Folio

Take notes in markdown

A beautiful markdown note-taking app for GNOME (forked from Paper).

Contributions are appreciated, see below for how to help translate Folio!

Some of Folio's features are:

• Almost WYSIWYG markdown rendering
• Searchable through GNOME search
• Highlight and strike-through text formatting
• Application theming based on notebook color
• Trash can
• Markdown document
• Optional line numbers
• Optional auto save
• Open links with Control-Click
• Link to other notes in Folio
• Automatically create links for bare URL's and e-mail addresses

Get Folio

The recommended way of installing Folio is through Flatpak or Snap:

From Flathub

From Snapcraft

Manually

Go to the current GitHub Releases page, select the latest release, and download the asset called Folio-YY.##.flatpak. Once downloaded, use flatpak install Folio-YY.##.flatpak to install Folio on your computer.

You can use the same process to update to a newer release as well.

Libraries Used

• libadwaita
• gtksourceview-5

License

The source code is GPLv3

Notes Storage

By default, notes are stored in ~/.var/app/com.toolstack.Folio/data, but that can be changed in preferences

Translations

Folio has been translated into several different languages by users. Previously this was done by submitting pull requests to add the various language files.

Folio now has an online localization portal, if you would like to participate in translating Folio, send an e-mail and request access for the language you would like to translate.

Build Instructions

Flatpak build requires flatpak-building installed.

Local builds (NOT RECOMMENDED)

• change into the top level source directory
• to configure the build environment (required only once), run meson build
• change into the build directory
• to build Folio, run ninja
• to install Folio, run ninja install
• to run Folio, run src/com.toolstack.Folio

Flatpak builds

• install flatpak-builder if not already installed
• change into the top level source directory
• to build the flatpak, run flatpak-builder --force-clean flatpak com.toolstack.Folio.json
• to build and install the flatpak, run flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean flatpak com.toolstack.Folio.json
• to launch the flatpak, run flatpak run com.toolstack.Folio

Snap builds

• Install snapcraft if not already installed
• change into the top level source directory
• to build the snap, run snapcraft
• to install locally, run sudo snap install ./folio_YY.XX_amd64.snap --dangerous
• to launch the snap, run folio

AppImage builds

• Install linuxdeploy if not already installed
• change into the top level source directory
• create the directory AppImage (if it already exists, ensure to remove all of its contents)
• change into the build directory
• set the DESTDIR environment variable as follows: export DESTDIR=../AppImage
• run build/install with ninja install
• change to the AppImage directory
• use linuxdeploy to build the AppImage: linuxdeploy --appdir=. -d usr/local/share/applications/com.toolstack.Folio.desktop -i usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/com.toolstack.Folio.svg -e usr/local/bin/com.toolstack.Folio --output appimage
• to launch the AppImage, run Folio-x86_64.AppImage

Release instructions

Folio uses a YY.## version format string, where YY is the two digit year (aka 23, 24, 25, etc) and ## is the release number of the year (aka 01 for the first release, 02 for the second release, etc., not the month number).

The release version is located in the main meson.build file, no other files contain the version number.

The full changelog is located in data/app.metainfo.xml.in and the current release for the about dialog is in src/application.vala.

Once updated, edit the flatpak and snap files:

• change into the top level source directory
• edit com.toolstack.Folio.json and update the tag value for sources, also remove the commit hash (don't forget to remove the comma on the line above) temporarily (we'll add it back later)
• change into the snap directory
• edit snapcraft.yaml and update the source-tag

Commit everything to git.

Now go to github and do the release.

After the release is done get the hash value for the commit for the new release tag and then add back the commit line in com.toolstack.Folio.json. Commit it back to git as well.

Two actions should have been kicked off on the github release, one to build the flatpak and the other to build the snap. These will take a few minutes to complete, but once they do, go to each one and download the built assets.

You will need to build the AppImage manually, follow the instructions above on how to do that and retrieve the generated Folio-x86_64.AppImage file.

Extract both zips that you downloaded and rename the resulting flatpak/snap/AppImage to "Folio=YY.XX.[flatpak/snap/AppImage]".

Go back to the release and attach these files to the release assets.

Now do the releases on Flathub and Snapcraft.

Flathub release

• get a clone of the flathub repo: https://github.com/flathub/com.toolstack.Folio.git
• create a new branch labeled "YY.XX"
• switch to the new branch
• edit com.toolstack.Folio.json and update both the tag and commit lines to reflect the new release
• commit the changes
• go to github and create a new PR to merge the branch into master
• commit the PR

Snap release

• after build, login to your snapcraft account snapcraft login
• upload the build snapcraft upload --release=stable folio_YY.##_amd64.snap

Generate translation POT

Folio uses POT/PO files for it's translations, the POT file defines all the strings that are used by Folio.

Before generating the POT file you must have already run meson for the first time and have run a local build.

To generate the POT file:

• change into the PO directory
• run ./print-source-files.sh > POTFILES
• change into the build directory: cd ../build
• run meson compile com.toolstack.Folio-pot

FAQ

Why fork Paper?

Unfortunately Paper is out of date and the developer does not have the time/interest to maintain it any more.

Ok, so what is Folio's main focous

The primary focus of my fork is getting everything up to date and supported for the long term.

A secondary focus is feature additions. Some new features that have already been added are:

• Better handling of escaped characters in code spans.
• Reworking of the format bar to act more like use user expect, including toggling formatting and smarter formatting.
• Control-click to open links in a browser.
• Marking non-markdown formatted links and email addresses.
• Fixed a ton of crashes caused by files without ending EOL markers.
• Automatically pace inserted formatting around current words instead of in the middle of them.