Solid app so far - Roadmap plans?

[relma2]

Hi, I've been using your app so far (Manjaro here) and I can see that its very solid -- keep it up and you could overtake Xournal++.

The strengths:

• Pen strokes are crisp, pressure sensitivity is responsive, and latency is low.
• That subtle stroke correction thats just enough to make handwriting more legible, but doesen't over-smooth strokes like an art application (one of the things I loved about one note -- keep it up!)
• Minimal, yet clear UI
• Shape tools are cool
• File format is intuitive to understand

The meh:

• When maximizing the window, the screen becomes black for a few seconds before rendering the screen to the larger window size
• Snap to grid lets go too often - when you start at point A, the first grid point your pen touches is the point that the line is drawn at. This makes it difficult to draw a straight line between two arbitrary points, especially if they are far away, because your pen is likely to hit a point in between
• File format is a zip archive with data seemingly encoded w/out much, if any, optimization. Would like to be able to be compatible with the xournal++ file format if possible

The features: So its clear that the app is still lacking many core features to truly be an everyday notetaker. I would just throw a bajillion feature requests (like text fields) at you, but I realize that wouldn't be productive as there are simply too many features to request. So, I would like to request a roadmap be published - a rough timeline of what features you plan to implement and in what order, so we know what to expect in the future and what you are choosing to prioritize. That way, people can look at your roadmap and not throw feature requests you already have planned or suggest things that would put too much on your plate.

P.S. How many devs are working on this?

[scrivanolabs]

Hi there, thank you for your feedback.

• The problem with the window becoming black should be (hopefully) be fixed in the next release.
• For the grid snapping, that is intended behaviour. The grid snapping algorithm simply checks if the pen is close enough to a grid intersection and then adds to the current stroke. However, you're right that when wanting to draw lines at angles not multiple of 45 degrees this is not ideal. I think it might be worthwhile to add a "delayed snapping" mode so that the points are snapped on the grid only after a certain amount of time has passed.
• I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. By optimisation, do you mean file size optimisation? How did you determine that the file format is not "optimised"?

As for a roadmap, there is no plan for that atm. Feel free to suggest anything (other people have suggested features here as well), although I cannot promise anything.

Scrivano has been entirely coded by myself (single dev).

[relma2]

Thanks for the response. I know you don't have a formal roadmap, but trust me, having a way to organize and prioritize the feature requests you get will be very helpful. Even a simple Trello board will help. (If you already have one, consider making it public)

As for the time-delay on grid snapping, I don't think thats the best way to implement it. You should render the line closest to the point the cursor is at dynamically, and when the user lifts the pen/unclicks, then the rendered line is put on the canvas.

[scrivanolabs]

As for the time-delay on grid snapping, I don't think thats the best way to implement it. You should render the line closest to the point the cursor is at dynamically, and when the user lifts the pen/unclicks, then the rendered line is put on the canvas.

Hmm, I don't quite understand what you mean by this. Do you want a live preview of the stroke and snap the points only when the user lifts their pen? If so, wouldn't this limit the grid snapping to be lines only? Suppose the user want to draw a "Z" (one unit to the right, one unit down-left diagonal and then one unit to the right), how would this work with what you've suggested?

Also note that when you're in grid mode, you can hold the pen in one place and that will switch to line mode (if enabled in settings), so that would be a better way to draw lines snapped to the grid.