Notes Editor is Still 'Clunky'... But Shouldn't Be

Doc B

The editor in the Notes tool is lightyears ahead of where we were ten years ago. But rather than seeing gradual improvements there like the rest of the software, it seems to have been neglected; little issues with it have gone un-updated.

Here are a couple examples. First, in many cases if I click inside a note text and insert the cursor, then hit Enter to insert a blank line, rather than inserting the blank line it jumps to the bottom of the text. Sometimes it takes two or three clicks to get the cursor to stay where I want it in order to insert the carriage return. Clicking inside the last word and manually moving the cursor with the arrow keys always seems to work. 

Second, when I open the highlight tool, the behavior is 'odd.' I click it open and it seems to be persistent...I can click on a color and the pre-selected text is highlighted as expected (usually...on rare occasions, this fails and no highlight is applied). But when I click the color one of two options is expected and neither happens. The first option would be for the highlight panel to close so I can select some different text to highlight. However, the palette stays open.  That's fine...the second option would be a persistent palette that stays open until clicked closed, so other text can be highlighted without reopening the palette. But that's not what's going on. The panel obscures the note text to start with (it should open where it does not obscure text, especially if the intended behavior is persistence). Then, if I highlight different text, the panel stays open until the highlight is completed but then closes when the mouse button is released, before any color can be selected. And oddly  enough, the text selected with the palette open freezes actions...I can't delete, overwrite, or otherwise modify the selected text even with the palette now closed. The solution is to click in the text area (which unselects the text) and then re-select it to perform the action.

That's what 'clunky' means, if you were wondering. This thing needs some basic attention and a few minor updates from time to time to clean up little issues like these.