I'm in a similar boat as NG. I've been using NV for a long time, but only recently got into MultiMarkdown. nvALT sounds perfect, but I do have the latest version of NV installed already. I don't use tags at all, so loosing them isn't an issue for me, but I understand why it's important for those who do use them.
Looking forward to the update. And thanks for doing this.
I'm eager to try NV Alt as a replacement for Notational Velocity, but I only recently heard about it and I already have the new version of Notational Velocity. Any idea when the database issue will be ironed out?
I have a version that I'm using for testing which just points to a new database. That requires that you re-import from SimpleNote or import note files (and lose any tags you have in NV), but everything else comes in fine. If you'd like that version to try out, let me know and I'll get it ready and post it. It does not affect the regular version of NV or cause conflicts, and you can run both to try it out.
If you'd rather wait for an official solution, though, that maintains tags and has a more solid upgrade path, it will take me a little bit. As far as a "real" database solution, I'm still making a few decisions about what's going to be best in the long run (become a separate project or become a better fork of the main). I'll be posting an update and roadmap very soon.
I am half the MMD user I want to be (never got around to using it for academic writing, which was always the plan) but I'm so thrilled with nvALT to date, and even more excited about your plans for it in future. I've pared back from having five (!!) NV instances/forks installed, in favour of two (vanilla/yours) of which I use one. My most recent discovery has been the joys of dual monitor mode for writing, with full screen notes on one screen and MMD preview (live updating!) on the other.
I look forward to (and have great faith in) your continued work on this, and thank you deeply.
I really like this project. Any chance that NV ALT could become it's own app? I'm probably insane, but I'd really like to use both canonical NV and NV ALT at the same time. I have to admit that I don't know what this entails, but I assume it is more involved than me as a user changing the name on the binary after downloading.
A distinct name would prevent problems like the one created by the recent NV upgrade as well. I also suspect that if it was (optional) to run NV ALT without stepping on an existing NV setup, it may lead to increased adoption.
Hi Tofias,
I wrote a bit about my plans in the post Notational Velocity ALT expatiation and roadmap. There are complications with using a unique ID and application name, but I'm working most of them out. First, nvALT will become a separate-but-closely-related application, and eventually I hope to evolve it to a point where it stands as its own app. That may involve a start from scratch, but the reason is that I would like to turn it into a more of a writing app with social/blogging features than a note-taking app, and I personally don't think Notational Velocity needs to be taken in that direction (nor would I want it to).
So, short answer: yes, it will soon be usable as a separate app, but I would like to make it as interoperable as possible without causing conflicts and double-syncing, etc.
Not only Brett is doing something nice by spending time on a fork no one is paying for (although someone may be donating for it), but he's also incredible friendly and open about on-going processes, something not seen very often, but which I find honorable.
Thanks Brett.
I suspect work on Notational Velocity is going on, behind the scenes, on a daily basis, but it does feel like Scrod comes back to life whenever another developer adds significant functionality. When Tyler Hall gained a little traction with Nottingham, NV was updated. When nvALT received a significant number of very positive reviews, NV was updated. Going forward, I really like Brett's paradigm of a "full-fledged, Markdown-based writing app" and I'm looking forward to more Markdown-specific features coming to nvALT.
I used nvALT because I thought that Notational Velocity's development was frozen, now I am confused :-)
To me, nvALT and NV are very close from each other, and I don't see the point to have two parallel developments. Would it be possible for both projects to merge ?
Pascal
PS : if someone wants to switch back to NV and fear the DB format mentioned above, the easiest thing is probably to 1) sync to SimpleNotes 2) delete your nvALT data 3) install NV from scratch 4) get your data back from SimpleNotes. That's the beauty of the concept...
That's the beauty of a fork. nvALT was an excellent choice when everyone thought Notational Velocity was dead.
Now it will be updated to work with NV internals. So you'll get (just a little bit later) all the goodies in Notational Velocity plus the nice features of nvALT.
nvALT is ultimately headed in a direction that doesn't sync with the intention of Notational Velocity, e.g., a full-fledged, Markdown-based writing app. Aside from the Markdown preview window in nvALT, most of the differences after this latest update are aesthetic and many of the changes Scrod has pulled in will be merged into nvALT. I'll keep the development separate, though. There are many Markdown-specific features coming soon to nvALT, too.
You can watch the update progress on both versions at GitHub, if you want to be sure development on either is moving forward.
You can also save your notes to disk, delete the database file and launch again to avoid the database issue.
Remarkbox