Panda release notes 1.0(2208)

Greetings fellow Pandas! We have a couple of new features and a handful of fixes in this release. Please give these a spin and keep the excellent feedback coming.

What’s new:

  • Stats Panel - A redesigned Stats Panel that is more compact and easier to read. Click any stat to open it in the new Stats Bar that stays on the screen as you work. The redesigned stats panel works for a whole note but also for a portion of selected text.

    To open the Stats Panel, simply use the (i) icon in the toolbar or the ⌘⇧Y shortcut.

  • Table of Contents - It’s here! A new tab in the Stats Panel automatically creates a ToC for your doc based on headings 1-6.

    To show the Table of Contents, simply use the (i) icon in the toolbar or the ⌘⇧Y shortcut, then switch to the second tab.

  • Style Bar for macOS - A new Style Bar that will help you format your notes without needing to remember Markdown.

    To toggle the Style Bar, simply use the BIU icon in the toolbar or the ⌘⇧Y shortcut.

What’s fixed

  • Several bug fixes for the folding features.
  • Fixed a crash when reordering todos lists.
  • Uniformed font-weight in the titles for non-Latin languages.
  • Autocomplete suggestions for emoji and programming languages are once again tappable on iOS.

Thanks for testing Bear

We really appreciate all your help and feedback in testing Bear. In fact, this new test build was entirely a result of your feedback! Please keep it coming, and we’ll be in touch in the forum threads.

Download the App

To try all the new features go to the alpha page: https://bear.app/alpha/

10 Likes

Awesome ToC! Thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like

The new features all look great :smiley:

In the main Bear app you can pin the info window - this would be really useful in Panda as well e.g. to:

  • See the word count increase as you enter more text
  • Keep the ToC visible so that you can quickly navigate around the document

Also, if I’m being picky, it would be great to pick the number of levels of headings you want to see in your ToC e.g. don’t show headings below h3.

I’m currently using https://github.com/jonschlinkert/markdown-toc and a custom Keyboard Maestro script to manage tables of contents in Bear and have found that for me showing headings below h3 isn’t helpful.

Thanks again …

Hi there!

Thanks for giving the update a go, we really appreciate it.

Regarding the pinning info window, when you open the Stats Panel via the (i) icon, if you drag it after opening it, it will stay on the screen for you to use when in the editor.

It will update as you enter more text like you mentioned above!

Similarly, this works (dragging after opening via the (i) icon) for the ToC too.

Regarding the additional feedback, thank you for providing this, i’ll pass it onto the team to consider.

Perfect - of course you’d thought of that :smiley:

I actually like the option of h1-h6 ToC. I structure my headings deliberately for structured markup (otherwise i’d just use bold for subheadings) and choose to use headers specifically for the option at some later date of referencing that heading, so i very much appreciate it being in the ToC

The dragging out of the info panel is super nice … but: If you are using Panda in “tab” mode with more than one document, the info panel does not change when switching documents. Further complicating the matter: if you have an info panel split out for more than one note, there is no identifier of which split-out-info-panel belongs with which note - as there is no document title or any other indicator to suggest which note it “belongs” to. I can see this being a problem in TOC view with people who want to have a persistent “outline” of their note.

My recommendation, fwiw, would be to have just one split-out panel allowed at any one time, and have it display the info contents for whichever note is the “active” one.

Thanks.

1 Like

That’s a good point.

Thank you for taking the time to test this version, and to leave a comment on the forum. We really appreciate all the feedback we receive.

I’ll pass the above onto the rest of the team to have a think about!

Hi @Vindaloo - I totally understand your point around markdown headings providing structured formatting and that for you showing every level of headings in the ToC makes sense.

I don’t think I explained it very well but I was trying to make a case for having “number of heading levels shown in ToC” as a user controllable setting.

1 Like

Ah yeah i get what you mean now, fair enough :slight_smile:

I want to folder articles and drag articles to sort by myself. Instead of adding the serial number manually.

1 Like

All these updates look great to me!

1 Like

All I need was nice toc and now I am waiting for the release :slight_smile:

Glad to hear that you like the addition of our ToC feature!

I like how the table of contents is a separate view, available to all pages :+1: — In contrast, currently, in bear, I manually create my own table of contents at the top of each page.

One suggestion is, can there be a setting/preference on whether we want the Statistics tab or the Table of Contents tab to show by default? (or maybe bear can simply remember the last used tab globally, for all pages)

Another sort of tangential personal request, can there be a keyboard shortcut to pop-up the table of contents? — For me, ideally, this hypothetical TOC pop-up could be immediately searchable/filterable by typing once the pop-up appears. — Then typing enter/return would automatically navigate to that TOC element.

Hi Burt,

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. I can see that this is your first post on the forum, so welcome to the community!

Regarding the Stats and ToC tabs, this information panel can be toggled using the ⇧⌘i shortcut.

When opened, if you drag the panel it will pin it to the screen, which can be moved around as desired. Hoping this helps!

Regarding the ToC pop up suggestion, the closest we have to that at the moment is the ⇧⌘i shortcut mentioned above.

As this isn’t exactly what you are looking for i’ll add your vote to this feature request and pass it onto the team to consider.

In the meantime hoping you’ve a Beary nice day!

I want to support folders. Can you consider the coexistence of folders and tags?

Hi there,

Regarding folders, it’s not a feature we plan on implementing into Bear.

Instead, we use the tagging structure to give users more freedom.

If you aren’t used to organising your notes, or if you have come from using folders it can be tough to get going.

To help you start thinking with tags, you can check out: How to think with tags, create a habit in Bear – Part 1

Hoping this helps!