Your new version of Agenda is great. The image and file attachment functionality is everything one could wish for, including the popup that is consistent with Agenda’s gorgeous design.
I played with it this morning and there is a minor detail that I don’t like, though, or perhaps it’s a bug? I attached a couple of Apple Numbers templates that I use and removed the originals from the desktop where they’d been sitting for far too long. Then I opened the attachment in Numbers and changed some cells. Saved and closed, and then reopened from within Agenda again and saw that it hadn’t updated the changes.
I tried the same with Bear and there it works.
Luckily the document still was in the temporary folder and I saved it to the desktop again. Am I doing something wrong?
I thought so already, and it’s not a big deal, at least not as far as I am concerned, but I really think you should mention it. As it is now, I think a lot of people will expect to be able to do that.
Thx - Erik
Agreed! It’s deceiving to attatch a Pages document for quick access within a note, only to open it, edit it, close it, and have those changes dissappear!
That’s definitely something you’ll want to pass on to users before you’re swamped with folks losing a bunch of edits because they accessed the file through Agenda.
A work around I found is to attatch the folder that the documnets are in, as a way of quickly accessing their location, but still launching them from Finder.
I realise you can’t do everything at once! The new features are brilliant.
I agree though that not being to access a document to edit it, via the ‘image link’ is going to be frustrating. I can see the logic for images and pdfs, as it’s more unusal to edit those; but docs, xls, etc are very likely to be edited.
When I first link a doc etc to note I don’t want to have to decide: am I likely to edit this later? and then either drag or control drag!
The long answer is that we do plan to bring support for editing attachments, but that is another set of non-trivial additions and gotchas to work out, which we didn’t want to further delay the attachment and images feature. Some day but not yet is the short answer.
Note that attachments are generally uneditable by definition. Take an app like Mail.
It is true that notes apps have been introducing hacks to make things editable, but the essence of a notes app is not to replace Finder or Files. If you continually edit something, it may be better in iCloud with a link from Agenda.
We do want to allow editing, but it is not trivial to track the file saves from other apps, and to keep that syncing correctly across devices. Stay tuned!
Very good point. I have two very different use cases for ‘attachments’ in Agenda:
As reference material or illustration for my note; no editing required. In fact preserving the integrity of the reference material is important.
As a jumping off point to a live document that I’m working on. i.e. the Note sets out the aims, context etc, but I’m actually writing the document in another application for some reason. In this case, I actually need a link to the document, not an attachment. (Though preview would be cool, but not a priority.)
For (2), I often insert a link to a GoogleDoc etc. What’s the best way of linking to ‘real’ files eg Word, Pages?
You’ve likely thought about this but thought I’d throw this out.
When I try to edit a Mail attachment, it will show up as read only, making it clear that if I want to make changes, I need to put the file elsewhere. Perhaps you could do that? It sounds easier to implement, though I don’t know if it is. It’s been a long time since I wrote much software.
Long term, I suppose you could have a flag as to whether or not a document can be edited – if it’s there as a record of how things were or if it’s there as something you’re working. You’d make everyone happier. I was going to say “happy” but I think we’re pretty happy right now.
I personally think the attached files work great, I mainly will attach finished docs in pdf, for when I price up jobs etc… editing will be in notes( Apple Pencil) or pages etc beforehand, and then sent to agenda for the long term reference.
you still need to iron out some kind of strange behavour on the file system: Every time I open or edit an attached file it will create a copy within a folder called “(A Document Being Saved By Agenda XX)”. These folder reside within some temporary folder structure under “/private/var/folders/…” but the never get deleted (!) So every time I open a file I still end up with another copy of the file within these folders. First of all it uses file space. Then it creates copies, even some sort of versioning since it will save my edits.
I would really suggest you either allow these edits (on a Mac at least) or you delete the folder after the document is closed.
I should point out there is a challenge there, namely, when should we remove the files? We could do it when our app quits, but what if you were still reading it? Same with app launch. There really is no good time to do it. Perhaps leaving it to device launch is the best time, because there is no app running.
Hi there … I just want to link to documents in a note. I don’t care if it opens the document or just shows me where it is.
At the moment when I try just dragging doc from finder to a note it warns me large files take a long time to sync in iCloud, which I understand to mean it is going to attach the actual file to Agenda, which I don’t want so I cancel.
If I use control and try to drag in invokes the context menu (which I usually access by right click on trackpad). Do I have to change some key association somewhere to be able to control click and get a link?
Hi Deb,
Start the drag first, and during the drag, hold the CTRL in. The important thing is that CTRL is held in when you drop in Agenda.
Kind regards,
Drew