appml / neutrinote

neutriNote - the original extensible Markdown + Math note app. Non-commerical. No lock-ins. Only 3 MB footprint & highly optimized. Designed for plaintext purists.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Make the dialog_duplicates_title dialog clearer #72

Open Gabr-F opened 6 months ago

Gabr-F commented 6 months ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

For several months, I'm almost sure ever since I reached 256 (or 255?) unnamed notes ("New Note #.txt") I've been having frequent problems with Neutrinote.
I postponed filing issues about them because I had little time to investigate, and even here, for now, I'm not reporting specifically about that.

Today though, after noticing that you've probably been working on these problems in the last releases, I began looking into it.

I had hopes that everything got fixed in the latest release, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be so.
Or, at least, it happened again for a few times (now I can't reproduce it).
Specifically, when making a new unnamed note (e.g. 'New Note 237.txt'), and then going back, in many occasions a dialog pops up saying "Found at least one record with the same title" (Overwrite, Discard, Cancel) which I found out to be the dialog_duplicates_title text.

Of course this is a sign of a bug that ought ideally get fixed (it's actually a pretty serious bug).
But in the meanwhile I think it would already be of great help, and much easier, to improve the dialog itself: right now it's very hard to understand what it does and the consequences of choosing Overwrite or Discard.

It's maybe so unclear because it only pops up in case of bugs, it wasn't expected to be seen by normal users; but, right now it is, so giving a better explanation to the affected users would already be a great help.

So, first of all could you clarify a little what's (probably) happening?

After that I can maybe help you come up with a clearer dialog; well unless it's easy to solve the whole problem and the dialog completely.

Oh by the way I don't remember for sure now, but I think it's completely impossible to have more than 255 or 256 "New Notes" (or it used to be); yes I should have reported all this much earlier, but I was a bit in a mess.


In case it can help, I use the F-Droid versions, currently on 4.4.9e. Android 10, Auto Save and Auto Backup enabled (but I don't think auto backup ever worked, I never figured it out).

~neutrinote_settings_data.txt :

com.appmindlab.nano.pref_auto_save|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_copy_attachments_to_repo|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_custom_filters|all;starred;A;B;C;D;E;F;G;H;I;J;K;L;M;N;O;P;Q;R;S;T;U;V;W;X;Y;Z
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_font_size|14
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_incremental_backup|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_lazy_update|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_location_aware|false
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_lux|false
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_math_url|https://
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_order_by|modified
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_order_by_direction|DESC
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_show_hidden|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_theme|system
appml commented 6 months ago

From the messages you encountered, it seems you are experiencing notes with duplicate titles. Would you also describe if you are using any 3rd party sync apps (if so, could the name be shared?), and if you have enabled Mirroring? Are you sharing the notes across multiple devices?

Until further information is gathered, I can only say the app logic inherently safeguards notes from sharing the same title, especially so when the app is used standalone. However, due to neutriNote's integrated file based repository, note data can be exposed to 3rd party sync apps and for Android 11+ onward, to Scope Storage which is also known to be a source of unwanted file duplicates . Thus the introduction of the new duplicate prevention measures.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

For several months, I'm almost sure ever since I reached 256 (or 255?) unnamed notes ("New Note #.txt") I've been having frequent problems with Neutrinote. I postponed filing issues about them because I had little time to investigate, and even here, for now, I'm not reporting specifically about that.

Today though, after noticing that you've probably been working on these problems in the last releases, I began looking into it.

I had hopes that everything got fixed in the latest release, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be so. Or, at least, it happened again for a few times (now I can't reproduce it). Specifically, when making a new unnamed note (e.g. 'New Note 237.txt'), and then going back, in many occasions a dialog pops up saying "Found at least one record with the same title" (Overwrite, Discard, Cancel) which I found out to be the dialog_duplicates_title text.

Of course this is a sign of a bug that ought ideally get fixed (it's actually a pretty serious bug). But in the meanwhile I think it would already be of great help, and much easier, to improve the dialog itself: right now it's very hard to understand what it does and the consequences of choosing Overwrite or Discard.

It's maybe so unclear because it only pops up in case of bugs, it wasn't expected to be seen by normal users; but, right now it is, so giving a better explanation to the affected users would already be a great help.

So, first of all could you clarify a little what's (probably) happening?

After that I can maybe help you come up with a clearer dialog; well unless it's easy to solve the whole problem and the dialog completely.

Oh by the way I don't remember for sure now, but I think it's completely impossible to have more than 255 or 256 "New Notes" (or it used to be); yes I should have reported all this much earlier, but I was a bit in a mess.

In case it can help, I use the F-Droid versions, currently on 4.4.9e. Android 10, Auto Save and Auto Backup enabled (but I don't think auto backup ever worked, I never figured it out).

~neutrinote_settings_data.txt :

com.appmindlab.nano.pref_auto_save|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_copy_attachments_to_repo|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_custom_filters|all;starred;A;B;C;D;E;F;G;H;I;J;K;L;M;N;O;P;Q;R;S;T;U;V;W;X;Y;Z
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_font_size|14
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_incremental_backup|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_lazy_update|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_location_aware|false
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_lux|false
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_math_url|https://
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_order_by|modified
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_order_by_direction|DESC
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_show_hidden|true
com.appmindlab.nano.pref_theme|system