Joplin

Project 4: Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) for Joplin

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Import OneNote Archives🔗

Joplin now supports importing OneNote archives, a significant step for users transitioning from OneNote. Microsoft has long made it challenging to leave OneNote, offering limited export options and complex formats that make it difficult for app developers to support it. Despite these hurdles, @pedr tackled these issues head-on, developing an import tool that simplifies the process. This addition makes Joplin a practical choice for those looking to move away from OneNote's ecosystem.

To use this feature, select File => Import => ZIP - OneNote Notebook

Multi-window support🔗

We're excited to introduce Multi-Window Support, a highly requested feature that makes managing multiple notes easier than ever. With this update, you can open notes in different windows and each window operates independently, allowing you to compare notes, reference content, and organise projects with greater flexibility.

To use this feature, right-click on a note, select Open in... and select Edit in new window

Customisable toolbar on mobile🔗

The new customisable toolbar on mobile is now draggable, making it easier to access the buttons you need. You can also choose which buttons to display by tapping the Cog button, allowing for a more personalised and efficient note-editing experience!

Enhanced Accessibility🔗

In order to implement the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, accessibility has seen a substantial upgrade thanks to the efforts of @personalizedrefrigerator. The desktop and mobile apps now offer better keyboard navigation, including improved functionality in dropdown menus and settings. Focus indicators have been made more visible, while ARIA labels have been added to boost compatibility with screen readers. Specific areas like note attachments, sidebars, and dialogs have also been optimised to ensure accessibility for all users.

Refined Drawing and Markdown Editing🔗

Joplin's drawing and editing features have been fine-tuned for a smoother experience. Freehand Drawing on mobile and desktop has been updated to version 2.14.0, addressing several usability issues and bugs. Additionally, the Freehand Drawing plugin is now part of the desktop app by default. These changes enhance the reliability and integration of the drawing tool.

Faster and more secure encryption🔗

For GSoC 2024, @wh201906 worked on optimising the encryption and decryption processes, boosting speed for mobile devices in particular (but desktop too). Additionally, the encryption security was improved by transitioning to a more robust 256-bit key.

As of now this feature is optional and can be enabled by going to the Configuration Screen, then Synchronisation => Advanced options => Use beta encryption.

Expanded Plugin Support🔗

Developers will appreciate the updates to Joplin's plugin ecosystem. A new API has been introduced to create toast notifications, alongside updates to CodeMirror packages. A new renderMarkup command has been introduced to allow you to render Markdown content to HTML using the Joplin built-in API.

Full changelogs🔗

This is just an overview of the main features. The full changelogs are available there:

Desktop: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/desktop
Android: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/android/
iOS: https://joplinapp.org/help/about/changelog/ios/

Project 4: Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) for Joplin

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Joplin is partnering with a French government institution to bring you innovative new features! We will work on accessibility, voice typing, HTR and add Rocketbook integration. Today we'll present the planned HTR integration:

Currently, Joplin’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature is designed to recognise printed text, which works great for scanning documents with standard fonts. However, we’re looking to expand this functionality to support handwritten text recognition (HTR), which would be beneficial to handle scanned, handwritten documents, as well as for the upcoming Rocketbook integration.

Handwritten text recognition is complex task, requiring significant processing power and large machine learning models. Because of this, we plan to implement HTR via a server, possibly integrated with Joplin Cloud or Joplin Server. The beauty of this approach is that handwritten text recognition is a rapidly evolving field, so we can continuously improve the server-side model. This means that every Joplin app can benefit from these updates without needing to redeploy or update the app itself.

For the Rocketbook integration, this integration will make a significant difference. Right now, your handwritten documents would be scanned as images, but with HTR, Joplin will be able to recognise the actual text you’ve written. Not only will your handwritten notes become searchable, but you’ll also be able to copy and paste the text into other documents.

@@ -393,15 +419,4 @@ sys 0m38.013s

Renovate on the other hand upgrades packages one at a time, and run our test units to ensure everything is still working as expected. It also upgrades multiple instances of the same package across the monorepo, which is convenient to keep our code consistent. It also has a number of options to make our life easier, such as the ability to automatically merge a pull request for patch releases since this is usually safe (when a package is, for example upgraded from 1.0.1 to 1.0.3).

Although Renovate automates the package upgrades it doesn't mean all upgrades are straightforward - our tests won't catch all issues, so the apps might end up being broken or cannot be compiled anymore. So there's manual work involved to get everything working after certain upgrades - for the most part this has been done and the apps appear to be stable so far.

This will however be an important part of pre-release 2.10 (or should it be 3.0?) - we hope that everything works but we may need your support to try this version and report any glitch you may have found. As always pre-release regressions have the highest priority so we aim to fix them as quickly as possible.

Joplin Cloud is now part of the Joplin company

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

As some of you may know Joplin Cloud so far has been operating under my own single-person limited company in the UK. This was mostly for convenience since it meant I could get things going quickly without having to setup a special structure for it.

Now that Joplin Cloud is becoming more mature however a proper company, simply called Joplin, has been created. This company will be based in France, and will be used mainly to handle the commercial part of the project, which currently is mostly Joplin Cloud. I'm still heading the company so there won't be any major change to the way the project is managed.

What does it mean for Joplin Cloud?🔗

There will be no significant change - the website ownership simply moves from one company in the UK to one in France. The new company is still owned by myself so I will keep following the same roadmap.

What does it mean for the open source apps?🔗

On the short term, the only visible change will be moving the non-open source assets, such as logo or trademark from the UK company to the French one. So expect a few changes in copyright notices here and there.

In the medium to long term, I would like to hire one or two software developers to help me with the Joplin Cloud development, because we reached a point where managing the whole project is difficult for a single person, so some help is needed. Some of their work might also touch the open source apps since both are quite related - but of course that work will remain open source too.

As a general rule, there will be a permanent commitment to keep the apps open source and to derive value from Joplin Cloud/Server.

Longer term I would like to create a non-profit organisation to handle the open source applications and to make decisions about the project, as well as to decide how to allocate any funding we receive (for example from GSoC).

Looking forward🔗

Those past 6 years of developing Joplin have been an exciting and rewarding experience, thank you to all of you of the friendly and vibrant Joplin community for your contribution toward making Joplin the software it is today, and looking forward to continuing the journey together!