Linwood Butterfly Adonis Blue released
Linwood Butterfly
🎨 Powerful, minimalistic, cross-platform, opensource note-taking app
Happy Easter! 🐰
Long awaited, the Butterfly Adonis Blue update is finally here! This release brings a lot of new features and improvements. Here are the highlights:
Highlights:
- 📱 Redesigned mobile home page
- 📄 Add file preview to files navigator
- 📝 Inline property name editing
- 🖼️ Background improvements
- ✨ New image operations
- 🛠️ Reworked add dialog
- 🖥️ Binary changes (New linux arm, min Android version 6.0, Docker)
- 🛠️ New Tools (Barcode, Grid, Ruler)
- 🔒 Password protected notes
- 🖼️ Import SVG as text
- 📍 Reworked waypoints
- 🔒 Lock layer
- ⚙️ Reworked settings
- 🤝 Collaboration improvements
And thank you for 1,300 stars!
This release includes all changes from the previous beta, release candidates and a svg export fix. The full changelog can be found here.
Thanks to @chriscavalluzzi for contributing to this release!
Every big butterfly release has now its own name. The 2.3 update is now called Adonis Blue.
Redesigned mobile home page
The mobile home page has been redesigned to use tabs for easier navigation. This should make it easier to go to the selected view instead of scrolling through the whole page.
Add file preview to files navigator
You can now preview files in the files navigator by clicking on them. This will open now a read-only document viewer.
Inline property name editing
You can now edit names inside the title bar by clicking on them. Previously every tool had a name field which could be confusing and take up space.
Background improvements
To cleanup the wrench view, the background button has been moved to the top left corner.
Additionally you can now also set the stroke width for the pattern texture.
Moreover you can now add multiple backgrounds to your document. The file format supported this previously, but the app doesn’t support it until now. Now you can layer multiple backgrounds on top of each other (if you have a transparent background).
Additionally, you can now use svg files as a background.
New image operations
Image operations should help changing image easy without the need of an external editor. You can now flip images horizontally, vertically and change them to grayscale.
Reworked add dialog
The add dialog has been reworked to make it easier to use. In every release, new tools are added and the dialog was getting bigger and bigger. This update now adds filters to the dialog to make it easier to find the tool you are looking for.
Binary changes
The linux arm binaries have been added to the release. Please test them and report any issues.
The minimum version of android has been changed to 6.0 (Marshmallow) instead of 5.0 (Lollipop). See the discussion for more information.
Additionally, web version of Butterfly is now available as a Docker image. This makes it easier to deploy and run the application in a containerized environment.
You can find the Docker image on the Docker Hub.
The documentation can be found here.
New Tools
Instead of having grid and ruler inside a tab in a submenu, they are now toggleable tools and can just be added like any other tool.
To toggle them, simply click on the added tool. Configure them like any other tools by long pressing on them.
They also have new properties. The ruler now has a color property and the grid has an offset property.
You can now create qr codes, data matrix codes, and code 128 codes. This is useful for sharing links or other data with others. You can find the barcode tool in the tools menu.
Password protected notes
To protect your notes, you can now set a password for them. Click on the wrench icon and click on encrypt to set a password. When opening the note, you will be asked for the password. Please note that if you forget the password, the note is lost.
You could unencrypt the note by clicking on the wrench icon and then unencrypt.
Import SVG as text
There is now a new option in the import section to import an SVG as text. This can be useful if you use a icon library and copy the SVG code into your clipboard.
Reworked waypoints
As a note grows and you move elements around to reorganize your work, waypoints that you have defined may no longer have relevant positions or scales. If the center point of the elements related to a waypoint naturally starts to drift away from the waypoint’s position, you may want to re-define the position of the waypoint. If the group of elements grows significantly, you may want to re-define the scale of a waypoint.
This also applies to the Origin waypoint as well. As your note grows and the most important parts of your note are no longer at position (0,0), the Origin waypoint starts to become less and less relevant to the user. And because notes always load at position (0,0) with 100% scale, the first thing you see after the note loads may be a very small and unimportant part of your note, and you may need to reposition / re-scale your note after every load.
This updates now includes:
- Adds a new option in the waypoint item menu to “Replace” a waypoint, which overwrites the waypoint with the current position and (optionally) scale.
- Adds an option to replace the Origin waypoint. After this waypoint has been replaced, a new option will be added called “Reset”, which resets the waypoint’s transform back to the default.
- When a new note is loaded, teleport to the Origin waypoint. If a custom Origin waypoint has been defined, use that, otherwise use the default Origin waypoint.
Lock layer
The lock layer option allows you to restrict editing to the current layer. This is useful for preventing accidental edits to other layers while working on a specific layer. You can enable this option in the lock menu on the toolbar.
Reworked settings
You can now import and export your settings. This should make it easier to share your settings between devices or with other users.
The input settings were redesign for the input mapping settings UI, with the goal of making the settings more user-friendly and not requiring any additional knowledge to understand.
Additionally the settings cards now has been tightened up to make them more compact and easier to read. The experiments settings page also now looks consistent with the rest of the settings.
Collaboration improvements
Collaboration is a big topic for some people working in a team. The current web-socket based collaboration system is not the best solution for this, since you need to have a server running and making the server available to the public is not easy.
This update introduces a new collaboration system based on my new development called Swamp. This system allows you to create a collaboration link that can be shared with others, and they can join the collaboration session without needing to set up a server for each session. When creating a new swamp session you need to enter a swamp server address, which is a public server that is running the swamp service. This server will be used to create the collaboration session and will handle all the communication between the clients. The last swamp server address will be saved in the settings, so you don’t need to enter it every time.
Read more about Swamp here.
The collaboration system is still in an experimental state and may not work as expected. Please report any issues you encounter.
You can enable the collaboration system in the settings under Experiments > Collaboration.
The connect string now starts with https://launch.butterfly.linwood.dev to allow cross-platform sharing of the link. When opening the link on a mobile device or pasting the link into the app under Plus > Connect, the app will automatically detect which collaboration system to use and open the correct page.
Additionally, you can now add a custom user name for collaboration, which will be used to identify you in the collaboration session. Additionally the collaboration button was moved in the top left corner menu and disconnecting from a collaboration session will now be visualized.
Notes
Thanks for being part of the Butterfly community. Feel free to share the app with everyone. In the next coming weeks, the 2.4 update cycle starts. Please report any bugs you find.
Full changelog
Changes since 2.3.0-rc.1:
- Fix exporting svg