I’ve been using this marvellous program for nearly a year now. Here’s a list of various wishes and niggles I’ve been collecting up - some large, some so small you can hardly see them.
Metadata
I understand this is on the way - it’s my top major wish. I hope it includes:
- fields that can formatted as dates or numbers
- the new metadata fields included in search criteria
- and in sort criteria for collections and searches.
Status: I’d like to choose the position and orientation of the stamp on the card.
Tables
I’d like:
- ‘Split Table’ command
- ‘Join table’ command
- the ability to copy and paste rows and columns.
Editor
At the moment the editor window fits a table to its width. So a wide table (in a narrow window) can be squashed up so much it is unreadable. I would like to choose to float the editor window over the table.
Version 1.2.5.0 introduced a restriction on the minimum size for the two editor windows. This is much too large for me. Sometimes I want to reduce the size of a window so that it just shows a couple of lines of text.
When working in two windows, I often want to open one of them out briefly to see more of the document, and then revert to the two-window view. But the closed window then re-opens on the same document that is in the open window. The closed window should reopen on the document it was displaying.
The ability to set default line spacing and other paragraph attributes for the notes.
Saveable ‘edit states’
I’d like the ability to save a specific document, shown in a specific mode (corkboard, outline etc), with its specific view settings (card size, use of label colours, outliner options) and screen layouts (binder shown, window size, split windows etc).
This is a set of layout preferences and also a specific file. So when you recall this ‘edit state’, what happens is you see a specific file displayed in a specific way. In each project there are always a couple of documents I am always going back to - a ‘masterplan’ of the entire work, a to-do list, a set of character notes.
Customisable icons
I would like to recall these ‘edit states’ by clicking customisable icons placed on the menu bar.
Keywords
For each keyword, the ability to choose whether the chip colour appears, because with more than half a dozen they’re too small to see on the cards.
A way to remove keywords from multiple cards (apart from deleting the keyword altogether).
Ability to add a keyword to a card by right-click in its keyword pane, which would display the list of keywords.
Corkboard
Left and right arrow should move the focus to the next card (doesn’t work at the beginning and end of lines).
Ability to reduce the space between cards even further.
Collections
A way to connect the colours of tabs with the colours of keywords.
Clicking the header of a collection selects all the items in the collection.
Make more collections visible (am not sure the tab idiom works too well - the list would be more compact without it).
Buttons to show/hide the binder, the list of collections and the collection (perhaps similar to the Inspector, with its clickable triangles to show/hide the synopsis and metadata panes)
Compile
Ability to select which metadata to include in compiles.
When you save settings, there should be a cursor in the filename box - at the moment you have to click in it to get one.
Ability to change font settings of the numbers in enumerated compiles.
Ability to change the default page size (A4, letter). At the moment, we A4 users have to resave each preset as a custom set of preferences.
References
The ability to drag (ie move/copy) references between documents. I recall someone posting that you can do this, but it doesn’t work for me.
As my project gets bigger, I find myself looking for a reference, but forget in which file I have made the link. It would be great to see them all together, and then be able to go the linked item, and to the file on which the link was made.
Improved Find/Replace
So that it works on notes, synopses and titles as well as the main document text.
Many thanks for the program, and I hope some of this makes it into the next version.