Thoughts on tags in 1.3

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed analysis!

Am 07.02.2012 14:41, schrieb fs:
> ==== what isn't working ====
>
> - There appears to be no way of looking //only// at my tags,
I'll probably add a configurable parameter with which you can define the
number of words in the clouds. All tags will always be shown, however.
> and //all//
> of my tags (including subtags).
Can you describe a situation where this is useful? I think having the
tags in the cloud suffices, because clicking on a tag will show its subtags.
>
> - Subtags don't show up in the cloud.
Actually if a subtag (or rather a word out of it) is used often enough,
it will show up.
>
> - Only single word tags appear in the cloud. This means tags like "look
> up" or "science magazines" don't show up in the cloud at all, regardless
> of frequency.
Thanks for discovering this, it has been fixed now in trunk.
>
> - There is no way to select for entries with multiple tags.
That's right. This will maybe get implemented, but I don't think too
many people need it.
>
> - Search behaves strangely for tags. If I enter a tag with subtags in
> search, it //does not show a result for the tag// and instead shows
> multiple results on the same entry, for each subtag.
This is the desired effect. When searching for a tag you get a list of
all subtags with the according dates. What do you suppose would be a
better result?
> - The tolerance level of the combined tag/word cloud may be such that a
> tag used infrequently doesn't appear. (I'm having trouble determining if
> this is the case because of all the other things that seem to be
> preventing my tags from showing up.)
This is fixed now. All tags always appear.
> ==== other thoughts ====
>
> In my dream interface:
>
> - tagging could be done entirely inline ie #hashtags, eliminating the
> need for a third panel entirely, or allowing the third panel to be used
> as a page margin--a place to jot down an unrelated note, a phone number,
> an action item, a movie to see, etc.
I like this idea, and already used the # character for escaping a search
for tags. This is implemented in the trunk version. It would be great if
you could try it out and see which of your issues remain. If you're on
Linux, please backup your journal and run the following commands:

cd ~
bzr branch lp:rednotebook
cd rednotebook/
./run

Cheers,
Jendrik

An even easier way is to install the RedNotebook daily ppa: https://launchpad.net/~rednotebook/+archive/daily

Everyone, please give some feedback to make tags even better and more useful.

I thought I already filed something on this on the day the new version shipped, couldn't find it anywhere?

I 100% agree with tags being

1 very important in and of themselves for user-specific navigation and organisation
2 completely separate from full-text concepts like frequency, search

and therefore shouldn't be mixed.

I could (barely) live with tags not being hierarchical, but would much prefer they were. Personally I have no use for the cloud at all, I want an expandable outline so I can quickly browse through my hundreds of tags and find the one I'm looking for even if I don't remember the string specifically.

When I click on it, I want to see **only** those items I've explicitly tagged with that term.

Ideally I can select a boolean "(cats and dogs) not pets"

Even more ideally, the tagging could be applied to specific spots in a given day. Alternatively, the days themselves would be implemented as tags, and multiple separate "chunk" or "entries" or "items" or "nodes" would be revealed when clicking on the day in the calendar.

Full text search is of course also essential, ideally also allowing google-style booleans.

Corpus-style word frequency - to be honest useless bells & whistles - same with the cloud idea itself.

Hi Jendrik!

> If you're on Linux, please backup your journal and run the following commands:
>
> cd ~
> bzr branch lp:rednotebook
 > cd rednotebook/
 > ./run

Done. I am trying it out now. :) Already I see multi-word tags!

>> - tagging could be done entirely inline ie #hashtags, eliminating the
>> need for a third panel entirely, or allowing the third panel to be used
>> as a page margin--a place to jot down an unrelated note, a phone number,
>> an action item, a movie to see, etc.
> I like this idea, and already used the # character for escaping a search
> for tags.

The # to escape searches is very nice. I realized later that the cloud was combining tags+words and was going to mention that a way of separating the two would be awesome, and there it is!

It doesn't return entries where the #tag is a subtag though, or entries where #tag is explicitly written in the text of the entry?

>> - There appears to be no way of looking //only// at my tags,
 > I'll probably add a configurable parameter with which you can define the
 > number of words in the clouds. All tags will always be shown, however.

I think this would be very useful! (Especially if it was possible to set it to 0 and temporarily create a cloud consisting only of tags. :)

>> and //all//
>> of my tags (including subtags).
 > Can you describe a situation where this is useful? I think having the
 > tags in the cloud suffices, because clicking on a tag will show its subtags.

&

 >> - Subtags don't show up in the cloud.
 > Actually if a subtag (or rather a word out of it) is used often enough,
 > it will show up.

I think maybe I am not using subtags correctly, if this is the desired behavior.

Right now I would tag an entry something like:

look up
- linux productivity apps

magazine article
- computing
- linux
- productivity
- software

recipe
- cocktail
- rum

rednotebook
- ideas

That, visually, makes sense for the daily entry because in it I have
- an action item that I need to remember to look up productivity apps
- an article from a computing magazine on linux productivity software
- a recipe for a rum cocktail
- some ideas about RedNotebook.

I probably wouldn't want "linux productivity apps" to always be a tag in this case because here it's more like a note to myself. (But this is me using the software badly, I think.)

For the rest, I probably would because I don't want to manually sort through the search results of every entry I've tagged #magazine article looking for just the ones also tagged #linux and #productivity.

>> - There is no way to select for entries with multiple tags.
 > That's right. This will maybe get implemented, but I don't think too
 > many people need it.

I don't know how other people are doing this. :) For me, with the current tagging system, boolean operators in the search would be helpful. (So I could look for things tagged #magazine article AND #linux for instance.) Or maybe it already is and I just don't know the right operators?

I also think being able to search tags (and just plain text) this way would eliminate the problem I'm having below, with overwhelming search results for subtags; right now really the only way to search multiple tags is to use a tag and then sift manually through the search results for the subtag.

The other alternative is redundant tagging, which is not a particularly elegant solution. Instead of tagging my entry once with:

magazine article
- computing
- linux
- productivity
- software

I would have to tag it:

computing
linux
software
productivity
magazine article
computing article
linux article
linux software article
linux productivity
productivity software
linux productivity software
etc.

to make sure I can find it later in cases and contexts I haven't even thought of yet, or when I don't remember what tag I used, if I filed it under "productivity software" or "linux software" etc.

(I'm also loathe to consider redundant tags a good workaround because it would massively inflate the tag cloud, which I don't see being helpful for usability either. :)

 >> - Search behaves strangely for tags. If I enter a tag with subtags in
 >> search, it //does not show a result for the tag// and instead shows
 >> multiple results on the same entry, for each subtag.
 > This is the desired effect. When searching for a tag you get a list of
 > all subtags with the according dates. What do you suppose would be a
 > better result?

Well, the result I //expected// was that search would return a single listing for each entry where #tag had been used. I don't know if it's necessarily better. :)

The #tag escape takes care of some of my difficulty with this because it filters out the non-tagged entries where just the word or phrase appears and removes a lot of the noise, bit it can become unwieldy if someone is using the tags & subtags the way I am, where if I look for something common like "magazine article" I might easily end up with four, five, six+ duplicate results in my search panel for each entry where #tag is used. (But I don't know if other people do this.)

For cases where tags are being used as micro-notes (like my "look up" tag) this way of returning results makes sense.

Thought:
I think my fundamental difficulty is centered around whether tags should be an index for organizing and retrieving information, or whether they should be a micro-note system for marginalia. I'm not sure they can be implemented in a way that works well for both purposes.

I wish I could promise this is my last TL;DR on tags but... XD

-Mel

Also I agree pretty much with everything HansBKK said.

Though I'm not sure about expandable outline vs. cloud -- I think they both have their flaws -- and one of my favorite things about RedNotebook is the one day - one page aesthetic, but I do like the idea of being able to separately tag spots in an entry.

:)

Hi again!

> That, visually, makes sense for the daily entry because in it I have
> - an action item that I need to remember to look up productivity apps
> - an article from a computing magazine on linux productivity software
> - a recipe for a rum cocktail
> - some ideas about RedNotebook.
>
> I probably wouldn't want "linux productivity apps" to always be a tag
> in this case because here it's more like a note to myself. (But this
> is me using the software badly, I think.)

You are wrong. This is exactly the way I use tag system almost all the
time, so it is not just you and not badly. =)

--
Danila E.

Maybe it's just me, but I liked the original cloud menus -- words, categories, tags. Under words especially I could see which words I use the most, a very nice feature to keep track of how one favors certain vocabulary. I did work a nice system of categories and tags, but if they are now conflated, it makes it a little less easy to organize in my opinion. Or at least it seems to lead one towards a certain type of organization rather than allow to use in a more personal style. Would it be desirable to put such choices in the preferences?

> Maybe it's just me, but I liked the original cloud menus -- words,
> categories, tags. Under words especially I could see which words I use
> the most, a very nice feature to keep track of how one favors certain
> vocabulary.

Like Wordle! (I love Wordle so much. :) This is mostly how I use the word cloud, too. I find it's not very good for organizing information, but very good at showing me visually where my head's at (which is valuable in a journal :) and, from a practical standpoint, the vocabulary I'm overusing. To me it would make the most sense to see the word cloud as a tab on the Statistics window. Maybe with the option of seeing the word cloud for just the current entry or the word cloud for the journal as a whole.

Hello, everyone!

> To me it would make the most sense to see
> the word cloud as a tab on the Statistics window.

Let me second this. =) It would really be nice to have this.

--
Danila E.

#rednotebook

On RedNotebook and Tags

I've been giving this some more thought, comparing 1.3 with how I used RedNotebook before the tag changes.

I think one of the killer features in RedNotebook is the ability to use that third panel and add marginalia -- movie to see, phone number, action item. I think that's what makes it //different// from other notebook and journal apps that I've tried. That and the simplicity -- I like the feel that it's //almost// a text editor. That's what I used before RedNotebook, because I find most note keeping apps are //too// focused on hierarchy and sorting.

Which brings me to tags and indexing. :)

This is not something I want to do with my notes. I mean, I don't want to be manually ordering things all the time and dragging and dropping and messing around with hierarchy and outlines and things. At the same time, it's necessary to have some kind of organization.

When I use a paper notebook, I use those little stick-on colored flags to mark pages--I color code for different projects and I write important keywords on the flag. (Really, this is relevant! :) I imagine a good tagging system should work like that, It should be easy to use and intuitive, it should make organization apparent at a glance, and it should not require redundant data entry. It should be searchable and it should return good results.

I don't think tags and marginalia/side notes are the same thing //at all// & I think the difficulty I'm having in using 1.3 is that it's pretending they are. E.g. added info like tag: Movies to Watch subtag: Requiem for a Dream has //nothing to do// with information organization. Right now, in 1.3, RedNotebook supports that kind of margin notation extremely well, but search and indexing have suffered because the tagging system is shoe-horned in with the annotation system.

For now I've gone to using ghetto inline #hash_tags in the body of the entry because I can search them and get results that are most useful for me this way. Also, they're highlighted which means I can tag #magazine_article in more than one place and see it instantly when I use search. I'm a little concerned about the future code that strips the ability to search the body of the entry text for #hash_tag but I suppose I can always replace # with a different character if that functionality persists. I should probably switch it now rather than have to find & replace in all my notebooks depending on how it works in a later version, but # feels like the defacto convention for tagging, I'm used to it, and it flows when I'm writing.

This thought builds on my previous comment about the word cloud... In place of the word cloud, I'd like to have a tag panel that shows the tags used in the current entry (not to be confused with the annotations in the right hand panel; I mean a separate and distinct tag system) and that can also be toggled to show all the tags used in the current journal.
- I'd like to be able to click in the tag panel or use a shortcut like Ctrl+T to add a tag to the entry //or// just type #my_new_tag in the body of the text as I'm writing and have it automatically added to the tags for that entry.
- When I click on a tag in the panel I'd like the panel to display a list of entries where that tag is used and have all the instances of that tag written in the body of the text highlighted (like the search highlights the text now).

I like how the panel can be used for search also; it keeps the interface clean and simple. I think my ideal search would work like this:
- by default it searches the full text for all the words in the search box,and returns the results that contain all of them (not only the entries where the words appear in sequence)
- I love the current highlighting in the body of the text
- I would like to be able to search tags exclusively using an escape character like a # (like in the modified 1.3 I tried) but I would like it to //also// highlight where that tag appears in the text of an entry, if it does. (Not instance where the word appears without a # though.)
- I would //also// like to be able to search the notes in the right-hand panel exclusively using a similar escape character, like : or something, and have it return the results the way the current tag search returns the subtags. E.g. I search ":movies to watch" and get the list of movies I want to watch as results in the search panel.
- I would like boolean search.

(Hey, if I'm gonna dream, I'm gonna dream big. :)

I suppose if you remember the tagging hooks you use most, that is all you would need. I personally like to categorize each entry by category and more specific tags if need be. I like having the hierarchichal structure to allow for either more specific or more general searches. It helps me think about what it is I want to search for with any type of entry. But then again, I don't mind spending some time to categorize my entries.

Just to follow up, I guess what I was trying to say is I have been using the tagging system more or less the way it seems to imply with categories/description and tags, and I have not yet needed to use hash tagging to search for anything. But it does require some time sitting there and going through past entries and labelling what you wrote. I happen to enjoy doing that because it helps me to think about what's important and worth retrieving in a way that my mind happens to work, and this doesn't always occur to me right after I write something from whatever impulse. Hash tags sounds like a reasonable solution, and I may use it at some point.

The main problem I have with the new cloud arrangement is that I just don't use it anymore. It seems cluttered to me and I can't distinguish between tags and words. Rather than being simpler which I believe is the intention, it makes things more complex IMO :) I guess I didn't have any problems with the previous implementation. However someone might like it, so why not have it be a preference selection?

Introducing a preference option always means more code, less testing and
more bugs, so I'm trying to use sane defaults that fit most users.

The old design was broken and too complex for beginning users, because
you needed to choose where to search before you made your search. I
guess the current cloud design could be made more intuitive if we
separate the tags from words and have the tag cloud above the word cloud
in the same window. What do you think?

That would certainly be better than mixing them up.

However I would still argue that "search" means something completely different from "show me documents with this tag".

If the intention is to make things easy for the beginning user, then my suggestion would be to start out by "hiding" the whole concept of tagging to start with, document it well for those new to the concept, and only show the UI bits that relate to tagging when they enable it in the preferences.

So the full-text search is the only thing there for new users, with the word cloud if that's something people like

Once tagging is enabled, then add a tab labeled "Tags" with the tag list, again if people like the cloud for that OK - personally I prefer a simple list, or ideally an outline allowing for at least one level of nesting/hierarchy.

Just thinking out loud with suggestions of course, take whatever route's easier for you, but I do think putting Tags and Search in the same interface will just lead to more confusion for those not clear on the distinction.

For me, anything that allows the user to represent the way they think is a good thing. So sane defaults of course is necessary and might make the user experience more reliable, but maybe less interesting for others. I know people who use this program who have no interest in tagging at all, just use it to write a journal entry or what have you, and forget about it. But I think those people would use the program with more functionality as long as the interface is elegant and easy to use.

I agree that the single full-text search is sufficient. If having the seperate clouds on tabs was problematic, then I understand why you chose a single panel. I personally like simple to look at, so either a word panel or a tabs/categories seems to make the most sense but I think having both one above somehow doesn't seem that easy to look at. Maybe the way you do it looks great, but if I had to pick just one, tabs/categories is probably the most useful.

Thanks for all the time and effort you put into RedNotebook. It's a great program with great performance. You may have written RedNotebook to meet you own personal needs, but your response to comments and suggestions has been timely and positive.

I use RedNotebookPortable every day. I started last August, so I'm still working out ways to make use of what RedNotebook has to offer. It's so fast at retrieving items, I look for different ways to take advantage of this speed. Using Tags is one technique that I use a lot, especially in my WorkJournal. I create a tag for each project I work on. Most of my time is on maintenance and different situations make me switch from one task to another. So, it's handy to quickly put a tag in when I work on a particular project or task, especially those times when I'm so caught up in doing the work that I don't find time for detailed journal notes. Being able to search on these tags is especially helpful when I have to post my time.

As I said, I use RedNotebook every day. I'm sorry to say that when I upgraded to 1.3.0, I immediately missed two things:
+ The Ctrl-T shortcut to apply a tag
+ The Tags search.

I spent a day trying to work around these shortcomings (compared to version 1.2.0 Rev 2), but not having the things I'd grown most used to was too much hassle. I searched for the prior version and downgraded. In noting this, I have to compliment you on your thoroughness at keeping the sites that provide RedNotebookPortable current. All the most popular sites had the 1.3 version, but, fortunately for me, not every site.

The Categories search is also something I use, though not as much as Tags searches. I'm still working out when to use Categories, Tags or in-text markers. Tags may be a specially case of Categories, but it **is** special.

I thought the earlier change from Text search to Everywhere was useful because it made the search more comprehensive. But, as a substitute for Tags or Category search, the results are just too cluttered for the way I use them. Some of the words that appear in my Tags also appear in unrelated text.

I'm not concerned about the changes to the Word Clouds. I find Word Clouds to be generally interesting and sometimes useful, but not that important. I don't neccessarily want to see them as a display default.

I appreciate your positive response to feedback almost as much as I appreciate your software. I hope you can manage to restore the Tags shortcut, and the Tags and Category searches soon because RedNotebook is good software, and I'd like to stay on track with it.

Thanks for your detailed feedback. I think you're completely right, tags
search definitely has to come back. I will try to fix this when I have
some time.

You can find old versions here
https://sourceforge.net/projects/rednotebook/files/,
https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/RedNotebook%20Portable/.

Since tags and categories are now the same, you can just use Ctrl+N to
tag an entry.

I'm glad you agree that Tags Search is important. In light of your statement that Tags and Categories are the same thing, I'm not sure what you're calling the Tag Search. In the old version, Tags Search lets you identify days with a particular tag attached. Since tags aren't related to each other, that's the best way for it to work. The Categories Search brings up all the annotations that fit into selected category. Again, that's the way that makes sense, since the reason for creating a Category is to be able to flag different parts of a single subject. They all relate to each other.

So, when you talk about bringing back the Tag Search, do you mean
- Both the Tags Search and the Categories Search ?
- One search that behaves like the old Tags Search ?
- One search the behaves like the old Categories Search ?

Thanks for taking the time to clarify this.

Perhaps I'm being nit-picky but I believe clear use of terminology helps to clarify the underlying ideas.

I'd like us if at all possible to keep the usual meaning of "Search" for the idea of parsing the content's full-text for arbitrary words, usually nothing to do with tags.

The "Search" interface should be completely separate from "Tags", as the former is for words contained in my content, while the latter is "meta data", not in the content itself. What we do with tags is "apply them" to nodes (currently days) and "select them" to display the days with those tags.

I don't like the phrase "Tag Search" except for this one possible (usually rare) use case:
I have thousands of tags and the application gives me an interface where it is so difficult for me to quickly get to the right tag I have to actually type the tag's string into a search box to get to it. To me, the necessity of such a feature is a symptom of a sub-optimal UI in the first place, unless it's just there as an accessory convenience for keyboard-oriented users that don't want to use the mouse to navigate the UI.

I'll call the present (IMO broken) version "RN-NG" and the previous (IMO better) version of Rednotebook "RNclassic". Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here:

RNclassic's implementation of tags used the term "Category" as a parent for the "leaf" tags, in effect creating a hierarchy for tagging restricted to two levels. So I might have a Category called "rating", with tags of "excellent" "good" "OK" "fair" and "poor". The use of the term "Tag" in RNclassic was simply one pre-defined catch-all Category, for those tags that didn't need to have a parent, which is a bit confusing since all the labels we put under our own custom Categories are also Tags. But at least it worked from a functional POV.

To me, an ideal UI would be an outline view that allowed me to click on the "+" next to "rating" to get to those five tags, and "-" to collapse the outline to get back to the Category overview. Except in extreme cases, this should eliminate the need for "Tag Search". Perhaps RNclassic's "Tags" Category could be renamed "Misc" or "Other" and "stickied" to sort at the top or bottom.

Personally, I would prefer an infinitely nestable parent/child hierarchy of tags, but it's possible that Jendrik will continue to keep RN-NG's "flat" design - no hierarchy at all, "Categories" are gone completely, as he appears to value simplicity for newbies above the added functionality of nested tags. If so, then I would need to rename the above tag examples to "rating-excellent", "rating-good", or perhaps "rating1" to "rating5" in order to keep them together.

In that case I would advocate for a simple tag listing UI that allowed the user to choose between an alpha sort and one by frequency, most-used on top. I don't like clouds at all, but apparently others do, so a tab choice between the listing UI and the cloud could handle that. In the "flat tags only" case, it is likely in my use case that I would end up with so many tags in one flat list that I would need to resort to a "Tag Search" function - as defined above - to find them.

But keep in mind this is all about the UI for Tags only, nothing to do with Search itself in the send of "full text search", which needs to be kept completely separate.

I think completely "flat" tags are less functional, and that a maximum-two-level (Category as parent of Tag) is at least a better compromise.

HansBKK raises some interesting points, but I feel that restoring the 1.2 search mechanisms is something that provides "more bang for the buck" in terms of effort and time to deliver. I use RedNotebook every day, and employ those features almost every day. With RedNotebook's speed and flexibility at retrieving items, they make it worthwhile to make note of a variety of subjects and events.

Jendrik Seipp mentioned that the Annotation shortcut can be used for posting Tags. In 1.2, it appears that the same dialog box is used for both Ctl-T (New Entry for tags) and Ctl-N (New Entry for categories) The difference is which field has the focus when it opens. That difference does make a difference. Posting a tag using the Ctl-T shortcut is a short side step to whatever else I may be doing in RedNotebook.

For example: to tag that today's entry has a note on Music, I type <Ctl-T> <M> <down arrow> <ENTER>. Even for tags that require hitting <down arrow> more than once, it's still a short quick process that allows me to get back to what I was working on. To use the Ctl-N shortcut requires two processes: first, select the Tags Category, then <TAB> and select the tag. Not a huge difference, I know, but the extra process can interfere with keeping the thread of what I'm working on. Small differences can have surprisingly big effects.

RedNotebook has a graphic interface, and provides abilities to include graphic media, but, as a journal, the main focus is still words. The keyboard is still the best UI for putting words together, and anything that facilitates getting them into the journal makes RedNotebook better.

> For example: to tag that today's entry has a note on Music, I type
> <Ctl-T> <M> <down arrow> <ENTER>. Even for tags that require hitting
> <down arrow> more than once, it's still a short quick process that
> allows me to get back to what I was working on. To use the Ctl-N
> shortcut requires two processes: first, select the Tags Category, then
> <TAB> and select the tag. Not a huge difference, I know, but the extra
> process can interfere with keeping the thread of what I'm working on.
> Small differences can have surprisingly big effects.
Since version 1.3 the categroy names are the tags. The extra "Tags"
category is not needed anymore. I'll probably add a way to transition
all "Tags" tags to categories in a future version. In the above use case
you would just type <Ctrl-N> <M> <down arrow>. You can then decide if
you want to add "Titanic" ;) in the lower field or not.

The "Tags" category will not come back, but a way to search only for
tags/categories will.

Hi all who are involved in this discussion.

I'm using RN for about 1 year. But the update to 1.3 made me cry. Why?

I use RN at work (at university) and make entrey nearly every day. Categories are great to organize all the information. The way i use them is to use a lot of categories (e.g. "measurments") and than enter a subtag that describes what i have done (e.g. "EELS measurement of FeCr at Libra 200FE"). Until version 1.2 i was able to choose the category "measurments" to see a hirachical list of all measurments i had done.
But at version 1.3 this feature is missing. Full-text search or the cloud do not help me to specifically search for the information i need. The main problem of the full-text search is the huge amount of entrys that are presented. All subtags are included, but there is also much "trash".
I like the new feature of version 1.4 to search only for categories by using a "#" as an escape sequence. But to replace the old drop down list (v. <=1.2), containing all the assigned categories, i would like one feature. Auto-complete would be great. It is already implemented for the category dialog, maybe it can be used at the search too.

There are some more comments i like to make:

two different clouds:
I like the idea to split the cloud. I don't use the cloud very much, but a category cloud would be nice (font size according to the frequency a category is used).
Placing the 2 clouds above each other would be bad for users of small displays. I use a netbook with a height of 768 pixels and a second cloud would not fit in there very well.
To place the word cloud at the statistics dialog would be ok for me, but i think there are many useres that would dislike such a solution.
I would prefer a mechanism to switch between both clouds. Tabs would be one solution. In addition this mechanism should switch between full-text and category search. This is more reasonable for new users than using a "#" to start the category search. I don't think every user will read the manual to find out how searching for categories work. And i don't have an idea how to tell every user to use "#".

default settings:
I agree with the opinion not to include new configurable items. You install RN and can start using it without checking out the settings dialog first. This is great. If there is a solution for a problem that does not need a configuration, this should be the preferred choise.

category list:
If someone uses the subtags to refine the structure his notes, an collapsible list of all categories could be a great advantage. But then omeone want's subsubtags, subsubsubtags and so on, maken everything more complex. I like that RN is easy to use and i hope that will resume. For categorizeing content there are lots of programs available and RN should not compete with them.

I agree with others and Bob's ( https://launchpad.net/~rclangill) comment is exactly right for me too.

"I thought the earlier change from Text search to Everywhere was useful because it made the search more comprehensive. But, as a substitute for Tags or Category search, the results are just too cluttered for the way I use them. Some of the words that appear in my Tags also appear in unrelated text."

Searching for 'weights' for the days tagged with weights meaning a day I lifted returns those days AND days where I said the word weights. Not what a user wants.

As for the cloud, I'd like a way to remove it. I find it of no value.

Just my 2 cents.

Re DaveQB's latest comment: I could take or leave word clouds, but I can see that other users might see more value to having them. As I stated, I'm currently using 1.2 because I need the functionality. The tabbed interface for Search / Word Cloud with the Search tab as a default is a UI element that functions well and is easy to use.

I think the Jendrik Seipp is doing an excellent job at keeping RedNotebook simple and flexible, yet a good performer, avoiding design and feature bloat.

Jendrik, you've stated that you agree on the need for a Categories only search. It appears that you feel that having special treatment for the Tags category is a design redundancy. I like the special treatment for Tags, but if 1.4 (or 1.3.5, whatever) doesn't keep that, I can probably cope with it. I am finding that I end up transforming some of my tags into Categories, but there are tags I'm using that I don't feel a need to break down further.

Thanks for for your good work, and I look forward to getting back on track with RedNotebook.

I concur:
"..I like the special treatment for Tags..."

I use categories to reduce the list of tags to ones in that category. I could see tags of the same name but in different categories creeping into my use and thus a way to select a category and then select/look up tags within that as VERY useful.

I'll quickly repost my message to the mailing list. Again, thanks for bringing up the issue and all your input and fruitful discussion!

Hello everyone,
thanks for all the very constructive feedback on the search feature! I took them into consideration and I think that I found a system that works well for most users and use-cases. There have been numerous changes to the search system and I think it's not only better than the search in 1.3, but even better and easier than the search feature in 1.2. Here are the changes:

X Search: If a search contains a hashtag (e.g. #Work or #Movies), only days
  with all of those tags will be searched. This means you can e.g. search for
  "project-xyz" only in the days tagged with "Work" with the query
  "#Work project-xyz".
X Search for combinations of tags (e.g. #magazine #linux)
X Search: If the query only contains a single hashtag (e.g. #Movies), a list of
  all subtags (the names of the movies) is shown.
X Search: Automatically scroll to found text in edit mode
X Split tag and word clouds
X Show tag cloud only if there are any tags
X Remove spaces from multi-word tags during search and in clouds
X Auto-complete tags in search
X Always include all tags regardless of their frequency in the cloud
X Exports: Correctly set the appropriate extension for each export type
X Fix: Correctly parse configuration values containing ='s
X Fix: Paths returned from file and folder choosers must be converted to unicode
X Fix: Correctly redirect error output into the logfile on Windows

I'd like to get some feedback from you. If you're on Linux, checkout the latest development code [1], run it and please report back your findings. If you're on Windows try the new beta [2]. Does it work? What should be changed?

Thanks Jendrik.

Running now. Looks brilliant upon first use.

I'm having trouble locating the Window 1.3 beta 2 version to check this out.

You should use the beta 3:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4780737/rednotebook-1.4.0-beta3.exe

One issue I am finding running 1.4 on Linux is this.

When adding a Tag and selecting a category you can then move to the "Write entry" field and start typing in your tag. The field searches for existing tags and puts them in a drop down menu. If you arrow down to the one you want and press the Enter key on your keyboard the tag is added to the entry but only what you actually typed in, not the tag you selected.

I hope that makes sense and I am not sure if this is the right place for 1.4 bug reports. Please advise if it is not.

Thanks again for an invaluable piece of software.

Am 28.03.2012 04:45, schrieb DaveQB:
> When adding a Tag and selecting a category you can then move to the
> "Write entry" field and start typing in your tag. The field searches for
> existing tags and puts them in a drop down menu. If you arrow down to
> the one you want and press the Enter key on your keyboard the tag is
> added to the entry but only what you actually typed in, not the tag you
> selected.
When I add a tag and then a subtag with autocomplete, the whole tag and
subtag is added to the day (On Linux). f you want you can open a
bugreport about this and describe the complete steps you do and I'll see
if I can fix it.

>
> Am 28.03.2012 04:45, schrieb DaveQB:
> > When adding a Tag and selecting a category you can then move to the
> > "Write entry" field and start typing in your tag. The field searches for
> > existing tags and puts them in a drop down menu. If you arrow down to
> > the one you want and press the Enter key on your keyboard the tag is
> > added to the entry but only what you actually typed in, not the tag you
> > selected.
>

Possible workaround:

I've had a similar problem with the old Delicious plugin with recent
upgrades to Firefox, and just changed my keystroke workflow to "down down.
. ." (selecting the right tag) and then TAB before hitting enter.

Just ignore this if it doesn't help. . .

I have since restarted RedNoteBook and the problem has ceased. Thanks!

Simplicity, complexity, aesthetic beauty.

I love the new version. Thanks for all of your work. One thing I noticed right away is search is much more responsive and intuitive, along with correspondence with the cloud panel. Quite powerful actually. Well done!

Thanks, I'm glad the desgin works for you.

If I didn't already have RedNotebook 1.2.0 rel 2, I'd probably be happy with 1.4.
The 1.4 release settled some of the issues for tag search that occured with 1.3, but not all of them.

The interface for doing a tag search is somewhat, chunky (I have a colllegue who is fond of the peanut butter analogy: interfaces are smooth or chunky) The #compressedwordswithnospaces convention that 1.4 uses works, sort of, but certainly doesn't get style points. I say it sort of works because of the way the 1.2 style tags are handled.

1.4 does provide a new search feature. Selecting a 1.4 style tag and then entering additional text creates a compound 'and' search that can be useful. But, the only selection for the 1.2 style tags is the 1.4 '#tags' tag. This selects daily entries that have any 1.2 style tag. In my case, every day has some sort of tag, so selecting #tags provides no selection at all for the compound search

Jendrik, I give you credit for providing backwards compatibility that assures that the tag values are still valid under 1.4. To me, it appears that you're trying to simplfy the interface while making the interaction more complex and powerful. But look at Google. Even as smart as Google's interface is at parsing queries, they still provide a separate 'Advanced Query' option. A button for an Advanced Search dialog may be the way you need to go if you want to enable more powerful searches in RedNotebook.

The other aspect of the 1.3/1.4 simplified search interface is the elimination of the tabs for choosing between 'Search' and 'Clouds'. Word Clouds are now the default. That's not my preference. I find the Word Cloud display distracts from my focus on the central entry panel. The only way to turn it off is to search for some odd character that doesn't appear in my entries. That's a kludgy work-around.

As I said, if I'd never used RedNotebook 1.2, I'd probably think RedNotebook 1.4 was terrific. For now, I'm sticking with 1.2 because of its great performance. I'll keep in touch with newer versions, but, I find the 1.2 version so powerful and useful, that it would take a pretty strong new feature to move me away from this fine software.

I Just switched to 1.4.0 and I'd like to second the idea of inline #hashtaging. This would also make tagging even more keyboard-friendly (of course Ctrl+N to add a new tag works as well).

Any news about that?

@Bob: Thanks for your constructive criticism ;) The compound "and"
search feature will probably work for you once you run 1.5. This version
converts all Tags->MyTag to just MyTag entries. If you want to keep
using 1.3, you should make a backup before trying the new version.
You're right, providing an advanced search might be the best option in
the future, but it makes both the code and the interface a little more
complex and each feature only gets half the testing then. If you want to
remove the word cloud, just add the regular expression .* (match
everything) to the cloud blacklist.

@Stefan: You're right, this is a very nice idea. I will see when I get
the time to work on this.

Hi again, Jendrik!

> The compound "and" search feature will probably work for you once
> you run 1.5. This version converts all Tags->MyTag to just MyTag
> entries.

Sorry for the off-topic, but how exactly will it convert these entries
in localized versions (i.e. in Russian language layout)? Will it search
for "Tags" top-tag in all the languages, or will it just grab the
translation for "Tags" from the *.po ?

I hope it will check both variations, and not use the second one only.

--
Thank you for reading this letter,
   Danila E.

I will only convert those tags under the English word Tags, since this
word has never been translated in the categories.

Am 10.05.2012 16:30, schrieb MyOtheHedgeFox:
> Will it search
> for "Tags" top-tag in all the languages, or will it just grab the
> translation for "Tags" from the *.po ?

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