Notational Velocity is a free and open source text editor for the Mac that can read text files from anywhere on your computer and syncs with Simplenote. Thanks to its sync functionalities, Notational Velocity became popular among users who wanted to store notes in Dropbox (from where Notational can fetch files) and sync them back to Simplenote as well. With Notational in the middle, users can enjoy the power of Dropbox text editors in the App Store, and the beauty of Simplenote’s tools.
In the past months, we have covered a couple of interesting mods to the original Notational Velocity which aimed at extending the feature set of the app by adding fullscreen mode, horizontal layout, multiple note tagging, Markdown and Textile support and lots more. Those were unofficial mods (or “forks”) realized because of the open source nature of the application. An update to Notational Velocity was released last night, and it adds a number of features seen in unofficial forks: horizontal layout (simple, reminds me of iOS), tag syncing through Dropbox with OpenMeta standard, TaskPaper compatibility, support for inter-note linking. Tags can be entered in a dedicated column of the vertical view, but I haven’t found a way to show tags while in horizontal mode. These tags have full Spotlight support as they’re based on OpenMeta (which means they’ll also work with other Mac apps like Tags and Leap). Lots of changes and small fixes are included in this update – I appreciate the fact that notes can now be created with the “nv://make/” URL syntax and AppleScript search support. I also find the new icon more elegant and unobtrusive than the previous one.
Overall, it’s the same Notational you know and love only with a few changes, a new layout and lots of minor improvements you can check out below. Download here.
Tags are synced to Dropbox and searched by Spotlight, via OpenMeta
Tags are auto-completed while typing in the tag-entry field
Option for horizontal layout with multi-line previews in notes list
Added a Strikethrough style to the Format menu
TaskPaper-compatible strikethrough formatting using the “@done” tag
Fully plain-text-based automatic list-bullet formatting
Words between [[double-brackets]] will become links to other notes
Note-titles inside double-brackets are (optionally) auto-completed
Allow picking alternate file extensions as the default for new notes
“Show in Finder” command for revealing selected note-files on disk
“Copy URL” command for copying a unique nv:// links to notes
nv://make/ URL syntax for creating notes from encoded text or HTML
Custom (global) foreground and background colors in the note editor
Highlighting of search terms can be disabled
Dragging the divider to the top or left of the window will hide search field
AppleScript Search command by Greg Bell
Portuguese localization by Daniel Souza
German localization by Benedikt Hopmann
New custom icon designed by Taylor Carrigan
Behavior Changes
The activate-NV hotkey will switch back to the previous OS X Space
“Deleted” notes are moved to the trash when stored as separate files
Titles that match the search terms exactly are autocompleted first
Command-Delete deletes lines in the body, and the whole note elsewhere
“Copy basic styles from other apps” option applies to imported URLs
The Underline style is no longer included.
The leading text of automatically-titled notes is initially selected for easy deletion
Imported files are titled after the first line in some circumstances
The tab key now right-shifts multiple-line selections and bullets only
Back-tab can be used to de-indent automatically-formatted list-bullets
Pressing tab in the search/title field autocompletes notes manually
Styles are reset after adding a new line
Fixes
Certain diacritics could prevent note-titles from matching a search (from Mikael Pettersson)
Secure text entry should be active only while NV is in the foreground
More accurate URL detection using Adium’s AutoHyperlinks framework
Certain types of proxy servers may no longer interfere with Simplenote
Existing file extensions of notes are preserved if they are compatible
Better detection of renamed files in the case of Dropbox
The “externally deleted files” alert is more accurate and less annoying
Unsynchronized notes are uploaded to Simplenote before machine sleep
Text and URLs dragged onto the application icon are also now imported
Note-files opened externally in NV are selected instead of imported
File system changes to the notes folder are detected more reliably
Hidden or internal files will no longer appear in the list of notes
Avoids a problem in which changes made by Dropbox were not seen
