Version 5.0.4 just appeared on the App Store and is available for download. With this update, Notebooks is compatible with iOS 6 (as far as we can influence it), and it also contains a series of improvements and fixes.
iOS 6 Compatibility
NB 5.0.4 runs fine on iOS 6, with one exception: you cannot use the second row of extra keyboard keys in rich text documents. In fact, you should disable that in Notebooks’ settings. We reported this as a bug to Apple, it has been acknowledged and now we need to wait for Apple to fix it…
UI Enhancements
- Option to show Recent Items in jump menu
- Sort options are now available for smart book “Contexts”
- Search & sort options do not appear in books containing less than two items
- “Extract Tasks…” is now available for rich text documents, too
- “Highlight”, “BIUS” and other formatting options are now available from action menu, too. (In previous versions they were only reachable from the cut/copy/paste menu)
- Better format of internal links in rich text documents and Markdown
- We replaced “Note” with “Documents” in the list view, which seems more appropriate
- We also tried to replace the terms HTML or formatted document with Rich text document
Dropbox Improvements
- Autosync prevents editing less frequently
- Fixed issue when moving an unsynced item to a synced book
Markdown Additions
- We added an option to auto detect Markdown (the characters ‘%’ and ‘#’ at the beginning of text as well as using the formatting buttons, images and links automatically switch a note to Markdown)
- Option to insert/remove table of contents; TOC is automatically updated
- Support for Pandoc style headers
Modifications to the Default Theme
- More space between list items
- Forces page break before titles (visible when creating PDFs)
Misc
- Performance improvements(!)
- Correctly collect included context tags after unzipping an archive
- Various fixes and improvements for Voice Memos
- Fixed occasional crash when using “Open in Notebooks” from other apps or importing from Safari
- Fixed occasional crash when adding description in info
Does this update natively support the new iPhone 5? – No, unfortunately not. We learned about the details two days ago, so we need to add the necessary assets and submit another update to Apple. However, you can use NB 5.0.4 on the iPhone 5 without issues, it just does not use the phone’s whole screen.
First, I LOVE Notebooks and use it extensively!
I just recently got the update on my iPhone and now all my documents have the icon that they need to be synced. I sync, but they keep that icon. It only goes away if I actually change the text of something and then sync. But some aren’t editable, e.g. PDFs. Is anyone else having that problem? Do I have something set wrong?
I have had this experience also – on my iPad2. I haven’t tried the iPod touch version.
I also love Notebooks!
Hi Amy and Bruce,
would you mind activating NB’s logging mechanism by adding a note “Notebooks Log” at the top level and restarting NB? Then open a few books that show the out of sync items and sent the contents of “Notebooks Log” to info(at)notebooks app.com. – That should show us why that happens.
Thank you!
I’m attempting to do this Alfons. The document “Notebooks log” is created (iPad). I’ve opened a book with documents having the “not synced” symbol. Should I expect then to find that Notebooks log has contents? (Because it seems not to have any!)
Meanwhile, I ought to have specified (a) that my problem is related to syncing with Dropbox: I haven’t tried anything else; (b) not all files are affected.
BK
Yes, the log file is supposed to have some content. Please make sure that its title is spelled “Notebooks Log” (capital “L”), and you need to close Notebooks once in order to make the log mechanism active.
I agree, this issue is in a way related to Dropbox sync. When listing the elements in a book, NB checks the sync status and shows that badge if necessary. NB logs certain conditions here.
If you successfully activated the log mechanism, you might also start a sync in one of those books in question; the log output then should provide further details.
Thanks again,
Alfons
Amy,
with Bruce’s help we were able to identify why that “out of sync” status appears for some documents: could it be that you have WebDAV sync enabled in Notebooks, even if you don’t actively use it? If you have it enabled, just turn it off and everything will be fine.
(When checking the sync status, NB looks at all active services, and if one of them is not synced, the document is marked.)
Best,
Alfons
I turned handsprings when I saw the item about sort options with “Contexts,” especially if the options include manual sort. Problem: nothing shows up when I open a context. No way to choose a sort. Am I missing something?
Thanks!
Hi Ron,
you are correct, when you open a context there are still no sort options. We tried to add that but had to realized that this requires modifications beyond a “minor update” and we had to postpone it.
However, a frequent request was to provide an option to sort the contexts themselves, and that is what we enabled in 5.0.4.
Is there any way of turning off the spaces between list items?