A monster of an update hit the excellent plain text editor, Notational Velocity, recently, and although there are far too many changes for me to detail in one post, here are a couple of changes that I found especially interesting:
Automated plain-text bullet points
Press tab, type out a dash, enter your text, then press enter to create a new bullet point right underneath your first one. It’s still not as good as an actual rich-text bullet point, but it’s much faster than creating bullet points manually, and it’s great to see these bullet points sync over to iPhone text editors in one piece (the iPhone can’t edit rich text).
Tag syncing
Unfortunately, this tag syncing has nothing to do with Simplenote, so if you were looking forward to taking advantage of Simplenote tags within NV, you’re still out of luck. What this seems to do is sync NV tags across Dropbox accounts and make them searchable via Spotlight (something I’m not terribly interested in).
Horizontal Layout
This was a concept that a few Notational Velocity alternatives played around with, and I’m glad to see it implemented in the main version of the app. I’m especially liking the look of my “small font” list without any note previews — it’s so clean I could cry.
Note Links
I still have to think of a particular use for this feature, but it does seem like a really great idea. If you want to make specific links to other notes, all you have to do is place a word or note name within double brackets to turn it into a direct link. You can then click on that link with your mouse pointer to go directly to that search or note. The feature is still pretty fresh in my mind, but I might end up using it for quickly referencing other notes, or quickly showing related notes (ex. “remember that you reviewed [[Red Conquest Ep 2]] already”).
“New” icon
If you’re a regular reader of iSource, you may remember a little Mac App icon post that I published a week or two ago that included an alternative icon for Notational Velocity. Well, that icon is no longer an alternative — it’s now red, and it’s now official.
Why should you care about this?
Well, first of all, you really should take my word for it and give Notational Velocity a shot if you haven’t already done so. However, if that sounds like a load of crap (my word usually is…), then here are a few actual reasons:
– NV is fast. Really fast.
– You can store notes as plain text for super duper ubiquity
– It syncs with Dropbox, Simplenote, and Simpletext.ws
– It works with most any iOS text editor that syncs with a folder
– Quick searches tend to replace complicated systems of tags and folders
– It has a sexy red icon now
– It’s open source and completely free to use
I suppose you’re going to want a link to Notational Velocity’s website at this point, so here it is (http://notational.net/)
(thanks to MacStories for the heads-up on the update)
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TAGS: mac text editor
