Here is a fresh new beta of Leap 2.5: Leap 2.5 Beta 3. (Sorry, I don't have any release notes with this one right now.)

Ok after having Leap 2 open and viewing them side by side.

I like the changes. The Tag Cloud is back.

The Dropzone thingy is available.

The UI is more customizable (allowing me to put the Info on the left side of the window instead of floaing)

I noticed a "Managed" group for files.

I'm sure there is much more but so far it's looking like a collection of good UI changes and there are probably internal tweaks as well.

It's really nice, but you seem to be giving plenty of ammunition to those complaining that Lep and Yeap are losing their separate identities! It doesn't bother me too much; I'm intrigued to see what you're planning.

I guess the number 1 thing I would hope for when the release version of 2.5 comes out is removing the limit of 500 tags displayed in the lefthand pane; if we've got the space, it seems to make sense to show more, rather than leaving whitespace and making us click "All Tags".

Never mind, I got it. Holding the command key down before clicking on "all types" give me the exclude option.

I'm pretty excited by the functional improvements. But I really like the grey & blue look of Leap 1 & 2 (and the cheerful green look of Fresh)and am a bit disappointed to see the green/brown tones of Yep 2 creep into what is still Leap 2 (also disappointed to see them in Yep 2). I know this is a really subjective thing, and there will be people saying this looks much better than the previous version, but this very subjective nature of the matter means that it might be wise to be careful about changing colour schemes too frequently and without consultation. It would be great if you could add colour options for the lefthand pane as well as the existing thumbnail pane.

%20 is the code for a space character.

To start a multi-word tag, begin with a quote character, for example:

"More than one word

then end it with another quote, or press Return

The result will produce a tag of:

More than one word


Terry

<strong>Guest:</strong><br /><br />That looks great!! The dropzone is back!! Thank you very much, because I am no friend of fresh but I love your dropzone for tagging, it fits perfect in my workflow!

+1 for un-URL-encoding the space character.

[Why are you encoding it in the first place?]

Hmmm… I'm not seeing this behavior in Terminal. Anyone else seeing this?

No problem. Have you checked out DTerm from Decimus? It's now freeware and very cool for quick Terminal access. Cheers!

Jim

Leap 2.5 is really superb. Congratulations. And the documentation is quite thorough and useful, too.

A simple way to add or remove the dropzone would be very helpful.

Although, the manual says that the info window and the inspector show the same thing, I found that the info window does not show tags and that when I enter a description into the info window it does not show up in the inspector and vice versa.

I haven't used "description" before. Do others find it useful?

Thanks again for a great job.

Fred

I see a new version of Leap is available. I also read that it now uses tag clouds. I Presume this is similar to how Yep was changed?

I like Leap, I still like the version of Yep that still uses Yepshot. I am glad that the team at Ironic keeps at innovation, however, I really do not like the tag could. IF I need to stay with leap as it is, that is alright. Leap is already very nice. IT seems a little counter productive to have a product that some of us really do need for organizational help, then to pull the rug out from underneath.

Sorry, just expressing my own little opinion here. I get confused looking at a cloud. Too much scattered information. I Like it much better to scan the vertical for the matches.

To each his own. Cet la vie.

David

<strong>Guest:</strong><br /><br />(Sorry about using Guest for this, my membership hasn't been approved yet)

Okay, just did a little more exploring and it doesn't appear to just be Sparkle having this problem. It seems to apply to ALL modal dialogs. I'm getting the same behavior when I open up the "Licensing..." dialog, as well as "Check for update..." (Sparkle) dialog. Leap is doing something that is causing the main window to front itself, and in the process, it winds up blocking modal dialog windows (which then cannot be reactivated for input).

I'm running 10.6.2 on a 1,1 MacPro, and again, this is with the version of Leap downloaded today (11/26/09) from the main Leap web page (I'd use the About dialog, but... *shrug*).

Unfortunately, dialogs don't show up that way, and will travel with the app's window that spawned them. It's a fairly common window handling bug, I've seen it in plenty of betas, and caused it myself on occasion. Unfortunately, once you get an app into this situation, there's no viable way for the user to get themselves out of it except to "force quit", or sometimes they can "blindly" end the modal dialog (if it is still receiving input events). I've been able to blindly end the Sparkle dialog in Leap, but couldn't get the Licensing one to blindly close itself and give input back to the main window.

A Guest wrote: I also have mixed feelings about the tag cloud. Any possibility of having a preference option to allow change from cloud to previous Leap style if desired?

Yes please, hear hear to that. I do not wish to be a stick in the mud. I appreciate progress. And yet, organization can get pretty overwhelming for some brains out here, mine anyway.

It may take extra work to allow tag clouds to turn on and off, but it would be easier than rearranging my brain and the way I process information. ;-)

Tag clouds do seem to be growing in popularity within the Ironic developer community, and with some users. I do not wish to rain on anyones choices. But here we are (in the northern hemisphere) just turning the calender to colder, cloudier, winter days to come. I am really wishing fore more blue skies overhead in the weather patterns and in my software choices, and more cloudless days ahead.

David

David:

Leap and Yep remember the last app chosen from the Open With… menu item as the default app. Maybe we could make this preferential or handle it like Deep.

Some additional comments and suggestions:

1. Problems:

a) Email doesn't work. I use gmail and while I didn't expect Leap's email to be useful to me for that reason, I was surprised that it didn't work at all. Other programs do open the default email, usually opening another window in my browser. Not a problem, because I wouldn't use it, but thought you might want to know.

b) If I select a file in the main file window and then click on "i" above, a window opens on the right and says "no documents selected." If I then click on the next file above and then click on the original file, the window does show the information - a minor, insignificant bug.

2) Future suggestions.

a) I think the battle about clouds versus lists of tags has a lot to do with the different ways one uses Leap. I am kind of neutral about the tags because when I do a search for a tag I almost always know the tag I am looking for to start with. But if possible, I would favor having an option as to how to show the tags.

b) OR. It would be very helpful to have a logical OR search. I think right now that If I want to OR, I have to select a group of files, flag them, select another group and flag them, then search on the flag. Finally, go back and remove the flag tag. Unless there is an easier way to do that.

c) Just as there is a simple "flag," I'd like to see another kind of flag that would show up in the flag column, a flag for the presence of a comment about a file. Right now the only way (I think) of knowing this is to have a column column open in the file window.

d) Make the dropzone optional.

e) Have a preference to activate or inactivate Yep functions. If I am not using Yep,I don't want to inadvertently invoke some of its functions - don't want to know about Yep if I am not using it,

All minor suggestions. I find Leap to be very useful.

Fred

<strong>gholt:</strong><br /><br />While it's not the same as disabling it, you can drag the dropzone nearly off the screen. I put mine on the upper right next to the spotlight icon and then forget about it.

It would be very helpful to have a logical OR search. I think right now that If I want to OR, I have to select a group of files, flag them, select another group and flag them, then search on the flag. Finally, go back and remove the flag tag. Unless there is an easier way to do that.

Not sure if it is exactly what you are saying, I think you are wanting to search within results ... I have discovered how you can add a tag as a NOT tag by command clicking the tag. I have found that to be very useful. When I am looking for a series of items which contain some but not all of a tag grouping, I select a tag with the command key (option key - I forget?). Then it is orange and it acts as a NOT (semi boolean) search criterion.

Just to clarify, I am not trying to start any conflict about tags as they were (2.0.3 which I am still using) or tags as they are now (with clouds). I accept that some find clouds not only a useful addition but also very cool. I don't have a problem with that. But here I sit with my own brain, trying my best to make this all work my own way. I can't apologize for my own organization style, and neither would I want to be perceived as attacking anyone else's. Just call it a strong preference for me.

David

Hello,

I see “added ‘Untagged’ menu item” in the release notes of 2.5.4. Where is this menu item ? I cannot find it…

TIA

Be very cautious with this option! I am filing a ticket to change its behavior since it's too easy to select a broad Location.

Jim

Fortunately (in my mind) this will stall at 100,000 files but I still think this should only be applicable in certain Locations.

Yes, this is really useful. Although I haven't had any problems yet, I agree that some way to stop us from accidentally choosing a broad Location would be nice.

Hi there,

On my search for tagging apps I found the ironic software-bundle. I took a deep look into it. It's all a great piece of software, that has the potential to become splashing software though the bundle of app's gives a lot of confusion too. Several app's are overlapping in their functionality. I have tried to figure it down to this:

Leap: almost as good/ in some perspectives an even better replacement for the Finder; but needs polishing: it includes managed files though lacks a scanning feature
Yep: is like Leap for managed files and includes a very fast scanning feature
Deep: is LEAP for images
Fresh: nice little feature to overlook your recent actions
Tagit: base app; it's functionality is baked-in all others app's

On the whole I would place YEP in the middle as THE software, knowing that one can handle it's paperless home with it. The other app's are extensions to me. So the extension Leap gives you the ability to rebuilt YEP into a Finder-replacement for all your files; not just the managed ones. Deep is an extra extension for Leap with the ability for colourcode-searching for files. Fresh is the extension that gives you way to look for recent files.


As others also advise I'd like to see some extra functionality incorporated.

Viewing files (e.g. images with the Deep-extension) should have the ability to rotate the viewable content with a single keystroke
The sort order should become part of a bookmark
YEP and it's extensions should have the ability to belong to a system start-up
There should be a tag-director in listview alongside with the tag-filter with cloud: look at Tags for a good impression
Assignment of tags in other app's should work more user-friendly: look at Tags that with a short-keystroke pops up a frontmost window in which one can assign tags to even more than one file/item (eg Mail); dragging more than one email onto LEAP or YEP doesn't work

Has the development stopped?

It's been easy for me to get that impression.