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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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

a web app (PWA) would be perfect :)

Yeah, I've entertained the thought of adding a web version of Heynote to heynote.com (using local storage for persistence).

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

#82
This reminds me a lot of org-mode(https://orgmode.org/). Do you have plans to add other org-like features, like evaluating code blocks? I don't personally see myself moving away from org-mode, but it would be nice to have something to recommend to people who are reluctant to use emacs, even if it's only for a single application.

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

#83

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…

You might consider Flutter for desktop apps next time, as they are compiled to machine code and won't be nearly as heavy as Electron, plus you get automatic mobile and web support.

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

#85
post #73

I'd love a macOS menubar icon for Heynote. I currently use Evernote's Quick Note feature from its menubar app.

I'll look into it! Not what you asked for, but slightly related: You can set a global hotkey that shows/hides Heynote.

Yes, that might be adequate, thank you. I can't quite put my finger on what I like about the menubar app, but I do click it 30 times a day. Maybe just habit now.

The hotkey is very responsive. Nice!

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

#86

I'd love to get some feedback also :). Heynote Github Repo: https://github.com/heyman/heynote

hey! i really like this. it's a great idea and implemented neatly. my MacOS arm install is <100mb. i know some asked for tabs. i would like to be able to open multiple windows.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good suggestion, I'll change that!

It would be nice with some documentation of what the Math mode supports, e.g. syntax, units, functions. It can be difficult to figure out why some lines are interpreted ok and while others fail. How to convert between fahrenheit and celsius?

Yes, I've learned that Heynote is lacking some documentation. Will improve that.

Math.js (https://mathjs.org/) powers the Math blocks, so what's supported by Math.js should be supported by Heynote, with the addition of currency conversions (exchange rates are updated daily).

> How to convert between fahrenheit and celsius?

This should work:

  10 celsius to fahrenheit

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

#89
This is pretty cool. I particularly like the Math block.

One issue I noticed while doing a calculation: "belt_pitch = 5/8 in" evaluates to "0.625 in^-1". To get the behavior I expected, I had to add parenthesis around the fraction. Maybe this could be fixed by adjusting precedence rules?

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

#90
Really nice execution of a simple but compelling idea. And the presentation on the site is solid too - I get what this is immediately, and I could see how it would be useful to me. A replacement for that Sublime text window I keep around where I paste stuff to keep for later, or to examine some JSON I just grabbed from somewhere!

I do find myself wanting more features, but of course the beauty of this is how simple it is, so you definitely need to strongly resist the urge to add and add as people suggest ways to 'improve' it. Apply the old 'every feature starts with -100 points' mindset (attributable to Anders Hjelsberg, I think?).

But that said, I'm going to give you some feature requests anyway :D

The thing I feel like I most immediately want from a tool like this is something close to the common SQL notebook behavior where you can select a few lines of text and hit F5 to run just the selection. Obviously only makes sense in language blocks which have a script engine associated. But the ability to write a chunk of JS or Python or shell and instantly execute it might be powerful. Where does it run, what happens to the output, etc? All good questions. No idea.

I'd love to see markdown blocks get formatted in place (still monospaced, just some bold and italic and stuff) - probably whenever the cursor is not focused in the block... though the potential shift in line wrap that would cause might be annoying. Maybe just have an edit/display toggle on markdown blocks to flip them into formatted mode. Additionally, making markdown-formatted tables elastically align in place while editing them would be a huge quality of life boost....

... Which (since formatting markdown tables correctly amounts to the same thing) makes me think this could be an opportunity to implement a classic 'elastic tabstops' plain text mode... the fact that the tab key only increases line indent is... an interesting choice that reduces the need to indulge any tabs vs spaces discussions - though obviously it's possible to paste in text that contains tabs even if you can't type them. Coming up with something better to do with inline tabs than just 'snap to next multiple of tab width' is tricky, but I would suggest maybe enabling 'elastic tab' rules: https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/ - because this is a place that's meant to handle copy/pasted text and stuff natively typed in, NOT a place that is expected to open and correctly format files.

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