[Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

Hi Everyone!

I'm glad to announce the newest of all Maemo 5 widgets: Sticky Notes.
It is a little application that lets you create as many notes on as many desktops in as many colours as you want!

• It has a sexy UI
• It is easy to use
• It saves your notes automatically
• It is finger-friendly
• It is also optified

Please, install and test it, then post your opinions and ideas here.
Any input is welcome!
I will be glad if you give it a test drive!

Screenshots:

Single note
http://kepfeltoltes.hu/thumb/100625/...toltes.hu_.png

Three notes on a SGU background
http://kepfeltoltes.hu/thumb/100625/...toltes.hu_.png

The new quick options dialog
http://kepfeltoltes.hu/thumb/100721/...toltes.hu_.png

The new colour selection dialog (from Hildon-Extras)
http://kepfeltoltes.hu/thumb/100721/...toltes.hu_.png

Two notes and the new formatting toolbar
http://kepfeltoltes.hu/thumb/100721/...toltes.hu_.png

(The images are hosted by kepfeltoltes.hu)

Important notes

• Any new ideas are welcome!
• The app is currently in Extras-devel.
  You should educate yourself about the dangers of using apps from Extras-devel before using it!
• The latest version is 0.3.0, update to that if you have an earlier one!
• Sticky Notes uses Hildon-Extras for its colour and font selection dialogs.
  If you are a developer, you should use it, too, because it is great!
• Sticky Notes uses QtSingleApplication, an unofficial extension from the Qt team.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Q: Why is this stuff better than the existing notes widgets?
  A: Because you may have as many notes as you want. There is no limitation about how many notes you can have. You can also set their colour to any colour you like.
• Q: What do the buttons do?
  A: The first (+) creates another note with same color. The second (•) pops up the Quick Options dialog, and the third (×) deletes the note.
  Easy, isn't it?
• Q: Is this a paid app?
  A: No, but you can pay for it (=make a donation) if you want to.
• Q: Is it open source?
  A: Yes, Sticky Notes is Free and Open Source software.
• Q: Where is da code?
  A: It is available in a Subversion (SVN) repository in the Maemo Garage.
• Q: What is the license?
  A: Sticky Notes is licensed under the terms of the EUPL (European Union Public License). It can be downloaded in several languages.
• Q: Can I have [my favourite feature] implemented?
  A: Sure! Just post your idea in a reply in this thread!
• Q:Can I help in implementing [my favourite feature]?
  A: Sure! Any contribution is welcome, just write a message to me.
• Q: Will it crash hildon-home?
  A: No, it runs under its own separate process.
• Q: How does it work?
  A: It saves your text automatically, 3 seconds after you finished typing.
• Q: Why does it always run in the background?
  A: This is pretty much required for it to operate correctly, see detailed answer here.

Implemented features

• A quick options dialog appears when the middle button is pressed
• Ability to change background colour
• Ability to change font
• Ability to change text colour
• Ability to change opacity
• Nice colour selection dialog (from Hildon-Extras)
• Nice about dialog (from Hildon-Extras)
• Text formatting options: Bold, italic, underline, and strike-through
• Shortcuts: Save (Ctrl+S), Bold (Ctrl+B), Italic (Ctrl+I), Undeline (Ctrl+U), Strike-through (Ctrl+T)
• Confirmation dialog appears when you would like to delete a note

Planned features

• Compact mode (hide the three buttons)
• Integration with Conboy

Features that are welcome to be implemented
These are popular feature requests that require a bit more time than I actually have for the project. They are welcome to be implemented by anyone else, though. I will gladly accept a patch.

• Ability to resize the notes
• Ability to have multiple pages in each widget

I wish to thank my users for their votes in the first N900 coding competition. (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=58928)

You want a paid app? Donate instead!

I promise that Sticky Notes will be always freely available to anyone. However, I read from many people on this forum that they need more paid apps for Maemo.

While I don't intend to make Sticky Notes a paid app, I'd like to present those of you who want to have a "paid app", or just show their appreciation a way to do so.

https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif

If you feel that you want to support the development of Sticky Notes, simply click on the button above.

Credits

I would like to express my special thanks to tswindell [alterego on IRC] (whose idea helped solve the problems with the multiple-widget approach), w00t (who helped me with every Qt-related question I had), and eitama (who helped me get through autobuilder)!
Also many thanks to the great people at #maemo, and especially #qt-maemo!

Special thanks to qwerty12 who helped with the most embarassing bugs I ever had and lcuk who answered every random question I had!

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

EDIT: This has been fixed.

Okay, I noticed that there is some issue with the pre-removal and post-installation scripts of the app - it displays an error message after installation.

Note that despite this, you can still launch the app from the app menu.
Anyone who is familiar with Debian packaging is welcome to help.

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

That looks great! It always felt like a weird omission to not have a decent finger optimized sticky notes app for Maemo 5, but this fits every feature request I had! Even not being tied to hildon-home.

Rare to see an application that gets so many things right on the first release :P

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

I have attempted to install your application, but the installation failed with a "unable to install" message.
After checking the app menu and app manager (restart included), it appears not to have indeed not installed.

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

It is in a "screwed up" state until you don't install the next release that fixes it.

The annoying thing about this bug is that everything works correctly if I build the app on my own machine.
The problem only occours when the autobuilder builds it.
If I can't resolve the issue with extras-devel today, I will post a .deb file in here that actually works.

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

Use a text editor that uses UNIX line endings. ;)

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

Do you think this is really the issue?
I think I saved all the files with Unix line endings...
But this doesn't explain why it is working for me with MADDE?

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

Yes, because when I looked at /var/lib/dpkg/info/sticky-notes.postinst (from dpkg -i'ing http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d....1.3_armel.deb), it was trying to run "#!/bin/sh^M" :)

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

Thanks. Will give this a try. Was using Simple Note Widget but that no longer works with PR 1.2. Then I started using what I think is called Simple Notes Applet. Prefer it to Simple Note Widget as can have multiple pages. However, edges of text keeps get cut off.

Re: [Announce] Sticky Notes - the ultimate notes widget
 

The files are located here, and thex are saved with Unix line endings.
The same files are good for MADDE, but are messed up by the auto-builder.