Warning: Notes in Beta 1 still not ready for prime time

I've had a weird experience with notes as well, so I won't open this feature until we are in full release.

Chris Roberts:

R. Mansfield:

gasped in horror to see any Greek word in my notes had been converted to a series of question marks. I gasped a second time as I watched the little sync symbol spin, knowing that my corrupted notes were being synced back to Logos' servers.

Have you checked your notes on the PC side to see if they really were corrupted?

I had to test this out this morning when I saw the bug last night. It looks like any non-Latin characters don't get translated correctly when going from Mac -> PC. I copied a note from the NET Bible out into a Mac note, synced it to Windows. All the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic showed up in Windows as ????? and it then synced back to Mac as ?????.

I think I know what the issue is, but I'll have to wait until I get into the office to debug it.

So, to be sure, we're looking at this and will get it fixed ASAP. That said is something that I want to better understand/clarify so that a) we make sure we're solving the entire issue and b) so that panic does not ensue.

R. Mansfield:

it was opening them on the Mac

Opening a note and simply viewing it (i.e. making zero modifications of any kind) should not result in any notes document data syncing. When we're talking about notes, we are talking about notes documents, yes? When you opened your notes, did you make any modifications of any kind? Or did they sync with zero modifications made?

R. Mansfield:

I gasped in horror to see any Greek word in my notes had been converted to a series of question marks. I gasped a second time as I watched the little sync symbol spin, knowing that my corrupted notes were being synced back to Logos' servers.

So, as I'm trying to replicate the issue on my machine this morning, a couple of questions are coming up:

1) When using the term "notes", do you mean Notes documents accessed via File -> (some Notes document) or other notes elsewhere in the system?

2) By what means did you put Greek text into your notes? Copy and paste from a resource? Copy and paste from some outside tool? Hand typed?

I ask question #2 because this is one scenario I'm able to create that differs from the one you describe:

1) Create a new note (in a Notes document) on Windows

2) Add greek text to the note by copying a passage from the NA27 and pasting it into the note

3) sync

4) open the note on the Mac When I do this, the greek shows up as expected (well, it shows up as Greek anyway, and not question marks).

At this point, I have a couple of paths that I can go down:

Path A (no modifications): If I simply view and close the note, even if I sync repeatedly, nothing should change. For the purposes of this discussion, "modifiy" refers to the user manipulating the text by adding characters or changing formatting. The *Mac* application doesn't view the corruption of the data (from Greek to question marks) as a modification. NOTE: On the Windows side, it appears that focusing the note is enough to persist the change; on Mac, you must actually make some modification.

Path B (modify): If I make any modification of any kind to the note in question, then those changes will be synchronized. However, only *that particular note* (not all of the notes in the document) should be changed. Further, if you *DO* make a change on the Mac, and that change *DOES* sync to Windows, the note will appear as all question marks. HOWEVER, if I don't edit it, nothing syncs ('cause nothing changed), so the note continues to appear properly (as greek) on the Mac.

================================

I point all of this out for a few of reasons:

First, if we're not talking about the same thing when we say "notes" (e.g. Notes Documents), then I need to better understand what you mean so that I can fix the correct problem.

Second, if you're experiencing a scenario where unmodified notes are being synchronized, then that is a significant bug in its own right.

Third, based on my initial testing, the issues with non-English are more subtle than originally described and while we're working on this particular bug, it would be fantastic to understand and, therefore, address the issue as broadly as possible.

R. Mansfield:

I copied and pasted the note from another Mac program to Logos/Windows (via Parallels). The Greek text was exported from that program as unicode. I've opened and closed the notes multiple times in multiple Windows sessions and had no problem until I opened it last night in Logos/Mac. 

Let me know how else I can help.

What is the other application? I ask so that I can actually try to replicate your scenario. Also, it's possible that having a copy of your file for that app would be useful, if you were willing to share it.

The challenge at the moment is this:

We cannot replicate what you describe (particularly the bit about Greek text entered in Windows showing up incorrect on Mac). In order to be certain of any fix, we need to reproduce it. In order to do that, I'll basically be attempting to "do what he did" as best I can until I can get it solved.

The part we *CAN* reproduce, and are working to fix is this:

If you have Greek text in a Note on the Mac, regardless of how it got there (entered on Windows, synced to Mac OR entered on Mac), when that text syncs to Windows, it shows up corrupted. However, that corruption doesn't sync back to the Mac unless the note is modified on Windows.

One more thing--I also get question marks for quotation marks and sometimes spacing as well. Also, the Hebrew text in my notes which was copied and pasted in just the same way has remained just as it has been all along. 

I published Beta 2 moments ago which includes a fix for the portion of the issue you described that we were able to reproduce this morning. Would love to hear the results of any further testing you do (in test Notes documents, of course) at your leisure.

Thank you for helping us track this down.

Cameron Watters:

I published Beta 2 moments ago which includes a fix for the portion of the issue you described that we were able to reproduce this morning. Would love to hear the results of any further testing you do (in test Notes documents, of course) at your leisure.

Thank you for helping us track this down.

I have now fixed all the places where my notes in Logos were corrupted. I'm really glad now that I didn't have my notes in only one place. I used the same method as before--copying from Accordance and pasting into Logos and everything has held so far this time. To experiment, I created some of the notes in Logos/Windows and some in Logos/Mac, although primarily in Windows as the Mac version is still much more difficult to work with. I've opened and closed both programs, edited previously made notes on both platforms, and so far, everything has held.

A few thoughts and questions:

1. I certainly see the advantage of having note files sync. But is there no set file on the computer tied to these notes? It would seem like a good idea—especially, perhaps, after editing a large number of notes—if this file could be backed up manually just in case corruption like that described in this thread were to happen again. Or perhaps if a warning were to be created like in MobileMe syncing. If my calendar gets corrupted (this has happened more than once), I will get a warning before a MobileMe sync if over 5% of my data is about to be changed. Then, I can opt not to let the change occur and I can create a new "correct" set of data from the calendar that has not been corrupted.
2. Notes on the Mac end of things still aren't all that usable. I cannot change fonts or font sizes on the Mac. Sometimes I cannot add formatting like bold or italics to a text and other times I can. My guess is this has to do with the font, but I cannot change fonts for the notes on the Mac. 
3. The formatting button bar itself looks very non-standard. Dare I say it, but the formatting bar looks better in the Windows version.
4. Notes in the Mac version don't "sit still." The expand and contract every now and then, visibly moving as they switch from simply a line with the reference to the entire open note. Sometimes that happens when trying to enter content. 
5. There ought to be a way to keep notes visually in sync with a biblical text. In other words, if I have Gal 1:2 at the top of the screen and I also have a note for Gal 1:2, that note ought to automatically align itself with it. 
6. If I place a note on a verse that immediately follows a section heading, the note icon automatically rests adjacent to the heading, not to the verse as in other instances. I'd prefer that the icon simply rests next to the verse; otherwise, I might not see it.

My goal above is not to criticize but to be helpful; I'll continue to help test some of these features as they are updated.

Tommy Ball:

Here David pointed out to a user why sometimes when there is a Sync issue a duplicate is made. I think this may answer your question about possible corruption. The reason a second is made is a reaction to any sync problems. I may be wrong and if I am I'm sure Cameron will correct me. :-) 

Except in my case, from what I can tell, a duplicate file was not made. I just ended up with corrupted data in my notes file, both in Windows and on the Mac. I wish I could have selected the correct file which would have kept me from having to re-enter data. Fortunately, it didn't take too long.

But when I opened collections, I gave me a window with two panels, the first of which is favorites. And when I closed collections, the whole window closed.