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Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

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Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#141

Post by samstave »

jonatanheyman wrote: post #15
maineldc wrote: post #3

I just downloaded and installed and I am really impressed. I liked the concept of math blocks though it took me a few seconds to figure out how to change a new block into a math block. This note at the top wasn't clear to me: ⌘ + L Change block language The phrase block language didn't trigger my "change the type of block" thinking. I might slightly rephrase like: ⌘ + L Change block language (Math, Markdown, etc.) Ot…

Good suggestion, I'll change that!

All blocks should be collapsable - I was playing with it and had to enter a comment marker in some to be able to get the collapse arrow in the bar, like # in a python block, however the behavior for a python block collapsing vs another - is that the python block collapses to ' ... ' Whereas, other blocks maintain the firt row as a header, so if I label another block NOTES and collapse it, I can still see the header.

So a collapse button on every block would be nice.

I love this. Thank you.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#142

Post by smusamashah »

jonatanheyman wrote: post #130
jsdalton wrote: post #109

This is just outstanding. It's so exactly what I wish for out of a scratch pad. My feature request to add to your pile (possibly a lonely one, since maybe it's just unique to how my brain works): I really want a scratch pad like this to have UX that supports "inverted" order. Meaning, new blocks get added to the top of the page instead of the bottom. The blocks naturally flow in descending order of creation rather th…

Happy you like it :). I get the idea of the "inverted order". I wonder if it would be enough to make it configurable so that C-Enter inserts a new block before the current one + Heynote sets the cursor at the beginning of the buffer at startup (instead of last which is the current behavior)?

Having an option to set either behaviour the default would be a better choice here.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#143

Post by hruzgar »

theSuda wrote: post #126
hruzgar wrote: post #57

great application and something i didnt ask for but needed somehow ;) Sometimes i have to quickly write something down for the reasons you stated. Then i have to open a text editor like Windows Editor or Notepad++. These are nice but they really don't have the feeling to write things down. You have somewhat of an anxiety that you'll lose that data if you forget to save it. Also there is no vim support and stuff like…

What's Windows Editor? Do you mean the good old Notepad? :)

yeah yeah suure Notepad of course. If Windows is set to german its "Editor" and not Notepad for some weird reason. Thanks for reminding me of that <)

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#144

Post by smusamashah »

jonatanheyman wrote: post #69
hoistbypetard wrote: post #62

Initial thoughts: 1. It looks beautiful and useful. Very nice work! 2. I love the math sections. 3. I was shocked how large the download was. 4. It's chewing enough memory between the GUI and the (3!) helper processes that I will probably continue to use BBEdit for this kind of thing. I think it will be useful to a lot of people... I like it and could see myself using it sometimes even if it feels too heavy to keep i…

Yeah, large file sizes and some RAM overhead is a drawback that comes with Electron apps. However, it would never have been possible for me to make Heynote for all of Mac, Windows and Linux, on my spare time and within a reasonable timeframe, without Electron. Also, the CPU usage overhead for Heynote is minimal. It's one of the apps I use the most, and it's never among the programs that have used the most CPU. Yes, 2…

Could it have been a PWA? I have seen some progressive web apps give an option to install as an app when you open them in your browser. Have thought about making a PWA for my kid which I could then install on my phone.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#145

Post by jonatanheyman »

evnc wrote: post #134

I love this! Simple and solid execution. I've been wanting to build something similar for some time now, might fork and play around with it. Thank you for open sourcing it! I've started using Obsidian with a new note for each day and separating "blocks" with a Markdown horizontal rule (`---`) to achieve something similar, but this is much cleaner. The strength of such an approach is making capture extremely easy -- n…

Performance is mostly handled by CodeMirror (https://codemirror.net/), the underlying editor that Heynote is built upon. It seems to handle quite large buffers well. Where I have seen some minor performance issues is when working with very large blocks in certain language modes.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#146

Post by jonatanheyman »

dceddia wrote: post #137

This looks awesome! I love the blocks idea. I’m gonna download and give it a try. I see lots of comments about Electron (per usual here haha) and I just thought I’d shout out Tauri if you hadn’t run across it. It’s basically Electron-but-in-Rust and uses the system webview instead of Chromium, so bundle size and memory usage is reduced a bunch. I took a look at the code and it looks like you haven’t got a ton of Elec…

Yeah, I looked at Tauri in the beginning of the project. What made me go with Electron was the maturity and large user base. And it has actually been a bliss to work with Electron (my expectations after having worked with other cross-platform tools for mobile were extremely low), so I haven't regretted my choice. I've dealt with very few bugs. I love that there is a large ecosystem, and that it was easy to automate building (as well as auto-updating) for multiple platforms.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#147

Post by jonatanheyman »

samstave wrote: post #141
jonatanheyman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good suggestion, I'll change that!

All blocks should be collapsable - I was playing with it and had to enter a comment marker in some to be able to get the collapse arrow in the bar, like # in a python block, however the behavior for a python block collapsing vs another - is that the python block collapses to ' ... ' Whereas, other blocks maintain the firt row as a header, so if I label another block NOTES and collapse it, I can still see the header.…

I agree! This would (will hopefully) be an improvement.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#148

Post by esafak »

dceddia wrote: post #137

This looks awesome! I love the blocks idea. I’m gonna download and give it a try. I see lots of comments about Electron (per usual here haha) and I just thought I’d shout out Tauri if you hadn’t run across it. It’s basically Electron-but-in-Rust and uses the system webview instead of Chromium, so bundle size and memory usage is reduced a bunch. I took a look at the code and it looks like you haven’t got a ton of Elec…

I read that the Rust part was unergonomic. Do you find Tauri productive?

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#149

Post by dceddia »

jonatanheyman wrote: post #146
dceddia wrote: post #137

This looks awesome! I love the blocks idea. I’m gonna download and give it a try. I see lots of comments about Electron (per usual here haha) and I just thought I’d shout out Tauri if you hadn’t run across it. It’s basically Electron-but-in-Rust and uses the system webview instead of Chromium, so bundle size and memory usage is reduced a bunch. I took a look at the code and it looks like you haven’t got a ton of Elec…

Yeah, I looked at Tauri in the beginning of the project. What made me go with Electron was the maturity and large user base. And it has actually been a bliss to work with Electron (my expectations after having worked with other cross-platform tools for mobile were extremely low), so I haven't regretted my choice. I've dealt with very few bugs. I love that there is a large ecosystem, and that it was easy to automate b…

That makes a lot of sense. I miss a bit of that from Electron. Its auto-updater is nicer, and while I haven't had a ton of cross-browser issues there've been a couple that I had to fix with transpiling or avoiding some newer CSS stuff. Shipping everything with one browser engine lends a lot toward peace of mind.

I wish there was a way to build a stripped-down Electron, like a configurator where you could uncheck things you don't need. Printing support? WebGPU? WebRTC? Video playback? PDF reader? Straight to jail. It would be lovely. I'd love to see what would happen to the bundle size.

Re: Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers

#150

Post by Rudism »

I love the idea of this after playing with it for a few minutes. My main gripe is that the font size is way too small for my old-man eyes, and it doesn't seem to remember or restore the previous zoom-level when launching (meaning I need to re-zoom-in every time). If it were possible to set a larger font-size or if the previous zoom level was saved and restored on each launch that would be a greatly welcome addition to what seems like a super useful tool.
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