msteffens
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: 17-May-2017, 14:28

August 2019 Status Update

This is a (very) late follow-up to my last status update.

The Keypoints app is still in continuous development, and I’ll keep on pushing it forward as much as I can. However, since this is very much a part-time effort, progress is still much slower than I’d like. So I greatly appreciate your patience and continued interest!

During the last months, I’ve mostly focused on fixing major bugs and further polished things, esp. w.r.t. the app's file handling and its scripting API. But I've also been able to add some new features:

I've added basic support for CriticMarkup. CriticMarkup offers a Markdown-like syntax to add highlights & inline comments to plain text, and to mark text additions, deletions and substitutions. Here's a somewhat contrived example:

Image

One of the most visible new features, however, is the built-in graph visualization of notes and their connections. The app's interface now offers a secondary preview which displays a dynamically generated graph of all currently displayed notes and their links between them:

Image

Here's another screenshot with the graph preview enlarged and zoomed in:

Image

In the graph, white boxes represent publications, and dotted lines point to all the currently displayed notes belonging to the publication. Solid lines with arrows depict links between notes, and dashed arrows point to linked notes which currently aren't among the displayed notes. Note card colors represent the note's label color, and the note card of the currently selected note gets a filled background hue.

While you browse, filter & search your notes in the app, this graph gets updated dynamically. But here's the really nice thing: The elements in the graph (more specifically, the note titles & publication titles/citekeys) are clickable, so you can also use the graph to navigate or alter your current collection of notes.

To better illustrate how this works, I've made a 1-minute screencast:

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Going forward, this graph visualization feature will get more refinement. And in the distant future, I plan to introduce qualified links, i.e. allow users to specify the relationship type of a link (e.g., "supports", "refutes", "extends", "corrects", "reviews" etc). Linking arrows in the graph could then be annotated with their relationship type.
Jason
Posts: 5
Joined: 24-Jan-2018, 16:56

Re: August 2019 Status Update

Thanks for the update! I really appreciate your efforts and am still very much looking forward to the app. As always if I can help with anything please let me know.

Cheers,
Jason
Asutu
Posts: 2
Joined: 12-Oct-2020, 16:21

Re: August 2019 Status Update

I discovered Keypoints a few days ago and it seems the PDF annotation tool I've been looking for for quite some time. From the screenshots it seems superior to other alternatives such as Skim or Highlights. Was wondering if Keypoints' development is still active at this point?

Many thanks,
Pedro
msteffens
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: 17-May-2017, 14:28

Re: August 2019 Status Update

Asutu wrote: Was wondering if Keypoints' development is still active at this point?

Hi Pedro,
thanks for your feedback!

Currently, development progress is unfortunately very slow. Nonetheless, I‘ll definitely continue with its development, and I’m dedicated to bring this app into release state.

While the app has many v1.0 features already implemented and working nicely, some important things are still missing (like e.g. import & export), and I have to resolve some issues with macOS system support (for the newest macOS releases).

Thanks for your understanding & patience.
Matthias
Asutu
Posts: 2
Joined: 12-Oct-2020, 16:21

Re: August 2019 Status Update

Thanks for the letting me know about Keypoints' progress. I just subscribed to the mailing list and am looking forward to see this app in action!

Pedro

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