Joplin Release Notes

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The plugin system has been part of Joplin since the previous version, however it was still a bit unstable. In the latest version we're getting a bit closer to production-ready state. The plugin API in particular has been significantly expanded, based on the developer feedback, so that more types of plugin are possible now, and indeed a few plugin concepts have started appearing on the forums. In particular all this could be done now:

• Access notes, folders, etc. via the data API
• Add a view to display custom data using HTML/CSS/JS
• Create a dialog to display information and get input from the user
• Create a new command and associate a toolbar button or menu item with it
• Get access to the note currently being edited and modify it …

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With 340 votes on GitHub, spell checker support was the most requested feature and is now finally available in Joplin! This was always tricky to add due to the custom editors (Rich Text and Markdown) we use, but thanks to the recent improvements in the Electron framework and to Caleb John's work on the Markdown editor it is now possible.

It should be working fine in both editors however it is currently considered Beta for the Markdown Editor because to enable the feature we had to use a special mode which in the past caused various issues. Now it seems to work well, at least we haven't noticed any bug so far, but please keep that in mind. If you notice any issue let us know in the forum.

Enabling the spell checker …

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I'm still trying to get a sense of what sharing and collaboration features would be useful in Joplin. By this mean any way to share a note with someone else or have multiple users collaborate on the same set of notes or notebooks.

If a feature like this might interest you, I'd be helpful if you could describe: how would you use it? How would you expect it to work?

All this might not be implemented right away, but it will inform how the development should happen for example by making sure that even if a feature can't be done now the software is done in such a way that it's possible to add it later on.

Any idea or suggestion is welcome!

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In this series of posts about version 1.1, we'll introduce another feature by one of our GSoC candidates, Anjula. Anjula developed over the past few months a system to allow configuring the keymap shortcuts, and created a nice editor for it.  Here is what he has to say:

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Joplin desktop application supports keyboard shortcuts to a certain  degree. However, there wasn't an option for users to configure keyboard  shortcuts according to their preferences. My project was to implement a  keyboard shortcut editor along with the necessary integration. …

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In this series of posts, I will introduce the changes that are coming in version 1.1 (which in fact is already available as a pre-release).

For this first feature, I will let Naveen, our GSoC candidate, present it. Naveen has made an excellent job implementing various search engine features, including advanced filters, support for Okapi BM25 scoring algorithm, and fuzzy search. Here is what he has to say:

What got done​

The project consisted of three parts:

1. Make search better by introducing additional search filters. (e.g., tags, notebook, type)
2. Make the ranking of search results better by implementing the Okapi BM25 relevance function.
3. Make fuzzy search possible. …

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The latest version of Joplin includes a mechanism to upgrade the structure of a sync target. When you startup the app you will be asked to upgrade before being able to sync. Once you start the process, the app will briefly display an information screen, upgrade the sync target, and then restart the app. You’ll then be able to sync with the new sync target format. That first upgrade is quite simple as the goal for now is to put the mechanism in place and verify that it works well.

From a user perspective this feature doesn’t do anything visible, although it caused some issues, so one might wonder why it’s even there. This post is meant to clarify this. …

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The design put the menu bar on the left, which I think makes sense, as it's consistent with the main screen UI. And I expect this bar will be the same colour as the main screen sidebar

For checkboxes Serj used a toggle button, which actually makes it easier to align all the labels on the left (a checkbox with a label on the left looks strange) so I might go with it.

Otherwise the screens are relatively similar but tidier. If you have any suggestion on what could be changed, feel free to let me know.

Synchronisation config

Synchronisation config (error messages) …

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Please either vote on the forum or let me know here what option you would prefer:

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/desktop-new-design-is-nearly-ready-please-cast-your-final-vote/9698

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For those who haven't seen it, there's an ongoing poll on the forum to vote for the new colour scheme (Light Theme for now):

https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/please-vote-for-the-new-light-theme-colour-scheme/9504

Please cast your vote if you haven't already, or add a comment here if you don't have a forum account.

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The latest pre-release is now available and includes 13 bug fixes and 9 various improvements and new features, among others:

Editable attachments

Files you attach to a note can now be edited. To do this, click on the attachment or, if it's an image, right-click on it and select open. The file will then be watched by the application and any change you make will be saved to Joplin, and synchronised.

New Markdown editor …

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Now that the GSoC changes have been merged and the application made more stable following the rewrite of the note editor code, a new pre-release will be available soon.

It will include several important features, which I will describe into more details in following posts, but for information the main new features will be:

• Allow editing note attachments and syncing the changes

• Save sensitive settings such as passwords to the system keychain

• Allow changing the app appearance according to the system theme

• Allow manually ordering notes

• A new text editor, Code Mirror, will be available for beta-testing

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The first phase of GSoC has ended and  the two students who will be working with the Joplin community in summer have been selected! So congratulation to @naviji  and @anjulalk  ! We’re glad to have you on board, and looking forward for the  improvements you’re going to make as part of your projects on,  respectively, the search engine and the keyboard shortcut editor! We’ll be in touch to give you more info on what happens next. …

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Joplin encryption, and in particular the E2EE system used during synchronisation, was recently audited by Isaac Potoczny-Jones, CEO of Tozny and this is what he had to say:

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about.

OBC2​

I was looking through your encryption implementation for Joplin and I have a few comments and concerns. I don't see anything that I know is a critical issue, but there are a number of choices and weaknesses that I'd like to lend you some advice about. …

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The latest pre-release of Joplin (v1.0.194) includes a new WYSIWYG editor, a prototype for now, but a first step towards integrating this feature into Joplin.

WYSIWYG is probably the most requested feature in Joplin - it's the second most up-voted on GitHub, and one of the most viewed and commented on post in the forum.

Please note however that this feature is experimental at this stage - don't use it for important notes as you may lose the content of the note, or it might get corrupted. …

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I haven't kept up with releases lately and thus the new one is quite big, it includes 8 new features, 3 security fixes, 19 improvements, and 29 bug fixes. Here's a summary of what to expect:

Mermaid diagram support

Mermaid was one of the most requested features, and it is finally here. The diagrams can be inserted using a fenced block, and all the diagrams supported by the library should be available, including Flow, Sequence, Gantt, Class, State and Pie diagrams.

More info in the Mermaid Markdown documentation

Word counter dialog …

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Good news, our Google Summer of Code 2020 application has been accepted!

Since we made the announcement back in November, we already had a few students submitted pull requests and getting themselves familiar with the codebase.

We hope some of them will work on the project ideas we've suggested, and develop some great features this summer!

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Joplin is looking into joining Google Summer of Code next summer. The application period as organisation is expected to happen in the second half of January 2020. Until then Joplin hopes to have multiple active discussion and may even have some easy commits in regard to the application and potential projects.

For those who don’t know, GSoC is a summer internship sponsored by Google, where open source organisations get full-time students as interns (paid by Google) to help take care of tasks. It’s a huge boon to many open source projects, allowing potentially some impressive progress to take place, and therefore many organisations try to qualify. …