Feature Request: Notes Section Rework

[mibib7]

I just started using awesomeSheet, and I must say that I am pleased with it.

With that being said, I believe that the note section needs a bit of a rework. The way the note section is currently setup doesn't allow users to organize their information as they want or as they need.

I think that allowing the users to create their own section (like characters, party, quests, story, locations, etc...) would permit users to organize information as they pleased.
I think that the way it would be the most flexible would be to organize notes as a tree structure, with each node having a title and a description. Each users would then be able to add and organize their information as they please.

E.G.:

1. Characters
   1. Party
      1. Party member 1
      2. Party member 2
   2. Friendly
      1. Friendly Merchant -> Because this node is selected, its description is visible to the user.
      2. Guard Captain
   3. Nemesis
      1. Evil Lich guy
      2. Orc warlord
2. Locations
   1. Elven Kingdom
      1. Capital city
   2. Some Dungeon
3. Quest
   1. Main Quest
4. Story
   1. Important Artefact

[zombieFox]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback, glad awesomeSheet is working for you.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this request, could you help me with a few more details? Let's explore this problem further so that we can try and solve it together. How about we look into the "What' and the "Why" before we settle on a solution and before I invest time into rebuild work.

Are there not enough Note section types? eg: As you listed, there should be more headings like characters, party, quests, locations?

How much information are you adding in the Notes section?

Do you find that you need to rearrange the Notes often? If so why?

Any screencasts/demos (or even sketches) about the above "What" and "Why" questions will help me understand.

Thanks for any further help and if it makes it easier I would be happy to have a one to one chat with you over a video call to better understand the issue.

[mibib7]

Hello and thank you for the response.

Firstly, I will address my needs as a user. What I want from an online character sheet is to replace the need for any physical sheet and notebook. Admittedly, I am the kind of player that takes notes on everything, from minor NPCs to major event related to the main story line. Combined together, the last 2 points make its that any sheet needs to accommodate for a lot of information. And, the greater the amount of information, the greater is the need to easily organize it, modify it, and most importantly, find it.

Currently there are 2 static section type; Character and Story. What this means is that when organizing his information, a user must place it in either of those section. I will admit that these two section can fit any type of information, but it also mean that there is no way for a user to make a distinction between major character and story element and minor ones.

By giving the possibility to create their own section type, or sub-type, the user now has the possibility to organize his notes in a way that accommodate the information he wants to keep.
For example, lets say a user want to keep tab on 2 minor NPCs, 3 major ones, one which being an enemy. Currently all five of those entries would be in the character section.

As you can see, the only way to distinguish between them is to read their entry, or write some kind of token to make them stand out. This screenshot also display another problem, the need to re-organize as new information emerge. Some of the NPCs have relationship between them, but because the notes are always displayed in the order they were created, there is no way to easily group together notes that relate to each other.

With that being said, lets explore a way remove these problems by taking the previous example as base for improvement. By adding the possibility to add new section type, the user could organize the characters like so:

Some good organization	Some Evil organization	random NPCs
Major NPC 1	Nemesis	Minor NPC 1
Major NPC 2	Minor NPC 2

Now that we have new sections, another problem could arise, we have too many of them. For example, still taking the previous example, but adding new sections, we could end up with something like this:

Some good organization	Some Evil organization	random NPCs	Main Story Line	Side Quest	Locations
Major NPC 1	Nemesis	Minor NPC 1	Devils summoning	Help little old lady	Creepy dungeon
Major NPC 2	Minor NPC 2		War with the elves	Bandit Contract	Important City

Some of these could be regrouped together by a general theme, like character and story. Sorry I don't have a table for you, I don't know how to make multi-column table in markdown, but I am sure you can see where I am going with this. By giving the possibility to add sections and sub-sections, you give the possibility to organize information using any theme or structure the users would want it. In the end it could look like a tree structure like I first proposed for example. I am not pretending it is the best solution though.

[DigiBear]

A quick way to make Notes already a lot easier to work with I think without going into the complexity of the previously mentioned system is by letting us give titles to the notes and making them collapsable. That we decently large amounts of information can be stored without having to worry about the section taking over the entire screen.

Here's a quick little sketch of what I mean.

[mibib7]

As a programmer myself, although I'll admit that I have no experience with javascript, implementing a tree structure is not considered a difficult task. A quick search lead me to this article.
The previous proposition, would amount to a tree limited to a depth of 1, meaning it would be less versatile than full tree implementation.

[zombieFox]

All valid points. I do believe a way of storing notes in a tree like structure is the way forward, even it technically more challenging for myself.

@DigiBear yes titles and minimising would be a great help here. As would minimising all the parts of Display Sections.

I'm still investigating solutions for improving this area of the webapp, so please bear with me.