NoteLab 0.2.1beta1 Released

Dominic Kramer — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:42:22 -0000

NoteLab Version 0.2.1beta1 Changelog
------------------------------------
Summary
-------
This version of NoteLab is a beta release of version 0.2.1.
It contains support for annotating PDF documents as well
as exporting PDF documents. The rendering system has
also been greatly improved to allow smooth annotation of
PDF documents. In addition, now when exporting the
current document to an image, if the current document is
too large, each page of the document is exported to its
own image.

NoteLab 0.2 Released

Dominic Kramer — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:41:10 -0000

NoteLab Version 0.2 Changelog
-------------------------------
Summary
-------
This version of NoteLab was given the release number 0.2, a dramatic increase
from the previous 0.1.5 release, because it has many major improvements over
that release. Some of the more noticable changes are listed below.

* Improvement: Added full screen suppot.
* Improvement: Implemented a nonvolatile rendering method which makes
writing much more responsive and improves stroke apperance.
* Improvement: The icon set is now based on the Tango Desktop Project's
Tango icon set.
* Improvement: The Nimbus look and feel is now used as the default look
and feel.
* Improvement: The toolbars can now be hidden to give more room for writing.
* Improvement: The writing canvas now has an eraser mode. As such, one
can quickly remove strokes without having to enter editing
mode.
* Improvement: By holding down the button found on the side of the
stylus, the current operation is inverted. If one is writing,
by holding down the side button, the stylus will instead
act as an eraser. If one is selecting text, holding down the
side button will cause the stylus to unselect text.
* Improvement: Added a "--currentDirectory" command line argument which sets
the directory from which open and save dialogs start from.
* Improvement: Added an option to the debug menu to show the current value for
each user defined setting.

* Bug fix: Fixed a bug where if the session contained to many pages the
export utility couldn't export the session to an image due to a
lack of system memory. Now if there is not enough memory, each page
is rendered to a separate image.

NoteLab 0.1.5 Released

Dominic Kramer — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:17:16 -0000

NoteLab Version 0.1.5 Changelog
-------------------------------
Summary
-------
* Improvement: Greatly improved the performance of scrolling the canvas.
* Improvement: Improved the way strokes are rendered when they are selected.
* Improvement: Changed the toolbar icon size from 20 pixels by 20 pixels
to 16 pixels by 16 pixels.

* Bug fix: Fixed a bug in the rendering system. Now strokes are rendered
much smoother than in previous versions.
* Bug fix: Fixed a bug where strokes would not be resized correctly

NoteLab 0.1.4 Released

Dominic Kramer — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:10:46 -0000

NoteLab Version 0.1.4 Changelog
-------------------------------
Summary
-------
* New: Added cut, copy, and paste functionality for entire pages.
* New: Added the ability to edit page properties for many pages at a time. (see 1)
* New: Added the ability to import NoteLab or Jarnal documents into the current session.
* New: Now the extent to which stroke smoothing is done can be edited graphically.
* New: Added progress bars which show the progress of saving, exporting, printing, and
opening sessions.
* New: Added .command scripts for Mac OS X systems.
* New: Now the startup scripts for Mac OS X systems set the dock icon and name. (see 2)

* Improvement: Greatly improved the speed of stroke smoothing.
* Improvement: Now the NoteLab startup scripts dynamically determine the location
of the NoteLab installation directory. As such this directory can
be moved after NoteLab is installed and NoteLab will still work fine.

* Bug fix: Fixed a bug where pages would not be copied correctly. This would cause
printed sessions to look differently on paper copared to their look in
NoteLab.

Details
-------
1. In previous versions of NoteLab, if the user wanted to change the background color of a
page or its paper type, he/she would have to select one page at a time and modify these
settings. Now multiply pages can be selected, and the settings will be applied to
all of the pages selected.

2. Now in Mac OS X when NoteLab is started, the icon placed in the system dock has the
NoteLab feather icon and the name of the application shown in the menu at the top of
the screen is not "NoteLab".

NoteLab and Windows

Dominic Kramer — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:43:11 -0000

Like all note taking applications designed for Windows operating systems, the "press and hold" feature of Windows reduces NoteLab's performance. The document at the link below describes this problem and how to remedy it.

http://java-notelab.sourceforge.net/windowsPressAndHold.html

NoteLab 0.1.3 Released

Dominic Kramer — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:00:15 -0000

NoteLab Version 0.1.3 Changelog
-------------------------------
Summary
-------
* New: Added stroke smoothing through interpolation (see 1)
* New: Added full antialiasing support
* New: Created a new toolbar widget for the canvas toolbars
* New: Added support for SVGZ (compressed SVG) images (see 2)
* New: Added unit scaling (see 3)
* New: Added canvas locking (see 4)
* New: Added a status bar (see 5)
* New: Added the ability to mark command line arguments as deprecated
* New: Added a development debug menu

* Improvement: Greatly improved the speed for opening and saving NoteLab files
* Improvement: Greatly reduced native NoteLab file sizes (see 6)
* Improvement: Added a small gap between pages for better appearance

* Bug fix: Fixed a bug in which SVG code would not be properly written
* Bug fix: Fixed a bug in which the resizing/recoloring of strokes would not
be immediately displayed if the strokes were not on the first page
* Bug fix: Fixed a bug in which stroke resizing would incorrectly change the strokes width

Details
-------
1. The previous version of NoteLab used a special statistical technique to smooth strokes
drawn. The new version of NoteLab uses advanced interpolation techniques to smooth
strokes. This means that smoothed strokes look substantially better than in the
previous version of NoteLab.

2. SVGZ is the W3C standard for compressed SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) image types.
If a session is exported as a SVGZ file, it will be substantially smaller than
a SVG file corresponding to the same session.

3. When NoteLab constructs a page, it uses the display properties of the computer to
make the page look approximately 8.5x11 inches on the screen. Unit scaling allows
the user to modify how NoteLab determines how many pixels on the screen correspond
to one inch or one centimeter.

That is with a unit scale factor of 0.5, a page would look approximately half as
large as a 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper when drawn on the screen.

4. Now when the canvas is being saved, printed, or exported it is momentarily locked
to avoid consistency problems between the current state of the canvas and the
state of the canvas saved, printed, or exported.

5. The new status bar describes if saving, printing, or exporting of the canvas was
successful or not.

6. By writing native NoteLab files in SVGZ instead of SVG format, the new native NoteLab
files are substantially smaller than their predecessors.

NoteLab 0.1.2 Released

Dominic Kramer — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:14:09 -0000

The NoteLab 0.1.2 release is a major release. The biggest improvements are stroke smoothing and cut/copy/paste functionality. However, there have been many improvements (see below).

NoteLab Version 0.1.2 Changelog
-------------------------------
Summary
-------
* New: Added stroke smoothing
* New: Added cut/copy/paste functionality
* New: Added select all and unselect all icons for un/selecting all strokes
* New: Added a show current page icon
* New: Added a safety feature to prevent accidentally overwriting existing documents
* New: Now canvas toolbars are scrollable
* New: Completely redesigned NoteLab's logo

* Improvement: Greatly improved the performance of undoing/redoing actions
* Improvement: Added support for dynamically calculating the memory used (see 1)
* Improvement: The current page is not highlighted unless in page selection mode (see 2)
* Improvement: Improved error messages when opening/saving files
* Improvement: Changed the drawing icon from the crosshair cursor to the default cursor
* Improvement: Internal code design improvements

* Bug fix: NoteLab files are now truly system independent (see 3)
* Bug fix: An internet connection is not needed to open NoteLab 0.1rc1 files (see 4)
* Bug fix: Documents are now not printed/exported with the current page highlighted
* Bug fix: JPEG images are now exported correctly
* Bug fix: Now pen widths change to reflect how much the user has zoomed in on the document.
* Bug fix: Now NoteLab displays the filename of newly opened files
* Bug fix: The NoteLab file loader now reads strokes completely (see 5)

Details
-------
1. Now when the memory settings graphical element is opened it determines and displays the
current memory usage.

2. Now the current page is not highlighted unless the user is in the page selection mode.
This greatly improves performance while in writing mode.

3. Now documents saved on one system but opened on another system adapt to the different
screen resolutions so that the saved document looks the same if opened on any system.

4. Previously NoteLab needed an internet connection to download the SVG specification.
Now NoteLab has a copy of this specification internally and thus an internet connection
is not needed.

5. There was a bug with the NoteLab file loader in which it would always ignore one of the
points at the start of a stroke. Now this bug has been fixed.

Microsoft Windows and Uninstalling NoteLab

Dominic Kramer — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:10:48 -0000

I thought I would mention that on Microsoft Windows systems when the uninstaller is run it will finish with 99% or 100% but will report an error. This error states that the NoteLab_<version> folder cannot be deleted. The uninstallation was in fact successful. However, Windows won't let NoteLab delete the directory to which it was installed because NoteLab is currently using that directory.

When this occurs simply click "Cancel" and delete the NoteLab_<version> directory to complete the uninstallation. After doing so the uninstallation is complete.

NoteLab 0.1.1 Install Issue Fixed

Dominic Kramer — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 10:50:32 -0000

The problem with the NoteLab 0.1.1 installer has been fixed. The problem was caused by spaces in the filename of the jar file from which NoteLab was installed.

The NoteLab version 0.1.1 jar file has been updated to include the fix to the installer.

Therefore if you download the NoteLab version 0.1.1 you'll have the most current code. Also if you have previously downloaded version 0.1.1 and the installer did not work, redownload version 0.1.1 for the fixed installer.

NoteLab 0.1.1 Install Issue

Dominic Kramer — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:56:45 -0000

It appears that the NoteLab 0.1.1 installer randomly cannot find the jar file from which it was executed. As such the installer will fail saying only that it cannot find the specified file.

If this problem occurs you can run NoteLab by first extracting the downloaded jar file. To do this change the extension of the file from .jar to .zip. Then extract the file as you would extract a zip file.

After extracting the jar file you simply need to run the appropriate startup script to run NoteLab.

In Windows based systems this startup script is 'notelab.bat' and in Unix based systems it is 'notelab.sh'. However, before running the script in Unix based systems you must make it executable. To do this, execute, from the directory where the jar file was extracted, 'chmod +x notelab.sh'.

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