - you switched to "My Diploma" tab, you can totally, completely forget about the "Fun Stuff" and "Code snippets" tabs.

Here's also another opportunity to explain the idea behind local tags: wouldn't it be nice to have tags like "c++", "php", "javascript" inside of "Code snippets" tab?

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

Noddy330 wrote:I’m not disagreeing, just generating discussion to ensure the best solution. I’m still thinking it would be more an elegant solution if the tab names were just user selected tags, rather than introducing a new category (tag name) to be associated with each note. This way you could slice and dice your notes in many ways, have notes in multiple tabs, insert notes into tabs and move notes between tabs very easily. Nod

Great, I like such discussions )
Now let's return to the root of the feature - what problem it is intended to solve.
I want it to solve the "I'd like to keep unrelated notes separated" problem, not the "I want to have shortcuts to different tag sets" problem.
Tabs will lower the brain strain - you switched to "My Diploma" tab, you can totally, completely forget about the "Fun Stuff" and "Code snippets" tabs.

Here's also another opportunity to explain the idea behind local tags: wouldn't it be nice to have tags like "c++", "php", "javascript" inside of "Code snippets" tab?

Yes, but, what someone sees as unrelated today, may not be so tomorrow.
Like when you wish to refer to a ‘good’ Code Snippet in Your Diploma, or New Job application.
Use tabs as tag names and you have the option to keep them separate or not.
Start with things separate and items that later need to be shared will have to be duplicated.
Just a thought. I don’t know the ‘right’ answer. Nod

Suggest tab names are hadled in the same way as tags in the Tag Sidebar - so we need ALL and UNTABBED. Then use Search, Tabs & Tag Sidebar to easily find whatever you want. Nod

kranor wrote:I think the new notes should go to an 'inbox' . one of the best things about CintaNote is the 'Fire and Forget' method of note taking. If you have to open the window select the tab then clip the note cinta will lose its flexability and speed. If it goes into an inbox you retain the speed with the ability to sort your notes later ( maybe with a reminder before exit that you have unsorted notes in the inbox?).

I Agree! Kranor stated my point above even more clearly, Thanks!

ale wrote:I'm still thinking about the inbox but let's focus on fuctionality and behaviour and not names

Let's imagine a new user, which just downloaded CN and starts the application. I absolutely agree everything should be ready out of the box, without configurations or questions, so there should be 1 default tab (as opposed to 0 tabs and the need to create one)

The user doesn't know at the beginning the possibility of more tabs or tags or any other function, the core functionality is creating new notes by clipping or manual creation and they should go to the default tab we have. At this point the user doesn't know anything about tabs, he just is able to create notes (in a fast way) and is happy

Later in the same session he learns about tabs probably by creating a new one. He now has two tabs, he learns to switch from one tab to the other and back as he does for example in his tabbed browser. Now in the same session, when he switched to a fresh created tab I think we all agree a new note, by means of manually inserting, should go to the new focused active tab. Now the user switch applications and goes to his browser and push the hotkey to clip a note. Where should this note go? to the active tab or to a hypothetical inbox tab? I think it should go to the active tab he left in CN for two reasons: the previous manually inserted note went to the active tab and we can't have two different ways to create notes send notes in different places without an explicit choice or desire of doing so (IMHO it would be a bad design). The second reason is: if we have an active tab, and only one active tab at a time (I think it's a good thing), it means the other tabs are inactive, and sending a note to an inactive tab (although special or different) is a bad design because it's inactive

The question arises when the user closes CN and open it again for a new session, now we should think which is the best choice for the active tab: it might be the last one before the user shut down CN last time or there might be a marked-chosen tab for being so. If the user didn't create more tabs it's easy, the one out of the box is also the marked one. If the user created more tabs we need a default behaviour (I mean there must be a default behaviour without need of configurations) and there might be options if needed to override the default behaviour. The abilitity to clip notes in a fast way is always preserved because obviously there's always an active tab, I think we just have to undestand which one would be the best active tab in a new session

I want to say I'm not pushing a feature or another, it's just feedback and brainstorming for Alex and everything is fine for him it's ok for me

Great Discussion! This is why forums are great!

I kind of disagree with having the newly clipped note go to an active tab, and here is why. I generally _try_ to only work on a task at a time, but in reality am doing several things at once. For example, I may be coding and so would have the coding snippets tab active. The phone rings, and I go to a clients site, and want to clip a new address or other information, but the coding tab is active so the new note is added to code snippets and I later need the info and go to search. If I am looking in the contacts tab without global search I am not going to find the info. However, if I know that newly clipped notes automatically go into the Inbox, I always know where they are, and can move them to other tabs just as now I have to go back and add tags. Does that make sense?

I do agree with you that in a lot of cases it would be nice for the note to go to the active tab, but in reality many of us are working on many things at once and so I think it is easier overall to manually assign tabs as we now do tags. Maybe the default could be an Inbox tab, with a configuration option to clip to active tab?

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

toddclausen wrote:I can't think of a reason to only search the current tab if the search does them all. You just ignore the other tabs...

One of the reasons could be that search inside of a tab can be much faster since less notes can be inspected.

This makes a lot of sense, but it seems search is so fast now that we wouldn't really notice much of a slow down. Would implementing tabs and a global search slow search more than it is currently?

CintaNotes Developer wrote:

toddclausen wrote:3. I like global tags, seems like local could be confusing. Could you elaborate on reasons for local tags?

I think the best explanation would be an example. Say I have a "cintanotes" tag, which "contains" all notes related to CN. This is the kind of a main project-like tag and it would be converted into a tab as soon as this functionality is available. I also have a bunch of tags which are used only together with the "cintanotes" tag, like: "feedback", "req", "review", "bug", "marketing". These tags are really noise outside of CN context.

OK, this makes more sense now, but say you had another software project in development and had another tab for it - wouldn't you in that case want marketing to be a global tag? Would there be an option in the tag editor to make global or local?

Noddy330 wrote:Suggest tab names are hadled in the same way as tags in the Tag Sidebar - so we need ALL and UNTABBED. Then use Search, Tabs & Tag Sidebar to easily find whatever you want. Nod

A logical extension to this would be a TAB TopBar or ToolBar, displaying all tags, from which you could select TAB names. Nod

toddclausen wrote:Great Discussion! This is why forums are great!

I kind of disagree with having the newly clipped note go to an active tab, and here is why. I generally _try_ to only work on a task at a time, but in reality am doing several things at once. For example, I may be coding and so would have the coding snippets tab active. The phone rings, and I go to a clients site, and want to clip a new address or other information, but the coding tab is active so the new note is added to code snippets and I later need the info and go to search. If I am looking in the contacts tab without global search I am not going to find the info. However, if I know that newly clipped notes automatically go into the Inbox, I always know where they are, and can move them to other tabs just as now I have to go back and add tags. Does that make sense?

I do agree with you that in a lot of cases it would be nice for the note to go to the active tab, but in reality many of us are working on many things at once and so I think it is easier overall to manually assign tabs as we now do tags. Maybe the default could be an Inbox tab, with a configuration option to clip to active tab?

All in all I think this is the best answer. There is no 'best' way for all users, sometimes we all forget that, as default new notes should go to a 'default' tab with a config option checkbox to send notes to the active tab. So I guess that could go on the roadmap as 2 seperate requests?

toddclausen wrote:Great Discussion! This is why forums are great!

I kind of disagree with having the newly clipped note go to an active tab, and here is why. I generally _try_ to only work on a task at a time, but in reality am doing several things at once. For example, I may be coding and so would have the coding snippets tab active. The phone rings, and I go to a clients site, and want to clip a new address or other information, but the coding tab is active so the new note is added to code snippets and I later need the info and go to search. If I am looking in the contacts tab without global search I am not going to find the info. However, if I know that newly clipped notes automatically go into the Inbox, I always know where they are, and can move them to other tabs just as now I have to go back and add tags. Does that make sense?

I do agree with you that in a lot of cases it would be nice for the note to go to the active tab, but in reality many of us are working on many things at once and so I think it is easier overall to manually assign tabs as we now do tags. Maybe the default could be an Inbox tab, with a configuration option to clip to active tab?

Hello Todd, I understand your explanation about clipped notes, but I have a question: what about notes inserted directly and not by clipping, should they go to the active tab?

The problem I see with inbox tab is something like this... let's say you have a tab called web design, and you insert there some notes manually with your code snippets, then you go online to look for some tutorials and clip three or four notes from web pages related to web design, now back to CN you have related notes some in web design and some to inbox, I see this as a problem

So inbox is better for unrelated items which do not have already a dedicated tab and we still have to organize, but it's not fine for related items which already have a tab ready to hold them

Maybe we need an option but if there's a design that accomodates both needs without options or configurations is even better. I think an option if present needs a graphical feedback for the user and maybe it's better directly in the main interface than in a configuration dialogue. For example, a left mouse click probably will switch between tabs, a double click on tab header might set or remove the property of being the receiving tab for clipped notes. If set, the tab, active or inactive, will receive clipped notes. If no tabs have this property, the active tab will receive notes. Maybe this way we don't need a special inbox, there's not the need to explain that a whole tab has a different meaning, it would be just a property set to a tab or set to no tabs at all, of course if you call a tab inbox and set this property forever it's the inbox we're talking so now

I think we need Alex now to guide us towards the right solution

Well, this really gets interesting. The vote against this feature is a surprise for me and an indication that maybe I'm being a bit too self-indulgent in seeing it as a "must have" only because I'd like to have it myself. It would be nice if the person who voted against it would share his or her vision on the topic.

I reckon that CintaNotes is gaining a niche mostly because of its convenience as a small information gatherer, and complicating the interface will bring CN a bit closer to Evernote and other monsters of the notetaking industry where there are little chances to survive the competition. So at least this feature has to be really unobtrusive and clear.

As to the essence of our discussion, I pretty much agree with ale and think that having an "inbox"-marker is the way to go. This is the most flexible approach, which can also be pre-configured to emulate the "inbox"-tab approach, and for those who'd like to clip to the active tab, there can be an option provided to automatically move the marker. So it has the power of all three solutions without being really much more difficult to grasp; in a way it is even more explicit: you literally *see* where your clippings are going to end up. Most of the time you'll use the inbox tab, but at times when you are working on a particular project, you'll be able to switch gears to not have to sort all those notes manually.

Moreover, the active tab is no holy cow, I think the act of clipping should be interpreted as a request to switch to the inbox tab and focus the note just clipped. This way no note searching will be necessary.

toddclausen wrote:This makes a lot of sense, but it seems search is so fast now that we wouldn't really notice much of a slow down. Would implementing tabs and a global search slow search more than it is currently?

No, it won't, but although the search is quite fast now, I guess you haven't tried searching on a notebase with 10000+ notes or on a notebook with a bunch of 300+Kb notes.

toddclausen wrote:OK, this makes more sense now, but say you had another software project in development and had another tab for it - wouldn't you in that case want marketing to be a global tag? Would there be an option in the tag editor to make global or local?

I'd have the options to
- copy the local tags over one by one,
- promote local tags to global,
- or convert the two tabs into tags and merge them into one tab, "My Software Projects".

But frankly, in the light of having many different notebooks with fast access to them over a dropdown menu, the idea of supporting local tags seems less appealing. A much simpler solution would be just to hide the tags on the sidebar which are not present in the selected tab, eliminating noise.

As you see, this tab feature is anything but trivial, and I'm starting to think that I'd be better off implementing multiple notebooks first - at least no .dat file format changes will be required.

ale wrote:Hello Todd, I understand your explanation about clipped notes, but I have a question: what about notes inserted directly and not by clipping, should they go to the active tab?

I see your point here Ale. My previous comments were directed at the act of fast clipping with the hot key. I guess I hadn't thought about manually created notes, but agree they should go into the current active tab.