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Notational Velocity: modeless, mouseless Mac OS X note-taking application
http://notational.net
GNU General Public License v3.0
2.07k stars 404 forks source link

MacOS weirdness (Export function greyed out, GBs of hidden files accumulating, Interim Note-Changes not being written out to Notes and Settings). #389

Open seanPhill opened 4 years ago

seanPhill commented 4 years ago

I've used Notational Velocity since at least as far back as 2010, and I noticed there is an issue in here questioning High Sierra compatibility, but I have been using NV in High Sierra for some years without problem.

My concern is this. In order to backup NV I have zipped the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Notational\ Data/ folder, or at least the files in it, but not having done a backup for some time, trying it today, the folder contains Interim Note-Changes saved today with 3.8 MB, and Notes & Settings 9 Nov 2018 4.9 MB.

Two significant concerns:

  1. Why don't the Interim Note-Changes get incorporated back into the Notes & Settings, which still retains an old save date??
  2. I zipped the whole folder in anticipation of PGP encrypting the archive, as I have done in the past, but the zip archive was 4.55 GB!! While the two files in there are less than 10 MB. :/ Now maybe this hidden stuff is the decrypted working space mounted on the `NVProtectedEditingSpace hidden volume, but that is only 2.1 MB. Nothing shows when I unzip the archive, except for the two expected files. Opening up NV again, the Interim Note-Changes has reduced to 1.9 MB, but the Notes & Settings file is still the same size, with the ancient modified date-time. When closing NV again, the Interim... file increased back to 3.8 MB. The hidden volume only has 143 KB of data in it and 2 MB of free space, while NV is closed. What is the "dark matter" in the zipped archive?

Contrary to someone else's complaint in another issue, this volume is easily unmounted via Disk Utility (while NV is not running).

There does not appear to be a BACKUP function in NV, or at least not since I've been using the encrypted database option. I still love this program. Just wondering about these things.

seanPhill commented 4 years ago

While I have previously been able to restore NV to a second computer with only the visible files I decided to use Archive Utility to archive the folder without using the context menu function. I see that it zipping lots of files starting with a dot, and therefore hidden.

It created (by its default settings) a file Notational Data.cpgz (a compressed archive file, I could have changed the app default to zip) which is also 4.57 GB. Quite a bit larger than the visible files.

seanPhill commented 4 years ago

My workaround for this is to select both of the original visible files and then "compress 2 items", and then rename the zip file to NotationalData-Backup20201019.zip (for example).

thimes49 commented 1 year ago

I have a new Macbook Pro, running Ventura v13.1. I Moved NV to it and it runs fine. I emailed Zach to fix a database problem and solved that. I am really dependent on this software, so I would like to find out how to build it for future platforms. Are there any detailed build instructions anywhere? Terry (thimes49@gmail.com)

seanPhill commented 2 months ago

My concern is this. In order to backup NV I have zipped the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Notational\ Data/ folder, or at least the files in it, but not having done a backup for some time, trying it today, the folder contains Interim Note-Changes saved today with 3.8 MB, and Notes & Settings 9 Nov 2018 4.9 MB.

Returning to this when trying to ensure that my Notational Data is backed up. My files are now: 6.9 MB Interim Note-Changes (with date modified today) 4.9 MB Notes & Settings (which might actually be the date I originally set up NV on this computer, transferring the data from an earlier Mac) PLUS lots and lots and lots of hidden files (starting with ".") with numerical file names and dates that would likely be the when edited date and time of each individual note. THIS MAKES THE Notational Data folder now take up 16.59 GB!!! And now, NV is a little bit sluggish (on a 32GB late-2013 Mac Pro) compared to years ago. My concerns remain:

Two significant concerns:

  1. Why don't the Interim Note-Changes get incorporated back into the Notes & Settings, which still retains an old save date??
  2. I zipped the whole folder in anticipation of PGP encrypting the archive, as I have done in the past, but the zip archive was 4.55 GB!! While the two files in there are less than 10 MB. :/ Now maybe this hidden stuff is the decrypted working space mounted on the `NVProtectedEditingSpace hidden volume, but that is only 2.1 MB. Nothing shows when I unzip the archive, except for the two expected files. Opening up NV again, the Interim Note-Changes has reduced to 1.9 MB, but the Notes & Settings file is still the same size, with the ancient modified date-time. When closing NV again, the Interim... file increased back to 3.8 MB. The hidden volume only has 143 KB of data in it and 2 MB of free space, while NV is closed. What is the "dark matter" in the zipped archive?

There does not appear to be a BACKUP function in NV, or at least not since I've been using the encrypted database option. I still love this program. Just wondering about these things.

Or at least, the Export menu item under Note is greyed out, and I haven't been able to use it for years! I've been instead, zipping the two small visible files on my own RAM drive and PGP encrypting it. This doesn't include all those hidden files. If I select a note Export becomes available, but why would I export just one or several notes? Maybe I did it this way 15 years ago. I don't remember. … I'll try selecting all the notes and see how it goes. → 7491 Notes Selected. → "Rich Text Format". Hmm, I think not. I just want a single encrypted export file. ⟶ There are issues with the file naming, as there are error messages of a file already existing! This is when writing the export to a RAM Drive. Maybe I will have to change the text in some notes to comply with file naming rules or to ensure that two or more notes are not trying to be written to a conflicting shortened name! On a second try the error didn't pop up, and all the files were written without a file naming clash. ¯\(ツ)/¯ !

Having an SSD on a laptop recently become unrecoverable in the middle of a video conference I am about to replace the PCI-e NVMi M-2 SSD in my Mac Pro as a precaution, because the loss of this data would be disastrous, and the encrypted Notation Velocity backup is a high priority.

seanPhill commented 2 months ago

By the way, I am and have been using Version 2.0 β5 (8)

There seems not to have been a new version since 2011?

Currently on macOS 12.7.6 (Monterey), which is the latest macOS that my Mac Pro can run.