WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! If you don’t want to run potentially buggy, pre-beta, pre-release software on your Mac turn away now!
UPDATE: If you tried the 20120729 build and found searching caused a crash try updating to the 20120730 build (link at bottom of page)
I hope the above warning is dramatic enough to deter users who only want a polished, finished version of Trunk Notes for Mac. Lots of distractions such as my day job, girlfriend, Word Frazzle!, Trunk Notes for iOS, … have colluded to me missing many self imposed deadlines for getting Trunk Notes for Mac finished and released. As such I have decided to throw caution to the wind and release what I’m terming an ‘Early Access Build’. There are some (but not many) additional features to implement and already identified bugs to fix before I would call Trunk Notes for Mac 1.0 a beta, however it might be interesting for some users to have a play with a build now – and not wait another month or possibly more.
Some details about this build:
- It is sandboxed – which is great for keeping everything secure and partitioned away from the rest of your data and apps. By default all your notes are installed in the sandbox environment. If you want to store your wiki somewhere else set a default location from the preferences.
- It is developer signed. This way you know that this has come from Apps On The Move (Matthew Kennard).
- I have been using a slightly earlier build for keeping notes for a couple of months and so far haven’t had too many issues.
- It isn’t advised that you use this with Trunk Notes for iOS. However, if you really want to and are aware of the consequences (i.e. it might mess up your data), you can hook it up to use a wiki you synchronise using Dropbox. Bring up the preferences, select a custom location for the wiki, and choose the folder containing the notes/ and files/ directories. You will need to restart the Mac app to detect changes to the wiki – however Dropbox will be updated fairly quickly as soon as you save a page.
- The icon is an example of programmer art – I will be shortly commissioning an icon. However I am interested to hear what people think of the concept, rather than the execution, of the current icon.
- The only functions implemented are {{image}} and {{lua}}.
- You need to be running Mac OS X 10.7 or above. This build has only been tested on the GM version of Mountain Lion.
- Although the preferences indicate that you can change the syntax highlighting style and viewing CSS this isn’t operational in this build. It will be once I have some nice defaults created.
- Search is very basic – and the pages are listed in no particular order in the sidebar. This is the next feature I will be working on.
- The list continuation still needs a little work before its really nice to use.
- This build does not expire – however it is also completely unsupported.
Some tips on using Trunk Notes for Mac:
- Switch quickly between Markdown and HTML mode using the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+CMD+E. HTML mode and Markdown mode will be renamed to something more friendly in a later release.
- Use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+[ and CMD+] to go quickly back and forwards in the history. This works in both Markdown and HTML modes.
- CMD+L will take you directly to the search field.
- CMD+N creates a new page. Type in the page name, press return and start typing. If you are currently focused on the search field then the search text will be used as the basis for the new page name.
- To import images or PDFs files into the wiki simply drag them to the Trunk Notes icon on the dock.
- Clicking an image/PDF on the File: page will open that image/PDF in Preview.
- There are some Markdown specific editing features. For example select some text and press CMD+B to make it bold. The text stays selected so you can press CMD+B a second time to remove the bold.
- You can tag notes – bring up the inspector to see the list of tags. The tags applied to the current note will be ticked.
- If you want to open up a page in another editor simply drag the proxy icon to the icon of the other app.
Finally, what you have been waiting for, is the download link:
- Download Trunk Notes EAB 20120730 (Updated)
I look forward to your feedback. Feel free to email your comments to mgkennard@appsonthemove.com or add to the Apps On The Move forum!