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damionx7 / Zettel-Notes-Documentation

Documentation for Zettel Notes : Markdown Note Taking application for android devices
https://znotes.thedoc.eu.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Markdown implementation is not there #34

Closed Martin-Maat closed 1 year ago

Martin-Maat commented 1 year ago

Reading the feature list and browsing through the Android app's UI, I got really enthusiastic.

Unfortunately, creating my first and very simple markdown test note was sobering.

Please paste this in (everything in between [Start] and [End]).

[Start]

---
title: Test Note
---

This is a test note.

# One header

Some text.

## Subheader

More text.
This is **some** random *text* to search in.

# Header

And some text.

And some more text. This is some **random** text to *search* in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
---
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
---
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
---
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.
This is some random text to search in. This is some random text to search in.

Grom

[End]

Nothing fancy, right? A couple of headers, some bold words, some italic words and some rulers. That's it. And yet, an array of things go wrong.

Rendering

Headers are followed with additional rulers under them. Why? If I want a ruler I'll use --- thank you.

After the second top level heading (titled "Heading") and the first paragraph "And some text", all following text is in a large font as if it's all level 2 heading. It was entered as just more plain text though. Within this erroneously enlarged text, bold is not working, only italic. Possibly because everything is already bold?

At the last repeated section separated by rulers it finally flips back to normal for no apparent reason.

Editing

When editing, text enclosed in double asterisks is rendered as bold and text enclosed in single asterisks is rendered italic. This is wrong of course, I am editing markdown, I should see plain text only. And if on purpose, no, not appreciated.

Quite disappointing so far and worrying. This is not just an understandable bug, this is so strangely wrong at the most basic level, it really makes me wonder how this can possibly make it to a release. How?

[Edit]

Then again, the text suddenly flipping to header 2 size is seen in this very message as well (before I made it code to appear as plain text)... Same library?

[Edit 2]

I tried it in a message on the stackexchange network: same issue. The trigger appears to be a paragraph (ended by a single CrLf) immediately followed by a ruler (---). If I insert an empty line between the paragraph and the ruler, all is well again. And it only occurs when making a ruler using 3 dashes, not with underscores or stars.

So, workable after all and likely not your fault. Still a serious bug in the md renderer.

damionx7 commented 1 year ago

Hey there. Firstly you should read commonmark markdown spec https://commonmark.org/help/. More detailed documentation https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30.

Your issue can be divided in 3 items.

Q1. Headers are followed with additional rulers under them.

A: I will try to add an option in upcoming releases, where user can disable additional ruler below heading.

Q2. After the second top level heading (titled "Heading") and the first paragraph "And some text", all following text is in a large font as if it's all level 2 heading.

A: Read more about the format you are using. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#setext-heading-underline. Having --- below any line triggers parser to format it as heading (setext heading)

Q3: When editing, text enclosed in double asterisks is rendered as bold and text enclosed in single asterisks is rendered italic.

A: Zettel Notes uses WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format for editor. It more users demand it, I will add an option to disable this feature.

Martin-Maat commented 1 year ago

Thanks for the quick response.OK, so the main issue is by (somewhat odd) design. Allowing --- to be used for a ruler as well is rather confusing and redundant but I understand it's not your spec so thanks for pointing that out.About the WYSIWYG, it would be nice if it were but it it's not. It's nothing like WYSIWYG. Currently it only seems to do something with bold and italic and even for those I still see the modifiers. WYSIWYG would be like being able to put a cursor in the fully rendered image and have the modifiers appear only for that element where the cursor is. This would be somewhat useful/nice, you would no longer need to switch between edit mode and view mode. Copy should still give the markdown text, or provide an option for either plain text or markdown.I recognize this would be a lot harder to do and there may be issues for complex elements but this would really add value. I don't see any in what it does now, as demonstrated it just looks like a bug.Some other things:- The spacing over and under rulers is rather generous, I would prefer it to be less.- Code formatting is OK but bare. You don't seem to support keyword coloring depending on the specified language.- highlighted text in dark mode is not good, the foreground color is not inverted so you get white on bright yellow which is unreadable.- emojis don't seem to be supported. I didn't check the specs on this so please forgive me if this is not markdown, yet I expected ":smile:" to give me a smiley face.- The Android app icon is super dull. If one looks for a markdown/zettelkast app and sees it, one is likely to pass on the application just for the appearance of the icon.Some context:All in all I'm excited. I use Joplin, only because it does markdown nicely and allows me to save centrally to WebDAV but there is a lot to hate about it so I have been looking for an alternative and it looks like I found it. Please bear with my sometimes not so cheerful comments. I want this to succeed.Regards,Martin.On Sep 25, 2023 13:20, Rohit @.***> wrote: Hey there. Firstly you should read commonmark markdown spec https://commonmark.org/help/. More detailed documentation https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30. Your issue can be divided in 3 items. Q1. Headers are followed with additional rulers under them. A: I will try to add an option in upcoming releases, where user can disable additional ruler below heading. Q2. After the second top level heading (titled "Heading") and the first paragraph "And some text", all following text is in a large font as if it's all level 2 heading. A: Read more about the format you are using. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#setext-heading-underline. Having --- below any line triggers parser to format it as heading (setext heading) Q3: When editing, text enclosed in double asterisks is rendered as bold and text enclosed in single asterisks is rendered italic. A: Zettel Notes uses WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format for editor. It more users demand it, I will add an option to disable this feature.

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damionx7 commented 1 year ago

Hey Martin, I appreciate your detailed review of the app..

Martin-Maat commented 1 year ago

OK, nice.About emoji's, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I can paste in Unicode alright but none of this seems to work:https://github.com/ikatyang/emoji-cheat-sheet/blob/master/README.mdI didn't try all of them of course but neither :smile: nor :smiley: are processed.On Sep 26, 2023 12:05, Rohit @.***> wrote: Hey Martin, I appreciate your detailed review of the app.. I will add option to disable editor formatting.Code formatting for specific language is plannedI have added feature to select highlighted text foreground and background color in version 2.1.4Emojis are supported. If not, please reply back with screenshots.

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damionx7 commented 1 year ago

You are asking about converting :smiley: to 😃 ?

Martin-Maat commented 1 year ago

Yes.On Sep 26, 2023 18:02, Rohit @.***> wrote: You are asking about converting :smiley: to 😃 ?

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damionx7 commented 1 year ago

Is there any app that already implements this feature ?

Martin-Maat commented 1 year ago

Yes, Joplin does it just fine. I'm not sure if it does it completely though, like all emojis in the list I referred to.Most of my criticism comes from migrating my current notes from Joplin to Zettel Notes and noticing the differences in rendering.Joplin is horrible in a number of ways but overall the rendered text does look better to me.On Sep 26, 2023 18:51, Rohit @.***> wrote: Is there any app that already implements this feature ?

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damionx7 commented 1 year ago

I have added emoji alias support. For details follow this link in documentation https://znotes.thedoc.eu.org/note/editor/#emoji-button.

Martin-Maat commented 12 months ago

Hi.I just started the app and got the "What's new?" popup which, among other things, said "fixed WebDAV synchronization".Well, it looks to me like you screwed it up instead.It doesn't work anymore, I only get this synchronization error:com.thegrizzlylabs.sardineandroidimpl.SardineException: Error contacting https://martinmaat.nl:5006/zettel/Eten+%26+Drinken%2FBier%2FBrouw+November+2023+.md (404 Not Found)An encoding issue with file names perhaps?It did work with a simply named file (without spaces).I also got double notes (with the same file name) in the notes list on my client device of which one was empty. This happened to the file specified in the exception.I hope you can fix this.Regards, Martin.

damionx7 commented 12 months ago

Hey. Does this issue occur with every file or with files that have & in file name.

damionx7 commented 12 months ago

I have fixed this issue. It should be live in the next update v2.3.0.

Martin-Maat commented 12 months ago

Thanks for the quick response.I am not sure whether it was the ampersand or any encoded character. I will wait for the update and report back.On Nov 21, 2023 04:01, Rohit @.***> wrote: I have fixed this issue. It should be live in the next update v2.3.0.

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Martin-Maat commented 12 months ago

I am on 2.3.1 now and WebDAV sync looks good now.I also like the new app icon.On Nov 21, 2023 04:01, Rohit @.***> wrote: I have fixed this issue. It should be live in the next update v2.3.0.

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Martin-Maat commented 11 months ago

Hi,It has been a while and I am not sure we were talking about the same issue when you replied saying you fixed it, but I just came around to check a bug I reported earlier and found you have not done anything about it yet. It is a pretty annoying one.I reported several bugs in a single message, perhaps I should not do that anymore.The problem is with selecting text. It is impossible on a phone or tablet to select a piece of text, scroll by swiping and then extend the selection by dragging the handle. Because the moment one touches the screen, the selection will be undone. Tapping should undo the selection, NOT dragging!Also, dragging a selection bigger does not work well. Scrolling should kick in when one's finger gets near the edge of the view port. This does either not happen at all or is jerky and requires continuous movement.This makes it impossible to select and copy more than a few lines on a small device.Also, the scroll thumb is unusable (way too small). A fly-in/pop-up handle would be nice. If your note is large, you have to swipe like a madman just to get to the bottom after opening it.Regards, Martin. On Nov 21, 2023 04:01, Rohit @.***> wrote: I have fixed this issue. It should be live in the next update v2.3.0.

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damionx7 commented 11 months ago

Hey Martin, I have added this feature in my to-do list and know that it is note resolved. I will fix this in upcoming updates.

Martin-Maat commented 11 months ago

OK, thank you. I will be more patient.On Dec 18, 2023 14:38, Rohit @.***> wrote: Hey Martin, I have added this feature in my to-do list and know that it is note resolved. I will fix this in upcoming updates.

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Martin-Maat commented 10 months ago

I just ran into something that is not really a bug, yet is likely to put off new users.

I had the app on two different devices: a phone and a small older tablet. Today I installed it on a third device, a larger newer tablet.

My repository is accessed over WebDAV, I configured it successfully on the first two devices and sort of remembered how to do it.

I went to Repositories to find the one default repository "App Folder" listed. I then tapped the dot menu on the far right side of the App Folder item. The result was just one menu item: "Edit Repository". This only allowed me to set the file extension and date format and such, nothing related to synchronization.

It took me about an hour to figure out I had to pull up that single menu item to find more menu items, among which the one I was looking for.

On my phone I instantly get the full menu. On my Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ however, each time I visit the menu I get just the one item and have to pull up.

Any other user not knowing the option has to be there somewhere (because he has seen it before) would have given up within 10 minutes of frustration.

You may be able to force the full menu to appear on any screen. This would help a lot.

On Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 14:38 Rohit @.***> wrote:

Hey Martin, I have added this feature in my to-do list and know that it is note resolved. I will fix this in upcoming updates.

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damionx7 commented 10 months ago

I just ran into something that is not really a bug, yet is likely to put off new users.

I had the app on two different devices: a phone and a small older tablet. Today I installed it on a third device, a larger newer tablet.

My repository is accessed over WebDAV, I configured it successfully on the first two devices and sort of remembered how to do it.

I went to Repositories to find the one default repository "App Folder" listed. I then tapped the dot menu on the far right side of the App Folder item. The result was just one menu item: "Edit Repository". This only allowed me to set the file extension and date format and such, nothing related to synchronization.

It took me about an hour to figure out I had to pull up that single menu item to find more menu items, among which the one I was looking for.

On my phone I instantly get the full menu. On my Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ however, each time I visit the menu I get just the one item and have to pull up.

Any other user not knowing the option has to be there somewhere (because he has seen it before) would have given up within 10 minutes of frustration.

You may be able to force the full menu to appear on any screen. This would help a lot.

On Mon, Dec 18, 2023, 14:38 Rohit @.***> wrote:

Hey Martin, I have added this feature in my to-do list and know that it is note resolved. I will fix this in upcoming updates.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/damionx7/Zettel-Notes-Documentation/issues/34#issuecomment-1860523833, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AGKVOIXH4M5SLFX3J2GG6GTYKBBLTAVCNFSM6AAAAAA5FEJDIWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTQNRQGUZDGOBTGM . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

Thanks for reporting. I will fix this.