[Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Qnotted is a Knot Helper application written in Qt with full portrait support.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Qnotted

As always, feedback and bug reports welcome.

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Er, I took a bite in the rope and hurt my teeth.....

Actually knot, but wots a bight?

Not yet in repos but the point is if definitions are provided?

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Yes, definitions are provided.
Having autobuilder upload trouble at the moment you'll have to be patient before biting anything :P

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Will do. Love the idea. Animated gifs would be..... stunning (but a lot of work :-( )

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Thanks to merlin1991 for fixing my issue, Qnotted 0.0.1 is in Extras Devel.
I am currently working on 0.0.2, soon to be released.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...0&postcount=72

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Now available in Extras-Devel
Enjoy

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Anyone get tied up or bite anything yet? :)
Pushed up to Extras-Testing please QA.
http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...qnotted/0.0.2/

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Am having a look and trying out instructions etc, as time allows (tied up with kids ya know: ).

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Of course I've totally missed annoucement for this really helpful program (thank you, Jolla spam!). Thankfuly, it is uploaded to extras-* - not stuck as link in the forum thread - so I was able to discover it via browsing repos.

Now, here first suggestion comes, and a little story. I've "discovered" qnotted for the first time accidentaly, while browsing repos for packages that I wanted to reinstall, following a list of files that got damaged during filesystem collapse (log of fsck). Obviously, I wasn't in position to check new things then, working to bring my system into undamaged state. I just remembered keyword "knot", to check later.

Now, the next day, I tried to find the application, using "knot(s)", searching *both* in the application names *and* in the description (short description, to be precise). No luck. I tried it few times during span of a month, with different "knot"-related keywords, without any joy - actually, I become sure that seeing this in repos didn't happen and I dreamed it ( really, no joke ;) ).

Now, I've re-found this "bugger", thanks to update, placing it near the top of "last packages imported". Of course, I've checked why the hell "knot" wasn't giving me any results. "Blah, Qnotted as a name" - well, I took the bullet, Qnotted is really good idea for a name, and it was my fault for not remembering it. "But, wait, I've searched descriptions too! What the hell, short description is a repeated "qnotted" again, damnit?"

So, concluding the story and into my suggestion - it might be worthwile to update the short description section of package to be a little more informative, as it is used by all repos searching methods. Someone who just got idea to look for a knotting helper application, will likely search for "knot" or "knots", and get nothing, if using HAM or FAM (or base apt-cache search - looking through long description require specifing it manually, is rarely used and prone to spamming with misleading results). Heck, you even have a real life example of one old fart user *actively* searching for *this* program, and failing through a month's time.
---

Now, as for program itself - huge thank you - nifty and very useful.

Bug: If you cycle quickly switch between different knot types and knots, application will "clone" itself:
http://s21.postimg.org/6vjlpmlaf/qnotted1.png

I can't find a direct step-by-step way to reproduce this, but if you spend a solid 5 seconds "jumping" between knot types *and* knots, you're guaranteed to hit it.

Suggestion: As handaxe said, animated gifs would be wonderful. But, if they're not possible, a static photographs of knots forming a step-by-step illustration to written instructions could be as much useful, if not more. Currently, there are 2 "steps" at most, likely showing final form before and after dressing. Or views of final knot from 2 sides.

While most knots can be "reverse-engineered" by looking at currently provided pictures (then, one can try to learn knoting them properly via written instructions - opposite order will fail, most likely), there are some of them, that cause my brain to... knot itself ;) Photographs with more intermediate steps would surely help a lot.

Cheers,
/Estel

// Edit

I forget mandatory - while not exactly correct, absolutely unavoidable - applaud, that should be opening my post:

Yay! Bondage app for Maemo!

http://s16.postimg.org/n0ot3kgmd/handcuff_knot.png

You have seen that one coming, haven't you? ;)

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Firstly thank for your informative post, I was starting to think it was tumbleweed-ware.

It seems the second line in the control file is not searchable in HAM. Thank you for spotting this, it is helpful if you can find the application in the first place. :rolleyes:
Also it seems the icon image is very dark causing it to look like a black square, can anyone confirm this?

As for the window spawn bug, I had thought I had fixed this by making the pushButton's "pressed()" instead of "clicked()" and reducing the image sizes but alas not. I will look into it but I am not certain of a solution.
It seems that the image takes so long to load you have time to press the pushButton again and spawn another non-stacked window.

Obviously animated knots would be ideal, however, it would take a fair amount of time and effort to do this. I would also have to borrow the materials (ropes, paracord, poles, camera, tripod) used to make the images again, from the multiple sources I acquired them.

Images at multiple stages wasn't done in the first place to keep the application light. Also this was created from the pictures in another RL project I did.
I spent a lot of time wording the instructions as carefully as possible so they could be done from looking at the final picture alone.

Can you point me to some of the knots you are having a hard time with?

All the knots in Qnotted are important and should be learned IMO. What you use them for is at your discretion. :p

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Nah, it's just that kind of application with destiny of getting a small, yet loyal niche of followers. You know, like Bander, or Dicejinni, or Theremin, or Tuner. You probably won't expect zillions of downloads for Qnotted (or any of the applications I've mentioned), but I would be really sand penguin without them, the same for all three users of those ;)

As for me, I was really glad to find tool like this, and as mentioned in my "story", it kept me searching for a long time. Thank you for bringing it.

Definitely :) As for "second" and "first" line, IIRC, in packaging documentation, it is called "short" and "long" description. Not only HAM, but FAM and basic apt-cache search only look for titles and short description. Thus, it's always recommended to make good use of it. apt-cache allows to specify some option, forcing it to search inside long description, but I don't even remember it - tried to use it once or twice, got gazzilion of unrelated results... WelI, guess they've make short-description only as default for a purpose ;)

It looks very dark in FAM/HAM, but for Maemo - if one isn't using dark background - it's visible quite OK. I thought it was desired (albeit strange) effect. If not, (thinking about it, brown know would probably look better than black one), something must have went wrong with image encoding.

Generally, it's not a big deal - during normal usage, it manifest itself only if you accidentally clicked wrong button, and wanted to go back AFAP. Maybe some QT's gurus would have answer, if you post question in developer section?

// Edit
I noticed something strange about this bug. It seems to me that - currently - it doesn't manifest itself just after quickly closing knot-view - I still have one window with sub-list of knots, and back-arrow. Then, after clicking back-arrow, it does small "poof!" for a split second, and I see the same window, but with back-arrow replaced by X. At this point, I'm already in the cloned window. I assume the screen blinking ("poof!") moment is when window get cloned, and I'm transfered into it's focus.

Whoa, I thought that you got knots from some CC source. Photographs looks very professional, congratulations. I understand that creating good photos for various stages is considerable effort... Heck, thinking about it, I have camera, tripod, and poles could get improvised. The thing is, that I lack proper knotting-skills - I'm yet to learn them from your program ;) - so my photos would be rather prone to show imposer knots as results.

Instructions are written with great attention to detail. The thing is, that some people - like me - completely fail to follow such manuals tasks by written instructions alone. IE - even despite English is not my mother-language - I understand every word and sentence, but I probably wouldn't be able to tie a loop just following them, without picture :p It just doesn't create the "image" in my mind, for such kind of tasks. So, currently I "reverse-engineer" knots from your pictures, and use text for resolving parts that I'm not completely sure about.

It could be my personal quirk, but, from experience, I think that such debility to written steps for this kind of activity isn't so uncommon. At least few intermediate steps for more complicated knots would surely help a lot. I think that it could be even better than animations - at least as long, as user wouldn't be able to "pause" animation at any chosen point, which would make it even harder to code, I think.

I absolutely agree, but if I would already have all those basic knots in memory, I would helper application (unless for quick reminder, maybe? But, for this, a photo alone would probably suffice). Personally, I see qnotted as thing that could help a total newbie to tie a given knot, or learn how to. I know, lazy from our side, there ate tutorials in net etc - but, force Internet isn't always with Luke me, and N900 is. Not to mention that we're all becoming old farts, and memory may not server us so well, after not using particular knot for few years, even if we learned it (think first aid, if you don't refresh training).

Running bowline is doable, but required twisting my mind a lot to understand it from picture (with help of guidelines).
figure 8 double loop looks doable, but 2nd picture - with yellow rope - send to break laws of physic for me ;) and I can't make it out for a life of mine, I'm, always ending with result from red line, only.
figure 9 loop looks like I *could* unknit it (got it?), but for now, I failed.
trucker's hitch looks like rocket science, can't make 1+1 out of it (ok, to be fair, I recognize some already-known middlemand-knots, but as for which should go first, second, etc... No idea).

Most hitches are quite hard to follow, due to pole obstructing part of view (obviously). Same apply for lashings, but multiplied - funny enough, I know some variations of them from memory (but not names), but initially failed to recognize them from pictures or complete via guideliness.

I suxx, I know :(

/Estel

// Edit
BTW, all knots made with red line are easier to follow than the ones in yellow. Contrast thing, probably.

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Is it?

So maybe I am the only one but I find the habit of calling applications after whatever they were written in a bit odd. The users generally don't give a monkey's fart about such things so the only one who cares is the app's creator. Which begs the question, why does (s)he care so much that (s)he feels the need to express that in the name. I may be wrong, but to me it shouts loudly and clear, "hey, potential user, be careful, this is this author's first ever application written using this language/platform/framework, be prepared for a dodgy UI and a lot of bugs!"

Not that I am suggesting that any of the above applies to Qnotted. It looks really nice. It's just a general comment on the poor choices some developers make for their creations ;)

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Ok thank you for the feedback.

I will fix the dark image and package description ASAP.

As for other ideas I will have to see if I can source the materials and time. It was designed from a reminder POV, as I am fairly good at knots. I agree it would be nice for new knotters to easily tie them from the images.
Maybe in the future I could redo this, if so I would try and use a red and green or blue coloured rope. The ropes I used were kindly lent to me by a friend I know from my local bouldering centre. I agree the yellow has an odd pattern on the rope that makes it awkward to mentally RE, it was also slightly thinner than the red.

Come to think about it I would like if possible to keep the single image. So I would probably see how one or two partially tied knots adjacent the final knot would look. As I say I would like to keep the application as light as possible.

This is why I was asking which knots were causing you to get in a knot :D
To me all of the images are fine to mentally RE, however I understand this is not the case if you don't understand the knot.

I looked for a source of knot images and animations and found none that aren't covered by copyright, this is what lead be to use my own images.

Well with Knots and Knots2 already taken I had to find an appropriate name. This seemed the obvious choice to me.

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Thanks sixwheeledbeast, I'll gladly test it after next release(s) :)

@pichlo
While I'm not fan of names such as "QRadio" or "QNetworkMonitor" (although, the latter is really good program), I like playing with languages - so, Qnotted as Knotted seems fine to me.

OTOH, It is - sometimes - helpful to now which language program was written at the very point of seeing it's name. For example, Qt stacks are screwed for multimedia (at least on Maemo), and any radio program written in Q *will* have mono only. Thus, "silly names" helped me to filter out noise in search results, when I was looking for decent FM radio applications.

Once, it was also helpful, when one wanted to have more lightweight system - choosing GTK programs was beneficial due to fact, that - if one wasn't using any Qt'ie apps at all - Qt libraries were not sitting loaded in the physical RAM (GTK is used by hildon, so it was loaded - and shared - anyway). Nowadays, it isn't relevant anymore, as even such base things as CSSU are using Qt bits over GTK (sadly).

Sorry for off-topic,
/Estel

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Quick Post - that I will edit when I get time....

Qnotted 0.0.3 available in extras-devel.

Fixed the package image it's now bright orange ;) and also the packages description so it should be easy to find in HAM now.

Also partily fixed the minor spawning window issue by making the knotselect page(s) slots modal with exec(); However, if I try to do this with the MainWindow slots aswell, the grandchilds (knot instruction) close button stops working.
I will try to work on this, I am sure it's simple fix for a pro.


Also some things you may not know about Qnotted...

All Qnotted user-visible text has been enclosed in tr() (translate) I have never used translate before but it could be possible in the future to have translations in Qnotted much like OMP and qtworldclock.

Finally in line with CSSU hildon-desktop and my other applications :cough: the keyboard has shortcut keys connected to the pushButton slots on screen. But you knew that :) didn't you.

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Hey, I know I'm late to the game here, but very nice app! :) I've gotta admit that the only strings I normally tie are my shoelaces; I'm going to have to go through all these knots and give them a try...

BTW, I was just wondering, where did you get those nice looking button icons from? ;)

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

Cool, I would appreciate your opinion on the app and the code too if you feel like having a poke in there.
There have been reported issues with the stacked windows that I have only partially resolved.

Err... no comment.

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

I will take a look! :)

:) If you're getting icons from where I think you are, I should point out that I've been getting my icons from Gentleface. They come under a Creative Commons license, which pretty much just means that you need to give them an attribution. (I do in the "about" section of Pierogi...)

Re: [Announce][Fremantle] Qnotted - Knot Helper
 

That basically confirms what I said. Advertising what the app's been written in in its name is only good as a warning :)

This is obviously hugely off-topic here, nothing to do with Qnotted.