I know Scapple is a largely feature complete and deliberately simple application, but I do feel that I need to raise this suggestion with you as it’s something that would present a material time / energy saver for me as a user, and so I’d hope would for at least some others too! More importantly, it would allow LL to evolve its products to provide a much greater element of motivation and support to users than is currently offered by any of its (or indeed, its competitors’) applications.
The feature I have in mind is audible feedback.
This would work by having some pre-recorded audio files that play whenever certain actions are completed within the programme. I would suggest that you get Ioa to record these, as I have built an expectation in my head that he looks and sounds like David Hasselhoff, but is likely to be much cheaper for voice work.
Key phrases would be (there may be others!):
Create a note “Ok”
Move a note “Yeah, that’s the spot”
Create a connection between existing notes “YES! That works!”
Finish writing a (short) note “Good. Keep at it!”
Finish writing a longer note (say, 11 words or more) “Brilliant! You da man, Rog!”
At present, I have to provide this feedback manually. Implementing this feature would significantly enhance the emotional impact I receive if the laptop itself was providing the feedback. It would, I suggest, reduce the number of worried stares I get from people in coffee shops from talking to myself. It would also save me a lot of time, because having to manually count notes to see if they meet the 11-word threshold (or are just 9-10 word notes) significantly disrupts my flow.
I appreciate you are super busy, but I hope you’ll give this due consideration.
While I appreciate the feedback, I’m afraid this is not something we will be adding. The chief problem is that Ioa, far from sounding like David Hasselhoff, actually has a voice several decibels lower than Barry White, occasionally hitting infrasound frequencies. Although a brief exposure to his vocalisations is unlikely to result in anything worse than a gnawing, unplaceable, deep-boned sense of dread and foreboding, his more sudden, Brian Blessed-like enunciations have occasionally been known to hit the erstwhile-believed mythical “brown note”, and that really is not something we can risk unleashing on our users, especially those such as yourself hoping to use this feature in a coffee shop.
Well, if you really want to add audio, I think you should cater to the curmudgeons among us:
Create a note
“Not another one”
Move a note
“You missed it. A bit more to the right.”
Create a connection between existing notes
“Do you really think that makes sense!”
Finish writing a (short) note
“Well, at least it’s short.”
Finish writing a longer note (say, 11 words or more)
“Do you really think people have nothing better to do than read this?”
(This last in Ioa’s Brian Blessed voice.)
I’m all for “a gnawing, unplaceable, deep-boned sense of dread and foreboding”,
