Over the last two years I’ve written and re-written a custom notetaking application to keep track of my “to do” lists. These were written in C++. Now I’m re-writting the app again, this time using C# and InfiNotes (Professional Edition).
So far, so good.
Here’s a screenshot of what I have working so far:
The program displays a vertical list of records where each record can contain ink, text, and pictures. A column on the left holds checkboxes for each “to do” record. Eventually this area could also include flags, categories and the like. Right now it’s just checkboxes.
This is just an incremental protoype that I’ve built along the way to porting my notetaking app. There’s lots more needed. So far I just wanted to see if I could get the list of records working and it’s looking good.
What have I learned? I’m using the InfiNotes Scribble control in the program. I’ll provide my own toolbars later rather than using InfiNotes’ toolbar. I’d rather be in control and the provided toolbar doesn’t provide enough programmatic control over which toolbar buttons are shown.
Using the control is pleasantly easy. The only downside is that the documentation is very sparse. Fortunately the Agilix team has done a tremendous job of answering my questions via email. The sample apps have helped out too.
As you can see the program essentially has a vertical list of scribbled contents. Actually, only one Scribble control exists at a time because only one list item is being edited at a time. The other displayed note records are rendered by the Renderer class. I’m thinking about providing a code sample that shows how to use this. It’s quite useful.
That’s all for now. I have a ton of things to do around the house.
I’d be interested in hearing more about your experience. With the sale they had earlier, I couldn’t resist and picked it up. There’s been no time to do anything with it, but I have some ideas.
Fred
Will do. What I’ve thought about doing is posting my thoughts as I work through a project and the Agilix control would be ideal for this. I have a project coming up that would be an ideal candidate.
But so far what are my impressions? Quite favorable for general inking. If you have an app where you like a single note page–this is probably the tool for you.
As I mentioned in the short post, the documentation is the weakest part. And there are some minor bugs here and there, but I’m hoping that Agilix is able to stay on top of these.
When I use a tool like this I often try to use it in a couple different ways to see how flexible it is. For instance, in my To Do list app, the structure of the application is far different than a typical Journal or OneNote “one-page” app. However, with a little scratching of the head and the Renderer class that Agilix provides I was able to come up with an interaction that’s pretty good–not perfect yet–but pretty impressive for the amount of time it took me to code.