• Notes stored in a tree view and structure
• Drag and drop support for reordering notes
• Simple text formatting by highlighted bounds
• Auto-save feature
• Import/Export to/from text files
• Link notes to a file on disk

Currently, dependancies include:

• Python 2.3.3
• PyGTK >= 2.3.92 (unstable 2.4)
• PyOrbit 2.0.0
• GNOME-Python 2.0.2

Please send any bugs, usability issues, or comments to the notemeister-user mailing list at notemeister-users@lists.sourceforge.net. You do not have to be a member of the list to post to it. Thanks for your bug reporting.

Notemeister Replacement Project

As you've probably noticed, there haven't been many updates to Notemeister in recent months. This is because I've been working on a replacement for it. If you would like a program that has all of the functionality of Notemeister and more, I urge you to have a look at my newer project, Newton.

Newton has the functionality of Notemeister, plus far more power when it comes to rendering page content because it uses the gecko rendering engine to display your documents. I'll let you read more about the project on it's webpage.

Notemeister is still quite usable in its current state, however. If you would like to take over maintainership of this project, the code is yours. Email me and I will transfer the ownership of the SourceForge project and this website to you.

Notemeister 0.1.7 Released

Major changes in this version include:

• swap OK and CANCEL buttons in "Add Note" and "Remove" dialogs
• don't allow resizing of "Add Note" and preferences dialog
• add dialog entry activates default response
• rename dialog entry activates default response
• open Notemeister homepage from Help menu
• data (finally) saved and read from XML formatted data files
• install prefix no longer hardcoded - more portable across distrobutions
• cut to clipboard seems to work properly now (Bug #974428)
• remove shortcuts conflicting with emacs bindings (Bug #977422)
• remove version from window title as per HIG
• import/export of "Notemeister Notes" format implemented
• add import/export options to appropriate dialogs
• add import/export to appropriate context menus
• add variable time for autosave in prefs
• other minor bugfixes

New Features:

The ability to export "Notemeister Note" format has been added to this release. Notes are exported into an XML file that can be then imported again while preserving formatting. In the export dialog, the user is given options to export the single currently selected note, or the selected subtree of notes. The import dialog allows either adding the imported notes to the root of the current tree, or appending them to the currently selected note. The original structure of the exported subtree remains intact. Exported "links" are not preserved for obvious security reasons.

The data file that Notemeister uses to keep your data persistant is now stored in XML format. The transition between formats is transparent to the user who already has data stored in the old non-XML format. After first starting the new version, the data will be converted and will be used by the program from now on.

More of a bugfix really, but Notemeister no longer hardcodes paths to pixmaps and glade files making it friendlier to distrobutions that use the /usr/local prefix by default.

Issues Installing Notemeister?

There have been many problems with people trying to install Notemeister without an appropriate version of PyGTK installed on their system. I just found out today (thanks Qball) that due to the use of the new gtk.ToolItem, the only version that will suffice to run Notemeister is PyGTK >= 2.3.92. Any version below this will not work. This will not be an issue in a few weeks when PyGTK 2.4 becomes stable and more widely spread, but for now...

The appropriate PyGTK tarball can be found here, and a Gentoo ebuild for both PyGTK and Notemeister both are included in this tarball.

Notemeister 0.1.6 Bugfix Release

Another version of Notemeister has been released which now depends on PyGTK 2.3. This is a bugfix release:

• stop properties dialog from appearing with prefs dialog
• make tree state restore between sessions actually work
• added a Gentoo ebuild to the tarball
• other misc bugfixes

Hopefully there are no more embarassing bugs that crept through my obviously inept testing process...

If you have any feedback or suggestions whether based on the UI or otherwise (feature requests?), please send an email to the notemeister-users mailing list.

Notemeister 0.1.5 Released

Another version of Notemeister has been released which now depends on PyGTK 2.3. New features since 0.1 include:

• welcome screen added for when no notes are in the tree
• select parent note in tree on deletion
• added export/import to text files
• added custom SVG icons for functions not available in stock GNOME
• extra exception handling, although probably not enough :)
• added word wrap on/off stored on a per note basis
• guess note title when importing from text file
• guess filename when exporting to text file
• clean up preferences dialog (lose the notebook widget)
• created a note properties dialog (added to note doubleclick and right-click menus
• implemented "linked note" feature

Most of the changes since last release are fairly self explanitory except maybe the "linked note" feature. This simply means that a note which is "linked" maintains a path to a file somewhere on your filesystem that its data gets written to. When the note's data gets saved to the Notemeister data file, it is also written out to the file that it's path points to. I use this feature to keep things like the Notemeister ChangeLog up to date. It basically saves me having to export to the file each time I make a change. A linked note is evident by a red arrow on its icon in the tree. It can be changed to point elsewhere or cleared via the new note properties dialog.

With this release, I am hoping for some user feedback on the usability issues that I know the program has. I'd like to solidify the wording of things like tooltips and menu entries so that I can begin internationalization and begging for translations in the next few releases. If you have any feedback or suggestions whether based on the UI or otherwise (feature requests?), please send an email to the notemeister-users mailing list.

CVS Now Requires PyGTK 2.4

With the addition of the new gtk.FileChooser dialog and a move away from terrible ugly and difficult to maintain toolbar/menu to the new gtk.UIManager code, the CVS version of Notemeister now requires PyGTK 2.3x.

Although version 2.4 has not yet been deemed stable, I saw no point in writing in the old file chooser dialog only to have to write it again. Also, since my toolbar/menubar code was getting quite big and ugly, I wanted to do it properly. Since the gtk.ItemFactory has been deprecated in 2.4 in favour of the gtk.UIManager, I chose to implement my window actions with the latter.

Notemeister's First Release 0.1.0

I decided to just release what I had as it is at least in a useful state. I'm finding it useful pretty much all the time, so I figured that given the "release early, release often" mentality, it was certainly time.

Since I don't have many computers and many environments to install the package on, I cannot test the release as much as I would like to. Your feedback is invaluable for me to fix bugs early in the release, whether they be install/distribution bugs, usability bugs, or whatever. If you have feedback/comments, please email notemeister-users@lists.sourceforge.net so that I can address them. Thanks for your help.

Note: The program uses the distutils Python module to build and install itself onto your computer. Although the distutils module is part of the Python standard library, some distrobutions (Debian for example) have split it into another package called python2.3-dev. You will need to install this package before installing Notemeister.

Screw the Tray Icon

I just tore out (actually, more like commented out) the tray icon code so until I figure out how to distribute the package properly with the tray icon included, the program will not have one. I like it much better with, so some day I hope to reinclude it.

I just imported the new Python code into the SourceForge CVS, and will continue to keep that up to date regularly. I don't think a release is far off. Maybe I'll release a tarball in a few days after I test it some more.

x86 Unofficial Pre-release Available

I have decided to make available an "unofficial" pre-release tarball of Notemeister for the x86 architecture. It is restricted to x86 simply because the tray icon module is in binary form in this package, compiled on an x86 machine.

This package is not meant to be installed. In fact, it contains no facility to install it with. It is just ment to be used as follows: # tar xvzf notemeister-prerelease-0.1.tar.gz # cd notemeister # ./runme This will run the program as expected without the need to install the package on your system. The tray icon can be enabled in the preferences dialog, but is disabled by default.

Once I eventually figure out the proper way to distribute the package as it should be distributed, I will do so. Until then, this will have to do, and probably will do fine for the most part.

Notemeister Written in Python/PyGTK

I decided for many reasons that the Notemeister program would not only evolve faster, but also more bug-free, if it were written in PyGTK. For this reason, I have totally rewritten the code in Python. It now has more features than it did before the rewrite, and will evolve hopefully more rapidly.

This switch did, however, cause a problem as well. Notemeister takes advantage of the GNOME Notification Area (limited advantage admittedly), by placing an icon in it for hiding/showing the window among other things. The problem is that this icon's functionality has not yet been wrapped in the PyGTK bindings. This leads to the problem of package distribution. I do not know of a seemless, portable way to distribute the program in such a way that not only does the program's Python code get situated in the appropriate places on the new host machine, but also the C code required for the tray icon be compiled and placed in the appropriate spot in the installation as well.