Niman

Platform notes

Supported today: Android (minSdk 35), Linux (Wayland), Windows. macOS/iOS are not built yet, but the code is kept portable. New tests must be portable too (see conventions).

Export is one feature on every platform: Markdown, HTML, PDF and EPUB are in both choosers, note and folder alike. EPUB is platform-neutral Dart — no engine, no WebView — so a book is built the same way everywhere; PDF goes through each platform’s own printer (below).

Android

  • Storage: plain dart:io file access, gated by MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. SAF tree grants are not a substitute — they only open content://, never the filesystem.
  • FUSE cost: every file stat/list is a round trip, so all disk reads run off the UI isolate (Isolate.run); Drift writes stay on main.
  • Reminders: exact alarms fire with the screen off or the process killed. Grant notification permission and, in Niman’s App info page (Informazioni app), turn on Allow background usage (Consenti l’utilizzo in background) — an app the system will not start in the background never fires an alarm.
  • Launcher shortcuts: long-press the icon (see shortcuts).
  • Home-screen widgets: the Niman Todos and Niman Note widgets (see widgets).
  • PDF export: through the system WebView’s print adapter, in-process: no browser is installed or run, and the PDF’s text stays selectable. A folder’s PDF zip prints each note the same way, one PDF per note. A WebView that refuses the print (a broken system component) falls back to drawing the note page by page, pictures included; that PDF is a picture and cannot be selected, and the app says so when the file is written.

Linux

  • Wayland supported; window owns close-request handling (dirty-check on close rides it).
  • The app draws its own title bar — sidebar toggle, window title, and the minimise / maximise / close buttons — in place of the system one. The close button meets the same unsaved-edits check the system close does.
  • Closing the window ends the process there and then, skipping the library teardown libc runs on the way out: on NVIDIA that teardown segfaults inside the EGL driver and left a core dump behind every close. Nothing of ours is skipped — the dirty-check ran, the notes are written and the engine is down before the window goes.
  • Spellcheck via hunspell (spellDictionaries in library settings), plus a per-library personal dictionary (right-click Add to dictionary, <library>/.niman/dictionary.txt).
  • The tray icon, where the desktop provides one. Its menu has Open Niman at the top, the quick actions (today’s journal entry among them), and Quit. By default the window’s × hides Niman to the tray and leaves it running, so desktop reminders keep firing; Settings → Appearance → Close to the tray turns that off, and then the × quits as it used to. Quit asks about unsaved notes exactly as the × does. On Linux the click on the icon is the menu — a StatusNotifier item has no right click of its own — and Open Niman is how the window comes back. On Windows the right click opens the menu and a left click brings the window back.
  • Markdown files open in Niman: the desktop entry declares text/markdown, so Niman is offered for .md files and can be made their default app. Double-clicking one opens it in the Niman already running, or starts one.
  • The niman command is the package’s, not the AppImage’s. The Arch package installs it at /usr/bin/niman, so it is on PATH. The .tar.gz ships a niman launcher at its root beside the bundle: put the extracted folder on PATH, or symlink that launcher into ~/.local/bin, to get the command. The AppImage puts nothing on PATH: run its own file with the same arguments — ./niman-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage --quick-note, or ./niman-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage note.md — or symlink the AppImage itself as niman. The flags are under shortcuts.
  • Dropping files and folders on the window is the window’s own GDK drop destination, which takes the text/uri-list a file manager offers. The frame around the window says a drag is over it, and the drop opens or imports what it names (organization). The portal’s file-transfer target is not taken: it carries a one-time key to resolve over D-Bus rather than paths, and preferring it is what left a drop on KDE/Wayland doing nothing at all (#224). A drag from a sandboxed app that offers that target alone is therefore not taken either, and says so in the log.
  • A tree row’s right-click menu can show the note in the file manager (over org.freedesktop.FileManager1, falling back to xdg-open on the folder) or open it in the default app — see organization.
  • PDF export: printed headless by the first Chromium-family browser on PATH — Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Helium: one engine under many names. On a machine without one, a note is drawn as pictures of its pages — pictures included, but not selectable — and the export asks before it starts, because a long note is minutes of drawing; a folder’s PDF zip is not offered.

Windows

  • Ships its own SQLite (sqlite3 package bundles the native library via Dart build hooks — Windows has no system sqlite3.dll). First build on a machine needs network to fetch the prebuilt binary.
  • Ships the Visual C++ runtime too (msvcp140.dll, vcruntime140.dll, vcruntime140_1.dll, next to niman.exe), so the installer and the zip run on a Windows that never had the redistributable installed. A release build fails if they are missing.
  • spellcheck via hunspell, same setting as Linux, plus the per-library personal dictionary.
  • The app draws its own title bar, as on Linux. The window keeps its system behaviours — resizing from the edges, Aero Snap, Win+Arrow — because the frame is still there underneath; the app only paints over the caption.
  • Hovering the maximise button opens the Windows 11 Snap Layouts flyout: the runner answers the hit test over the button’s rectangle, which the title bar reports on every layout it takes, so the flyout follows the bar’s real layout rather than a fixed spot (#169). The three buttons are non-client for that, so the app no longer draws their hover highlight on Windows; the × still meets the unsaved-edits check.
  • The installer can associate .md and .markdown files with Niman (a checkbox, on by default). Niman joins the files’ Open with list; Windows leaves the choice of default app to you, so it becomes the default only when nothing else claims .md, or when you pick it. Double-clicking one opens it in the Niman already running, or starts one.
  • The niman command is the niman.exe in the install folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Niman for the per-user install). The installer puts nothing on PATH, so call it by path or add that folder yourself; the flags are under shortcuts.
  • Dropping files and folders on the window takes the paths Win32 hands the window (WM_DROPFILES), and the drop opens or imports what it names. The frame that Linux draws while a drag is over the window is not drawn here: reporting a drag that is over the window and has not landed needs an OLE IDropTarget registered on the Flutter view, which this pass does not do (#224). The drop itself is unaffected.
  • A tree row’s right-click menu can show the note in Explorer (selected) or open it in the default app — see organization.
  • PDF export: printed headless by Edge, found through the shell’s App Paths key or its install folder. A note falls back to being drawn as page pictures where Edge is missing — asking before it starts, as on Linux — and a folder’s PDF zip is not offered then.

Density

On Linux and Windows the note tree and its right-click menu are drawn for a mouse: shorter rows, a narrower slot for the folder chevron and the note icon, and a tighter menu. A phone or a tablet keeps the thumb-sized rows and the long-press sheet. The choice follows the platform’s own density (compact on a desktop), not the window’s width, so a tablet in landscape keeps the touch sizes.

Open notes

On Linux and Windows the open notes are tabs in the title bar, and the ones you were working in come back when you open the library again — see editing. The desktop window also splits into two panes, each with its own tabs.

On an Android tablet, or any wide window without the app’s own title bar, the same tabs head the notes instead of sitting in the title bar.

On an Android phone the same open notes are reached from a switcher instead of tabs: a count on the note bar opens the list. One note is on screen at a time, and the phone has no split: a phone’s width holds one note.

The command palette is Ctrl+Shift+P on the desktop. On a phone it is its own thing, apart from the library’s search: two fingers dragged down anywhere open it, and so do the ⚡ on the Search tab’s bar and Command palette in an open note’s ⋮ menu. The Search tab searches notes. Either way the palette offers only the commands that can run where you are; Settings → Commands lists them all, with their keys and what each one needs to show (an open note, a wide window, the desktop, and so on).

On a device that has never had a hardware keyboard, nothing mentions keys you cannot press: the palette’s rows and Settings → Commands drop the key column (what a command needs is still there), and the palette’s footer says the pin is a tap. Plug a keyboard in and they come back.

Typing in the palette also finds settings, listed after the commands and the notes: pick one and the settings open on that row. The rows of the keyboard and Commands pages are left out, since the palette already lists those commands itself.

Pinned commands head the palette before anything is typed, above the ones used lately. The pin on a command’s row pins and unpins it, and Alt+P does the same to the selected row. Pins belong to the device, like the shortcuts, and a pinned command still shows only where it can run.

Keyboard shortcuts can be changed wherever there is a keyboard: on Linux and Windows, and on Android with a hardware keyboard attached, the same screen under Settings. Without a keyboard the screen says so instead of opening.

Zen mode (F11, see editing) is Linux and Windows only. It needs the app’s own title bar, which is where its thin bar goes, and a phone is already one note on one screen. The window is maximized for it; if the window manager declines, Zen still hides everything but the note.

Dropping files and folders on the window (see organization) is Linux and Windows only: a phone has nothing to drag from. On Linux the window draws a frame while a drag is over it; on Windows the drop lands without that frame, which needs an OLE drop target this pass did not add (#224).

Opening a file outside any library (Ctrl+Shift+O, see organization) is Linux and Windows only for now: Android’s picker hands over a copy of the file, which could be read but not saved back.

Sharing into Niman (Android) goes the other way: another app’s Share menu offers Niman for text and for a Markdown file, and a file manager’s Open with does for a .md. Shared text is appended to the quick note and the note opens; with no quick note chosen yet, the choose/create screen opens and the text lands in whatever note it picks. A shared file is copied into the library root as a new note — its name kept, uniquified like any other — and opened. A copy, because Android hands the sender’s file as a read-only content:// reference, not a path Niman could edit in place. A Notion export (a .zip) shared the same way is imported instead of copied as one note. That copy is made in the background, so the app stays responsive while a large share is read, and it is capped at 512 MB: past that the share is refused rather than copied — the sender’s text arrives instead, if it attached any.

The side panel (outline, tags, history beside the note, and the journal’s calendar) shows on any window at least 1000 px wide: desktops, tablets, a phone in landscape if it is that wide. A phone upright has no room for a note and a panel side by side, so this is a decision rather than an omission: the note’s ⋮ menu opens the same three there, the outline and the tags as sheets and the history as its screen. Where the panel shows, its left edge drags to make it wider or narrower, like the tree’s edge. It stops growing before the note gets narrower than 360 px, and it keeps its width for the next launch.

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