I'm pretty happy with Maple Pro, after finding Microsoft's OneNote to be too clumsy and expensive for my needs (it seems better suited as a collaboration tool for people using tablet PCs). I tried trial versions of a number of hierarchical note organizers in the $20-$40 price range and settled on Maple Pro. The all had some unique features and bugs, Maple seems the closest to what I need and tends to be snappier when changing notes.
Here are a list of bugs I've noted and features I'd like to see. I'm curious about other people's experiences:
bugs
- CTRL-W is assigned to two hotkey functions - 'add node' and 'word-wrap toggle'
- inserting an object or picture as an icon does not seem to work. A blank, resizable frame appears which stores the document
- When running at high resolution with large fonts (selected in OS display properties) under Windows XP, text in the status bar overlaps. Also, the registration prompt screen cuts off most of the buttons in the unregistered version. This can potentially make the trial software unusable for some users.
- on my laptop, applying a style to selected text causes repeated refresh of the window for 10-20 times, lasting about one to two seconds as the window flickers. Also, typing text at the end of a longer document causes a visible refresh with each keystroke. This does not occur with my desktop system at home. Laptop is running WinXP Pro with GeForce 440mx. Home is WinXP home with GeForce 3. It is possible that I need to install a newer graphics driver; however, I'm unable to do so because newer drivers introduce a show-stopper bug when using SolidWorks (a machine design program)
- automatically created email links do not work, I have to manually edit them to include the actual link location.
- automatically generated hyperlinks that contain a '?' get truncated before the '?'. As in: http:??www.regsoft.net?orderstatus.php3?tid=xx ... xxxxxxxxxx
- table border widths are inconsistent.
- on desktop machine, will occasionally get cascading series of 'unable to open clipboard' error dialogs open in background when program is minimized
- copying text to another program removes formatting. As a workaround, I export as html and copy and paste from there.
pasting formatted text removes all formatting (bold, lists, etc.)
- better style management. applying a style should 'stick' so that updating that style updates all occurrences in a document. I'd like styles to be saved with the tree, rather than as a setting. Ability to assign styles to hotkeys. Bonus points for a style selection task pane, ala Word XP
nested lists, both bulleted and numbered. - ability for node to only be an embedded OLE object, rather than embedding OLE objects as frames. When node is selected, only that document (say a pdf) is displayed in main window, and it is scaled appropriately.
- custom node templates, such as for 'todo lists' with check boxes and contact lists where each contact is a sub-node and information is filled in as forms (WordPlace's now defunct YeahWrite had a pretty decent system for doing this with common word processing documents)
- a built-in web browser (acting as an IE wrapper) such that nodes can be hyperlinks to web pages, thus remote, dynamically changing content can be accessed from within Maple. This is not intended as a replacement for a web browser, just a way to consolidated project-related bookmarks.
- ability to customize hotkeys in addition to menu buttons. tool-tips for all menu buttons
better table formatting behavior - if a node is blank, but it has children, have its text display a bulleted list of links to the node children. Editing the node will blank this list. I don't know why, but blank nodes annoy me, I always feel the need to fill something in.
- system for synchronizing between two computers, such as the ability to backup and restore to and from an FTP site.
- smaller bullets - they're huge! very low priority