tag menu

[Bill]

CintaNotes has the best system of searching and tagging of any app I have ever used, but there is one little menu in Evernote that is outstandingly useful; I wish CN could offer something like it.

In Evernote, if I press shift-alt-T, it brings up a list of the tags that have already been assigned to that note, with a space at the bottom where I can add new tags; since each tag has a check box next to it, I can also remove tags from a given note.

Alex, take a look at how Evernote handles this problem. I wonder if a menu like this might be possible in the next version of CintaNotes? Of course it's still possible to add or delete tags in the tag line on the main screen, but the problem in both CN and EN is that sometimes not all tags are visible on the screen. Hence this strikes me as a brilliant solution to that problem.

[Bill]

Sorry, let me correct a small typo in the note above. The Evernote list of tags attached to a particular note can be invoked by control-alt-t (*not* shift-alt-T). You then have a choice of displaying all tags or hiding unassigned tags. I always choose the latter. At this point, if I need to add another tag, typing just the first few characters of an existing tag will (through the wonders of autocomplete) add that tag to the list.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Thanks for the suggestion, may I clarify a bit.
What use case do you want to improve in CN using this menu:
- quick overview on note's tags
- quick deletion of subset of note's tags
- quick addition of a tag to a note (without having to open it)
- all of the above
- something else?

Thanks!

[Bill]

In Evernote when you use the control-alt-t command, you get a list of any tags already assigned to the note (each with a checkbox). If you want to delete a tag from that note, you simply uncheck the checkbox. If you want to add more tags, that is also possible.

As I said earlier, it's possible to display all existing tags in the entire notebook, but I find that cumbersome and have set as my default a list of only the tags used in this particular note. When I start to type a new tag in that menu, Evernote is able to predict and insert any existing tag by that name; I'm sure CN would be even better at doing that.

So, in response to your question, I was offering all three of the suggestions in your note -- but not "without having to open it". All of these operations would be done by opening an individual note and then invoking the tag menu. And of course the menu can also be used when you are creating the note in the first place.

The point I was trying to make is that it's much, much easier to use a menu like this one than to try to find, type, or delete tags on the tag line of the note itself. (In CintaNotes that line is displayed in a tremendously small font, and if you're a heavy tagger, as I am, the tags tend to drift off the edges of the screen.)

[CintaNotes Developer]

How about this?
https://roadmap.cintanotes.com/communit ... er-control

[Bill]

An interesting suggestion, though, as I said earlier, I would prefer not to have *all* the tags for a notebook displayed, because that might be a long and confusing list -- but instead just the tags assigned to that particular note. Here is an image of what the Evernote menu looks like:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d7mudkb6cruhm ... u.JPG?dl=0

You will see that if I uncheck the box labeled "Hide unassigned tags," it would then show all the tags in the notebook.

What I find slightly disconcerting about your response is that this exchange took place nearly a decade ago. I brought up the question now because, with a new version promised in the near future, I thought it might be the right time to mention a potentially novel element in the UI.

Of course if you plan to have a better system of displaying tags in the tag line, as your earlier preview seemed to hint, this separate menu might not be even necessary. The reason I raised this issue is that when I am using CintaNotes, I seem to spend a lot of time hunched over the computer typing tags -- barely separated from each other -- in a tiny, illegible font that keep sliding off the left or right side of the tag box.

[CintaNotes Developer]

I think I can see your point.
Yes, this idea has been around for a long time already. But it's doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be implemented soon, especially since a large UI overhaul is in the way.
Evernote's solution is perhaps practical, but not very estetically appealing to me. I think we will try to make a more streamlined solution, probably without the need for a separate window. This is why I was asking about the use cases. We need to understand the problem to find a solution. Analysing competitor's solution can be helpful, but it can also be limiting for the imagination.

[Bill]

I agree that the menu is ugly, like many other aspects of Evernote. But I'm glad you think something like that might serve a useful function.

Just to clarify one point: I really am not adding dozens of tags to each note -- but the problem of a crowded tag line does come up from time to time. I'm trying to use CintaNotes to create a large literary bibliography (which will offer a record of all the publications of one very prolific writer), and usually I have one note for each of his publications. However, for much of his life he contributed a weekly column to two local newspapers, so with those pieces I am grouping them together into a single note for each year, and that means a lot of tags for those longer entries. Hence my grumbling about the crowded, almost illegible tag lines for those notes in particular.

I'm happy to hear you're thinking about this (occasional) problem.

[CintaNotes Developer]

Thanks for the insight into your routine, Bill!
I'll definitely take it into account while implementing CN4's UI.