Importing legacy Tombody notes, tabs are turned into spaces

[KG576]

I'm migrating from legacy Tomoboy on an old installation to Tomboy NG 0.39 (the version that comes with Ubuntu 24.04).
I rsync'ed .local/share/tomboy/ directory to .local/share/tomboy-ng/ and noticed that notes that had tabs in the beginning of the line now have spaces.

So if a line starts with a tab (used for indentation), it now starts with a space. Still indented by just by one character.

[davidbannon]

OK KG576, thanks for your report. Your timing was exquisite ! We are in the middle of discussing tabs in general. See #323

Truth is tabs is one area where tomboy-ng is probably never going to behave like the original tomboy. The problem is a low level component (of tomboy-ng), KMemo, that does not handle tabs in the same way. Thats it I am afraid.

In you notes, using 0.39, I think a press of the tab key will insert 8 spaces. In later versions, that same press of the tab key will cause that paragraph to be inserted. That was an experimental feature but has proven buggy, sadly after two releases !

My choice now is to fix the bugs, giving you one fixed indent or not support any indent (except bullets). You thoughts would be of interest, you must be one of the very few people who want to use this sort of feature in a note !

Very sorry I don't have a better answer !

Davo

[KG576]

Here are some of my thoughts if you are asking for user input.

Please don't silently drop tabs on import. That would destroy a lot of structured data for people that used indentation in legacy Tomboy as a way to group sub-ideas under an idea. At least a single space instead of a tab (like in 0.39) is better than nothing. If possible, please implement it as a setting for those that want to repurpose tabs for bullet lists. Something they can enable.

I understand that in legacy the tab key only changed bullet depth when already in a line that is a bullet. Which I use all the time when working with bullets. I'm actually not used to Alt left and right and used tab key. But that's just a matter of habit and I can re-learn.

I used both bullet lists and free text with indentation. They both serve their purpose.

I understand your explanation about ng not being able to handle tabs like legacy, and you are right, 0.39 does add four spaces instead of a tab. I hadn't noticed it initially. And also, looks like ng after a tab-indented line (or space-indented), the next line starts from the beginning. So I guess it doesn't matter now. Adding spaces instead of a tab makes it harder to re-arrange afterwards. So it's a shame.

One example where I heavily use tab indentation in legacy is brainstorming ideas using plain text with levels of indentation like pseudo code, but for thoughts and ideas. Not using a bullet list makes it a lot easier to cut/paste things around, to move those blocks of ideas and rearrange them until a concrete solution begins to appear.

But I guess that's that. I just need to be able to import hundreds of notes from legacy, many of those notes contain tab-indented text with multiple levels of indentation, and not lose logical form of the content of those notes.

In any case, if you need to choose, my vote is for just single space on tab key (not multiple spaces) and single tab on existing note with tab characters in them. So like tab mapped to a single space for all intents and purposes.

If possible to do tab key to go deeper on a bullet list (like legacy) and only if already on a bullet line, that would be nice too. But inserting tab inside a bullet and that tab being multiple spaces seems like the worst combination.

[davidbannon]

Thanks KG, I appreciate the time you have put into that answer. But I have to be clear here. I can make tabs behave like bullets with a bullet character. So the whole paragraph is indented. 0.40 and 0.41 do that now but have a bug if you try the reverse that indent from the end of a line. I think I can provide multiple levels of that tab.

But I cannot do multiple embed tab characters in in a line of text so that its used, for example, to make columns of text where multiple lines for a nice column under a common heading. Tomboy does do that, I cannot without extensive and impracticable rewrite of KControls. I would like to, because I'd use that myself.

The first model is really just bullets with invisible bullet characters !

(Sorry for slow response, interstate dealing with a family emergency.)

Davo

[davidbannon]

Please see #322 for an update.

[davidbannon]

I have made a Beta Release of tomboy-ng that, I think, addresses the issue you have reported here. You might like to try it out and see if it solves your problem.
Thanks for your input.
David

[davidbannon]

The new release v0.42 of tomboy-ng, https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy-ng/wiki/Download_Release resolves tis issue.
Thank you for your report.
Davo