jonatanheyman

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, 200+ MB of RAM seems quite excessive in theory, but in practice it's less than 1% of the total RAM memory of my laptop (24 GB).

"napkin math" - I'll steal that for the website. Thanks :)!

> I would love the ability to create multiple cursors from a selection (within a block of course)

Ctrl-D (CMD-D on Mac) does this (currently not limited to the current block though, but that is something I'd like to change).

> Also it would be awesome to have some metadata on each block that is toggle-able (or just inserts as text) so I can have the current date/time added or shown.

Yeah, I've been thinking of adding timestamp (of last edit) as metadata for each block

Yes, I'd like to add more languages. It's currently limited to what Lezer (https://lezer.codemirror.net/) supports . However I just found this repo (https://github.com/withfig/lezer-bash) which seems to be Lezer grammar for bash, so I can probably use that for bash syntax support.

> Finally, if you remove the canvas background or set it to the same as the app background color

Will look into that. Thanks!

> On Macos a menubar item would be nice to pop the app up

Hm, not sure what this means, sorry :)?

EDIT: Now I googled "macos menubar" and see what you mean :). I'll look into it!

The buffer file has a syntax for the block separators, but it's human readable. Here's what it looks like:

  ∞∞∞text
  content of note 1
  ∞∞∞text-a
  note 2
  -a denotes that the block language is in autodetect mode and 
 might change
  ∞∞∞css
  .some-class {

etc...

Yeah, at the moment I'm hesitant to add tab support (for the reasons that you stated), though I've definitely thought about it.

Thanks :)!

Do you mean that the blocks should be collapsable? If so, blocks should be collapsable by clicking the small arrow to the right of the first line number. For some reason it seems that Markdown blocks aren't collapsable though - I'm going to investigate why.

Interesting! Do you know of any other Electron apps that can be installed via Brew?

The link has been fixed. Thanks!

And thanks for the grammar correction - I always keep doing that error (it's instead of its).

Oh, good catch! Fixed now!

> I couldn't find the shortcut to change the language until I hovered over the status bar element for it. It should have a menu item with the keyboard shortcut on it.

Noted. Will fix!

> Doesn't respect the system light/dark mode, it should by default (but perhaps with an app specific override as some people like that)

The light/dark toggle has three states. Light/Dark/Whatever the system is set to (default). If it's set to the third mode, it should respect the system mode. Otherwise it's a bug!

> The green branding is ok, but it's quite a strong personality for an app to have. Do you want the app to have a strong personality?

I do like the design (though I'm sure it could be improved ofcourse).

> - 427MB is huge

Yes, unfortunately that comes with Electron.

> Would be great to have a help reference in the app, or at least a docs page on the website that the help menu links to.

Yeah, goo point, will fix!

> Would be great to be able to change the font.

Maybe :)

> Where is the data saved?

The whole buffer is stored in a file called buffer.txt located in the user data directory (varies depending on platform, on Mac it's ~/Library/Application Support/Heynote, on Linux ~/.config/Heynote). It's saved as soon as you edit with a small debounce.

The data location is currently not configurable, and Heynote currently doesn't support reloading changes from the disk (except on startup), so at the moment it wouldn't work well to synchronize through a file syncing service if you were running Heynote on multiple machines. This is something I'd like to fix though.

> Where are the notes stored?

The whole buffer is stored in a file called buffer.txt located in the user data directory (varies depending on platform, on Mac it's ~/Library/Application Support/Heynote, on Linux ~/.config/Heynote).

> Can I delete a block easily?

I do that by pressing: C-A Backspace Backspace.

> After creating an additional cursor (great extra feature btw) how do I stop creating them, and/or remove one I've created?

Pressing ESC (or C-G in Emacs mode) should remove all extra cursors.

Good suggestion, I'll change that!

I'd love to get some feedback also :).

Heynote Github Repo: https://github.com/heyman/heynote

Not necessarily:

https://heyman.info/2023/fill-justified-text-on-the-web

In many western countries, e.g. the US, iPhones do make up the majority of the phone market.

Why would Google need a reload to keep tracking (they already control the browser)? That this feature/implementation was driven by desire for more tracking sounds far fetched to me.

Thankfully (IMO), you can't patent game ideas. There's no legal action NYT can take (and expect to win) to shut down any games that build on the same game rules.

However, even if you disagree with me, and think that there should be no app implementing Wordle-style gameplay on App Store. What's your opinion on Minesweeper, Tetris, or Tic-tac-toe? Should no iOS versions of those games exist? Remember that Apple only ever refers to the original Wordle website in their rejections and never even acknowledges the existence of Wordle clones.

What about Scrabble? If they were applying their rules consistently they would surely kick out Words With Friends, but what about Wordfeud? Should they kick out Wordfeud because Scrabble implementations already existed on the web?

OP here. Fun to talk about something technical :). I didn't make a curated list of words (also, my app supports 4-7 letter words). Instead, I use word frequency data to exclude 80% of the least used Swedish words. The frequency data is based on text from novels released since the 50th, popular Swedish web forums, and Swedish newspapers. Surprisingly, even with the 20% most common words, I've still seen odd words a few times. However, I find it quite enjoyable that it's possible to get a really hard word now and then.

As the writer of the post, I would love to hear Apple's side of the story. The reason I didn't include more quotes from Apple was that they never cited anything other than "resembles Wordle" and "leverages Wordle" in their replies. But clearly, given that they don't apply these rules when it comes to other apps (such as Scrabble, Minesweeper, Tetris, etc.), there is something else going on.

I'd argue that the language of the dictionary is far more critical for a word game than just the UI language of a random app.

The main drive for me (OP) was that I loved the game idea. Also, when I first decided to build the app, there were no Wordle-style games in the store (that I could find).

> And if you're going to essentially give it away, just make it web-based (like everyone's beloved Wordle).

Oh, you bet I regret I didn't take that road.

What's your opinion on the Minesweeper clones? Shouldn't they be allowed on the App Store? What about Scrabble? Or Tetris?

Also - like the post says - the app is in Swedish with a Swedish dictionary. Wordle is unplayable for anyone who doesn't speak English.

Point taken about the wording though, I've updated the blog post to say: "I figured I could make a Swedish Wordle-style game myself"

Not yet, but it could have in a future generation, or even a future firmware update.

> Smartphones have seen explosive growth because normal people can use them safely.

Can you back this claim with a source? How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?

Bad behaviour by some other third party does not justify bad acts by Apple.

> If they allowed Epic to skirt their rules, they'd have to do the same for everyone

Apple is already allowing Amazon to "skirt their rules".

No. The solution is to allow third party app stores, and then Apple can keep charging whatever commission they want.

The high commission percentage is not the only issue with Apple's monopoly. It's also that they are gate keepers of apps they don't approve of, they can decide to throw out apps to destroy competition, etc.

> It'd be like taking a walk in the park and paying/supporting the park if you feel the need to.

It'd be like taking a walk in the park and paying/supporting the park - by having a salesperson walking beside you trying to pitch some product - if you feel the need to.

Yes, it's still hypocritical.

You can, and in my opinion should, criticize Iran for a lot. For example for being a theocracy like you mention. But saying "you cannot have nukes, but we can" is still very much hypocritical.