LectureNotes app

[haris163]

Hi Marcus,

I was using Quill and Papyrus because of the vector format, however, their lack of certain features made me to overlook the non-vector format of LectureNotes and bought the app. I really like all the customization options of LN and the fact that works very fast (with the other apps, sometimes I get a lag when I draw).

The only thing I don't like much is the way that pencils are selected. I appreciate the ability to make presets, but I kinda like the Papyrus way more. With Papyrus I just select pencil and quickly I can change color and width with a couple of strokes. Please consider adding a similar capability for the pencil and shapes, i.e., one can select the tool (pencil, shape, etc) and a pallet can appear (perhaps on demand) that you can quickly adjust the width and the color (have some basic color squares available for selection in addition to a way to select an arbitrary color), of course, a key thing is that LN should remember the last setting, i.e., if I close LN, when I come back, my previous palette selection should be retained. Since LN already offers so many custom menus, this can be an extra option for those that like it this way.

I am not sure this is very well articulated, if not, let me know and I will try to explain it better.

Thanks again,

Haris
P.S. I am using the Galaxy Note 10.1

 

[acadoid]

@obscure.detour: To add a method to access the different tools (pencil, eraser, etc.) without the action bar is on my agenda.

@haris163: Many thanks for your kind comments. LectureNotes comes with twelve custom pencils, for which you can freely choose color, width, etc. To quickly change pencils, I suggest to enable the pencil toolbox (choose `Show pencil toolbox´ in the pencil menu, it can be moved around by click-and-drag and customized in the app's settings) and ensure that `Quick custom pencil settings´ is enabled in the app's settings. The pencil toolbox allows to change pencils by a single click on the respective pencil. A double-click on a custom pencil brings up the custom pencil settings to change width, color, etc. This should be pretty close to what you suggest.

 

[toenail_flicker]

@toenail_flicker: When inserting a single image (or a single page of a PDF file), you can move and resize it so that it fits the whole page, but the aspect ratio is kept fixed. An alternative is to put the image (or several images) in a ZIP file and import the ZIP file (the image set) as new pages in notebook overview (likewise, you can import all pages of a PDF file). In this case, you can set in the app's settings margins and whether aspect ratio is kept fixed.

Thanks. The only reason I want to change the aspect ratio is because ATM I'm not able to resize anything imported to fit the whole page without turning it sideways - not very helpful. Perhaps I'm missing something?

 

[crazeco]

@crazeco: Yes, if you wish to directly share the PDF, choose `Share PDF file after export´ (or choose `View PDF file after export´ and share from the PDF viewer).

Any way to export just one page to pdf of a multipage notebook?

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk 2

 

[haris163]

@haris163: Many thanks for your kind comments. LectureNotes comes with twelve custom pencils, for which you can freely choose color, width, etc. To quickly change pencils, I suggest to enable the pencil toolbox (choose `Show pencil toolbox´ in the pencil menu, it can be moved around by click-and-drag and customized in the app's settings) and ensure that `Quick custom pencil settings´ is enabled in the app's settings. The pencil toolbox allows to change pencils by a single click on the respective pencil. A double-click on a custom pencil brings up the custom pencil settings to change width, color, etc. This should be pretty close to what you suggest.

Marcus, thanks for the quick reply. Yes, for the most part this is what I want. I didn't realize that I could double click the pencils. I would still like a way to select "standard" (some colors that are predefined) rather than to sort-of guesstimate what color I want. For example, if want to switch to the color red, I will have to click on the red range, however, over and over, I will be selecting a slightly different red, perhaps you can add under the "wheel" and above the "Pencil is pressure sensitive" line a row of little boxes that the first half or 2/3rds can be "standard" red, blue, yellow, green, black, etc and the other half or 1/3rd perhaps recently used colors from the wheel.

 

[acadoid]

@toenail_flicker: To insert an image/a page of a PDF file so that it coverts the page maximally is probably best done when you adjust first fit width/fit height and/or zoom such that you see the full page.

@crazeco: Yes, open your notebook in notebook overview, click on the tag to active tagging, click on the page(s) that you wish to export (they will get tagged), and choose `Export tagged pages to PDF´.

@haris163: OK, I see your point. Let me think a moment how to improve here. What you can do in the meanwhile is to use eleven out of the twelve custom pencils as reservoir for the basic colors that you need and adjust them accordingly. Then, with the remaining custom pencil you write/draw. If you wish to change its color, click on the view in custom pencil settings that shows how the stroke will look like, this copies the standard pencils and the other custom pencils into this one, cycling through all possibilities. In this way, you can choose a color (or a custom pencil) of your reservoir.

 

[stbxxl]

Thanks for the continued improvements. In particular the new Text drawing tool setup is very helpful to me.

Could you please tell what exactly the new Filter input to reduce noise of touch input does? I think I noticed an improvement with my handwriting but I'm not sure.

 

[acadoid]

@stbxxl: Glad to hear that you like the new text drawing tool adjustments. I hope to provide a better support of typed text soon.

Concerning filtering: Since the very first versions, the app applies a running cubic interpolation on the input coordinates to get a smooth curve. This works fine if the coordinates do not display any noise, but can yield somewhat `strange´ results in the presence of noise, as both the curve as well as its derivative are enforced to fit at the input coordinates. The filtering applies the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm to reduce the number of points, which is a standard approach, the filter strength in the app's settings controls the threshold. Then, when the running cubic interpolation is applied, the resulting curve is smoother.

 

[haris163]

@haris163: OK, I see your point. Let me think a moment how to improve here. What you can do in the meanwhile is to use eleven out of the twelve custom pencils as reservoir for the basic colors that you need and adjust them accordingly. Then, with the remaining custom pencil you write/draw. If you wish to change its color, click on the view in custom pencil settings that shows how the stroke will look like, this copies the standard pencils and the other custom pencils into this one, cycling through all possibilities. In this way, you can choose a color (or a custom pencil) of your reservoir.

Thanks. Also, have a look at MS Paint for examples/ideas for color selection.

 

[Anonymatt]

Requests

First off, let me say thank you for a wonderful app. I just started school again, and when my previous tablet (a Lenovo x61t) broke I was searching for an alternative for taking notes. I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 specifically to use your app, and it has almost completely worked out fine. I do have a few suggestions/requests, though.

1) Is it possible to implement an import from ppt/pptx formats? Currently I have a lot of lectures in powerpoint form which I have to convert to PDF and then import them, and it would be a lot easier if it could just directly import from the powerpoint format.

2) Regarding importing from PDF I have run into a few issues, and have a few suggestions:
2a) The import will quit whenever ANYTHING happens while importing a PDF (both processing through PDFview, and "reading" in Lecturenotes), such as the screen going off (I have it set to stay on when LectureNotes is open, but when PDFview opens then this option no longer applies),or even just touching anywhere on the screen. Is there perhaps a way to make this a background process that isn't so sensitive to input?
2b) Is it possible to add in an option to automatically add a second layer to the notebook when importing a set of PDF pages? Almost 100% of the time I want this to happen, but I frequently forget to set it, and will start writing notes, inevitably want to erase something, and wind up having to erase part of the pdf image as well.
2c) Eventually it would be nice if instead of just converting the PDFs to images it was possible to write/save directly to the PDF files. I know your reasons for not implementing this yet, but it would be VERY nice to have that option.

3) I know these have been asked for in the past, but just to add my support: vector based pen strokes, handwriting recognition (to be able to search through notes), and text-based input.

Thanks again for your continued support!

 

[acadoid]

@Anonymatt: Many thanks for your kind comments, I am glad to hear that you like the app.

If there was anything like the MuPDF library for reading PPT or similar formats, I would not mind to produce an app similar to PDFView. I might be wrong, but I am not aware that such library exists (at least not under GPL).

I will add a `keep screen on´ to PDFView and also have a `keep screen on´ in potentially lengthly operations (export to PDF, import image set, import PDF, etc.) independent of user preference, good point. But I need to give users the possibility to cancel such operations, and a cancelable progress dialog can be canceled by any touch, I am sorry.

To allow to add layers in notebook overview is on my to-do-list, likewise to improve concerning typed text input.

A vector-based app, or one that can directly handle PDF or does handwriting recognition, is not to come anytime soon, I am sorry.

 

[toenail_flicker]

Are those things at least somewhere on your list, even if it's a while off?

 

[Anonymatt]

@Anonymatt: Many thanks for your kind comments, I am glad to hear that you like the app.

If there was anything like the MuPDF library for reading PPT or similar formats, I would not mind to produce an app similar to PDFView. I might be wrong, but I am not aware that such library exists (at least not under GPL).

I will add a `keep screen on´ to PDFView and also have a `keep screen on´ in potentially lengthly operations (export to PDF, import image set, import PDF, etc.) independent of user preference, good point. But I need to give users the possibility to cancel such operations, and a cancelable progress dialog can be canceled by any touch, I am sorry.

To allow to add layers in notebook overview is on my to-do-list, likewise to improve concerning typed text input.

A vector-based app, or one that can directly handle PDF or does handwriting recognition, is not to come anytime soon, I am sorry.

I understand those are a long way off, but I can dream

As for a library, I have no idea how easy it would be to use for ppt, but I'd imagine there would be some sort of GPL library that reads ppt format, since there are other gpl programs that can render ppt format. At least I have a way to get ppt into lecture notes, but eliminating that extra conversion step would save me a lot of hassle.

As for cancelable progress dialogue, there are no options to make you click a specific button in order to cancel? Odd. Maybe you could add an option to allow the user to elect not to have the option of canceling the long process? I just know it is frustrating when loading a 70 Page pdf, it is on p 60 and I accidentally brush against the screen and have to start all over again. I can cope, especially not having to worry about the screen timing out anymore with PDFview, but would like if there was a work around to that issue because I've messed that up quite a few times.

Thanks again for your support!

 

[acadoid]

Well, I have such things on my to-do-list, and I am not excluding the possibility that, at some point in the future, there might be a vector-based variant of LectureNotes. Native PDF support is a different issue, the MuPDF library consists of around 70,000 lines of code, and to read, write, and manipulate PDF will require much more lines, this is not something easily done. Also on-the-fly handwriting recognition on an Android device is certainly a challenge, both concerning a fast/good algorithm as well as concerning coding.

There are a couple of things that will definitely come first, better keyboard support, a zoomed input window, finer rotation and mirroring of image/PDF insertions, more (and user defined) drawing tools, page cropping, PNG/JPEG image as page background, etc.

I will have a look concerning a PPT library on GPL basis.

Concerning cancellation: I double-check the documentation, I was wrong, one can enable cancellation by back key and disable cancellation by touch outside the progress dialog window, I will add that for the next update.

 

[obscure.detour]

First off, let me say thank you for a wonderful app. I just started school again, and when my previous tablet (a Lenovo x61t) broke I was searching for an alternative for taking notes. I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 specifically to use your app, and it has almost completely worked out fine. I do have a few suggestions/requests, though.

1) Is it possible to implement an import from ppt/pptx formats? Currently I have a lot of lectures in powerpoint form which I have to convert to PDF and then import them, and it would be a lot easier if it could just directly import from the powerpoint format.

2) Regarding importing from PDF I have run into a few issues, and have a few suggestions:
2a) The import will quit whenever ANYTHING happens while importing a PDF (both processing through PDFview, and "reading" in Lecturenotes), such as the screen going off (I have it set to stay on when LectureNotes is open, but when PDFview opens then this option no longer applies),or even just touching anywhere on the screen. Is there perhaps a way to make this a background process that isn't so sensitive to input?
2b) Is it possible to add in an option to automatically add a second layer to the notebook when importing a set of PDF pages? Almost 100% of the time I want this to happen, but I frequently forget to set it, and will start writing notes, inevitably want to erase something, and wind up having to erase part of the pdf image as well.
2c) Eventually it would be nice if instead of just converting the PDFs to images it was possible to write/save directly to the PDF files. I know your reasons for not implementing this yet, but it would be VERY nice to have that option.

3) I know these have been asked for in the past, but just to add my support: vector based pen strokes, handwriting recognition (to be able to search through notes), and text-based input.

Thanks again for your continued support!

Hey I also love this app and use it daily for school and wanted to touch on a few of your points.

1) While I would like to see this feature as well I honestly don't think it would help that much. The ppt/pptx format is very finicky and would likely be very difficult to implement. Converting ppt/pptx to PDF and then importing works well but I have found a better solution. Open the document in Powerpoint or OpenOffice/LibreOffice and save it as an HTML document. You can also alternatively use this site when you need to do the convert on the go. After converting it to HTML you can simply delete all the actual HTML files it produces because you only want the images. Next, just open a new notebook and go to "notebook overview" and select Settings > Import image set. It'll import the entire ppt or images in this case. And you can simply follow along with the lecture and make notes when and where it is needed.

2a) I also have similar issues when importing, if anything is touched elsewhere or screen goes off, the import aborts.
2b) This is decent idea, I'm sure acadoid could implement that when an image/pdf is imported it could happen on Layer 1 and a new Layer could automaticaly be created.
2c) I don't think we'll ever see this honestly. But I am curious, what is wrong with importing the PDF and then simply exporting back to PDF? I've done it multiple times and have even emailed/faxed documents this way with zero issues.

3) Vector...don't think he can just add it in, maybe I'm wrong. Handwriting recognition has got to be extremely difficult to implement given that acadoid would need a database and algorithm to achieve this. Maybe in the future he could have a $5 add-on for it? Text-based input is already implemented. It is in the toolbox as a capital "A".

Cheers.

 

[toenail_flicker]

I don't have a "toolbox", but found it on a menu. Now HWR is unimportant. I have a keyboard for that. Thanks.

 

[haris163]

I don't have a "toolbox", but found it on a menu. Now HWR is unimportant. I have a keyboard for that. Thanks.

I do not care about HWR either. The option of flat drawing (current capability) and vector objects will be amazing! No other note program will be able to compete! Papyrus and Quill are nice, but they appear half baked to me.

 

[stbxxl]

I don't have a "toolbox", but found it on a menu. Now HWR is unimportant. I have a keyboard for that. Thanks.

Yeah I also don't care much for HWR.

Personally I can't wait for split screen zoom support (I know it's on the list). I often have to move around in my notes to either edit or add some notes or drawings. Without split screen zoom it's a bit cumbersome to zoom out, move to the spot I need to edit and then zoom in again to make necessary changes.

 

[toenail_flicker]

Don't get me wrong, I care about HWR, but as long as LN has text I can provide it for myself through the use of 7Notes with mazec.

 

[Anonymatt]

I'm sure that HWR recognition isn't a priority, and I don't want to actually convert to text, but I found the search capabilities to be invaluable when I was using One Note on windows. I could search for, say, 'hydrogen', and it would find every instance that I even semi-legibly wrote that word. I know this program isn't One Note, but there were some really nice functionalities in that program.

---------- Post added at 04:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 PM ----------

Hey I also love this app and use it daily for school and wanted to touch on a few of your points.

1) While I would like to see this feature as well I honestly don't think it would help that much. The ppt/pptx format is very finicky and would likely be very difficult to implement. Converting ppt/pptx to PDF and then importing works well but I have found a better solution. Open the document in Powerpoint or OpenOffice/LibreOffice and save it as an HTML document. You can also alternatively use this site when you need to do the convert on the go. After converting it to HTML you can simply delete all the actual HTML files it produces because you only want the images. Next, just open a new notebook and go to "notebook overview" and select Settings > Import image set. It'll import the entire ppt or images in this case. And you can simply follow along with the lecture and make notes when and where it is needed.

Well as of right now I use Polaris Office to save as pdf, so I have on the fly handling. Since LN just converts to png anyway, it would be nice if there was a way to do that from ppt instead of having to use a different program or website. Not a huge deal, as I said, mostly just for convenience.