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The Archive ⚠️ b168--b173 — Check out the Image Preview — Dangerous Beta Build ⚠️

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  • edited January 2021

    This version fixes a couple more cases where auto-saving wasn't triggered properly.

    @Will apart from the image preview, would be great if you could test your 2 Mac setup again.

    The Archive b170/b171 changes

    • Fixed: PDF preview as a static image.
    • Fixed: Cutting and pasting in the note editor triggers autosave again.
    • Fixed: Crash when removing inline image preview at the end of the file.
    • Fixed: Display issues of the note list on Big Sur.
    • Fixed: Inconsistencies when indenting blocks of text.
    • Changed: External file changes are labeled: you'll see "Undo External Change" in the Edit menu for these.
    • Changed: Enabling/disabling the image preview is now undoable. That prevents crashes when trying to undo a change at the end of the file after images preview has been disabled.
    • New: You can toggle the image preview from the "Editing" preferences or the "View" menu.
    • New: Hidden setting to change the image preview height. (Width is always limited to the text area.)

    Download: https://dlyfuw95744jo.cloudfront.net/TheArchive-b171.zip

    Change maximum image preview height

    • Make sure only the new version of The Archive is running.
    • Paste this in your Terminal.app to change the preview size to 200px height max: open thearchive://preference/maxInlineImagePreviewHeight/set/200 (change 200 to any other value)
    • Confirm the dialog in The Archive (click "Continue")

    You can pass 0 or -1 to not limit the height (width is always limited by the text area). Default is 400. To reset your changes and fallback to the default value, even if it's changed in the future, use open thearchive://preference/maxInlineImagePreviewHeight/delete

    Post edited by ctietze on

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • edited January 2021

    Here is an issue with b170.

    When I add a link to a PDF the note goes blank from the link south. I was doing the unthinkable and testing in my production archive and had to restore a file from my back up as undo and redo caused a mess and never restored the note.

    Now I'm in my test archive so no worries.

    I add a couple of images and they previewed fine. I added a link to a pdf in the media folder north of the image links and they disappeared.

    At the same moment, the Marked2 streaming preview shows the following. The missing text and links south of the PDF link show up. Sorry for the large uploaded image. I have found no comfortable way to take scrolling screenshots.

    This time I was able to restore the missing text with a series of CMD-Z undo.
    This doesn't seem related to Marked2 preview. Something struck me as this might be a way to see what was going on.

    This was a quick test and I want to explore this further.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • Ah yeah, PDF support is not officially there. Usually, the data isn't lost when you add a PDF image syntax, but displaying in the editor just breaks from there onward. I wonder how your note became garbled. Do you recall what was lost, exactly?

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • Here is a clearer picture of what I see.
    Here I complete a media link to a PDF and I see the note truncate at that point south.
    A CMD-Z restores the note to the pre ")" which completes the link.

    This seems a bit of trouble but might be my setup.

    Wait for it. I type a ")" and bano! The note changes suddenly and dramatically.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • I see. Loading PDF produces 0-sizes images and that apparently trips things up. In my tests, I can hit backspace to delete the parenthesis again, but in your case, that isn't even visible :) Will fix that

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • @ctietze said:
    Ah yeah, PDF support is not officially there. Usually, the data isn't lost when you add a PDF image syntax, but displaying it in the editor breaks from there onward. I wonder how your note became garbled. Do you recall what was lost, exactly?

    The incident where I was still in my production archive - everything south of the PDF link disappeared. My test note, which I was working with, went from 1600 words to 10.

    I realize PDF preview isn't supported yet. It did work in b169. If it doesn't work, you wouldn't expect this type of behavior. I sometimes put links to PDFs and other document types in my notes fully not expecting any preview but just for reference.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • @ctietze said:
    I see. Loading PDF produces 0-sizes images, and that apparently trips things up. In my tests, I can hit backspace to delete the parenthesis again, but in your case, that isn't even visible :) Will fix that

    Yes, backspace does restore the note. It all was just so confusing that I was hitting CMD-Z and Shift CMD-Z in a panic to try to restore the note. I switched from note to note, thinking some sort of refresh might help, but instead, a calm backspace would have worked.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • Quickly found a way to make the PDF confusion go away. Now you'll get a preview of page 1.

    Download: https://dlyfuw95744jo.cloudfront.net/TheArchive-b171.zip

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • edited January 2021

    Works great! Thanks. We are experiencing a wind storm, and the electrical power is a bit unstable, but later this morning, I'll test the conflicting files with 2 instances of my ZK running.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • @ctietze, I tested the note conflict issue, and it did not manifest itself. The "View" menu has moved to its more usual position right of the "Edit" menu. Nice! You had this old dog confused at first.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • Questions mostly. I'm feeling a bit more confident and am using b171 in production. I looked around, invoking different external editors, turning on and off the "Show Image Previews," and systematically trying various menu options. Otherwise, so far, this beta is stable for me.

    I came up with a couple of questions. I'm not sure these qualify as bugs.

    I've never used the "Edit -> Copy Link to Note" menu option. When I do, I get a link formatted like [[202101130900 CN ENGL473 January 14, 2021]], which I think is not the format that is recommended. It might be more useful and help with the adoption of UID as the link if it was like [[202101130900]] CN ENGL473 January 14, 2021.

    A menu item I've been blind to and don't understand is-
    What is supposed to happen when "Search -> Reload Results" is selected?
    Is it supposed to reload the previous search query?

    A couple of comments about the Help menu.
    It would be helpful for new users if a menu item took them directly to the introduction that @Sascha created. https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/
    Also:
    "Help -> Create Welcome Note..." doesn't create a welcome note.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • @ctietze, this bug is tricky to explain. It seems associated with the image preview because when I deselect "View -> Show Image Previews," it stops.

    I've included a jpg and a pdf, but I see the problem separately, so I don't think it is image type related.

    I have to gif to help explain what I'm experiencing. In the first, I'm typing in the note above the images. The preview goes on and off on its own with each keystroke, very distracting.

    In this second gif, I'm typing below the placement of the image previews. In this case, I have the Typewriter Mode set, and you can see it is about impossible to enter text. Turning Typewriter Mode off stabilizes the note editor but the image preview still flickers.

    In trying to replicate this, I've seen where it will not happen initially, and it will come after 6-10 characters. And other times, it takes 30-50 words on 3-5 lines before it will happen. I've not found anything that is positively repeatable.
    I have tried this on different notes and different macs. I have only seen this in production, so maybe it has something to do with note size (this one 1600+ words) or a timing issue as I have a large media directory (250meg).

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • I was not looking in the right place when I selected "Create a Welcome Note," and it does work. It also creates an Acknowledgements.md note without a UID, and I can imagine some confusion from a newbie. One note with a UID and one without?

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • I had the flickering when sharing my screen as video yesterday, but not ever since. That's odd, and I'll have a look what's going on there. Thanks for trying this out!

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • Download b172

    https://dlyfuw95744jo.cloudfront.net/TheArchive-b172.zip 2021-01-18

    Fixes flickering of preview images in my tests.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • Hi Christian, two very minor bugs I've found in b172 (I'm guessing we report bugs here :smile:)

    The flickering of preview images.
    1. Highlight (see pic related) and copy the image url and the image preview.
    2. Paste that into another note and you get the flickering bug that b172 was suppose to fix.

    If you only highlight the image url, flickering does not occur.

    Creating a note, adding text, deleting, creating a new one with same name shows old content
    1. Create a new note (in my example The Archive generated 202101191522).
    2. Add some text, image, whatever.
    3. Delete it and create a new note within the same minute so the title of the note is the same (in my example my new note has the same title 202101191522).
    4. The content from the deleted note is in this note. I'm guessing The Archive is not deleting the note content of 202101191522 in memory so when I create a new note with the same title it looks up the old content in memory.

    If I do this more than once the bug does not happen - only the first time I create a new note with the same title as a deleted one.

    Also I'd like to add a huge thank you for developing The Archive and blogging about the Zettlekasten method / knowledge work in general. It has been a game changer in my university & professional life.

    Zettelkasten is love. Zettelkasten is life.

  • Good catches, @JoshA! I fixed the copy & paste inconsistency. The image attachments (much like what you'd get in your clipboard when you copy RTF) is not cleaned to produce plain text in both directions.

    The restored contents weirdness is an odd side-effect of a cache of deleted notes. That's used to display contents of notes that were deleted on the file system, e.g. when you go back in history.

    The whole thing about caching deleted notes is a bit weird, though. If we pretend the note is still there, it looks like it never got deleted, which is confusing; if we refuse to display something, the history time travel is somewhat incomplete. We'll look into this topic in more detail. I'll have a look how to fix the odd thing you found out in the meantime.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • Download b173

    https://dlyfuw95744jo.cloudfront.net/TheArchive-b173.zip 2021-01-21

    Fixed the copy & paste problem, and handles deletion of notes a bit better than ever before. Instead of an error dialog in your face, there's now a toned-down notice at the center:

    This also does away with the eager caching of deleted notes, so @JoshA's observation of accidental note restoration will now not happen again. At least not if you delete the note inside the app. If you delete the note from Finder, the cache isn't cleared, yet.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • edited January 2021

    Some feature requests for images:

    1. It would be nice to allow images in lists:

    1. It would be useful to allow pasting of an image in the clipboard (i.e. a screenshot) into a note, with automatic saving of the image in the media folder. Pasting an image would display a dialog for the image name (maybe optionally with an option to select the image type (jpg/png) to use when saving the image). Perhaps also including a setting for the default image format of pasted images in the Preferences.

    2. Drag-drop of images into a note displays a dialog for the image name, then copies the renamed image into the media folder and inserts it into the document at the cursor position in the note where it was dragged. Currently, dragging an image into a note only pastes the path of the image (or any other file for that matter), so if that is the preferred behaviour, perhaps we could trigger the insert of the image when holding down the option key?

  • @pryley These are good suggestions, and some are already on my to-do-list. That's not going to hit with the upcoming public release, but some time after 👍

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • b173: one small bug & one small performance enhancement suggestion :)

    Bug: After deleting a note, The Archive selects the next note on the list - but it is blank
    1. Create a note.
    2. Delete that note.
    3. The note that is automatically selected to render is completely blank. I have to select another note and then select the original note to view the content.

    As you can see, the note is completely blank.

    Possible performance enhancement
    I like to quickly arrow up and down my notes search results list. Upon rendering a note with an image (in this case a 900KB jpg) The Archive takes around half a second to render the note. This is slightly annoying because I might arrow through 10 notes and having to wait ~ 500ms for a note with an image to render adds up. I can provide a GIF if you'd like. Maybe asynchronous load in of images?

    I love The Archive!

    Zettelkasten is love. Zettelkasten is life.

  • @JoshA I cannot reproduce the problem with the empty note. Tried different things, but no dice -- can you tell me what you do/which shortcuts or menu items you use to get that starting from right after the app launched?

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • I can reproduce this behavior.
    1. Open Archive b173
    2. Create a note called "test note."
    3. Use key combo ⌘Delete to delete the note.
    4. The next note is highlighted in the Note List, and the Editor window is blank. The scroll bar active, but no content is shown.
    5. Select highlighted note, and the editor window remains blank.
    6. Select any other note, and the editor window becomes active, and then you can switch back to the originally highlighted note, and it appears in the editor window.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • @ctietze said:
    @JoshA I cannot reproduce the problem with the empty note. Tried different things, but no dice -- can you tell me what you do/which shortcuts or menu items you use to get that starting from right after the app launched?

    1. I launch The Archive.
    2. I hit ⌘N to create a new note.
    3. I right click my new note in the notes list.
    4. I select the menu item "Delete".
    5. The Archive automatically selects the next note in my notes list. I am presented with a blank note even though it has content (text, images).

    Zettelkasten is love. Zettelkasten is life.

  • Thanks you two. Doesn't happen on my machine. Sheesh. Tried with and without "Ask for conformation when deleting", also tried different sort orders. Tried with and without an image embedded in the note that would be shown automatically. Tried looking at the note that would be selected afterwards beforehand, and starting the app freshly. -- App development is a curse :)

    Could one of you send me a log of this? To get a clean slate:

    • Press ⌘⇧G in Finder and paste this path to get there quickly ~/Library/Logs/TheArchive
    • Quit The Archive, delete the log for the day
    • Launch The Archive and reproduce the problem, then send me the file once the empty editor is shown

    Oh and which macOS version are you on btw?

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • Download b174

    https://dlyfuw95744jo.cloudfront.net/TheArchive-b174.zip 2021-01-26

    • Changed: Attempting to delete a note that isn't found on disk anymore does not display an error alert. Since the file is gone, and that's the user's intention, it removes the missing note from the note list.
    • Fixed: Bug where deleting a note did sometimes show it again right away in the editor. Thanks @Will and @JoshA!
    • Fixed: Restoring the sidebar collapse state reflects in the View menu items properly.

    I hope the bug you both reported is covered completely by this. Was a weird timing thing that took a while to figure out how to reproduce on my machine. As with all weird timing things, it's hard to know if you caught the issue completely.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • @ctietze, I can report that in initial testing the issue of remnant deleted note and the timing of the editor window's update is resolved for me. Deleting a note now immediately shows the next note in the note list in the editor window as expected.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

  • Just tested b174 and looks like blank note bug is fixed! Thanks @ctietze

    Zettelkasten is love. Zettelkasten is life.

  • Phew. Thank you two for reporting so many details via email/dm! Wouldn't have thunk about digging the way I hat to dig otherwise.

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • @ctietze said:
    Phew. Thank you two for reporting so many details via email/dm! Wouldn't have thunk about digging the way I hat to dig otherwise.

    No, it is us who thank you. This was a hard bug to explain and you stuck with it. This pushes The Archive one step closer to a public release.

    Will Simpson
    I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
    kestrelcreek.com

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