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Project Austin – An Easy to Use Digital Note-taking App for Windows 8

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I had an opportunity this weekend to download, compile and test a great note-taking app for Windows 8. You can download the source code of the app at codeplex.com and read Jorge Pereira’s blog post about Project Austin. Make sure you follow the steps below before compiling the app in Visual Studio 2012. Once you’ve added all required files including the boost library, you can compile and run the app. You can also create an application package by using the Store option and install the app on another Windows 8 computer which meets the setup requirements including a valid developer license.

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You can use mouse or stylus (which I have yet to test with) to take notes with different colors and add photos from your computer or camera. You can add a new page as you wish and choose a different page type. This is where you truly feel you are taking notes on your notepad, well, digitally. The app allows you to view pages and navigate through them. You can delete a page by pressing and holding on it for a while until the Delete application bar shown. This feature works well on a touch enabled device like my Samsung Series 7 slate, but I haven’t found a way to do the same on my HP EliteBook 2530p, a non-touch notebook. Regardless, this is a very cool app at its current form. Try it if you have Visual Studio 2012 running on your computer. (Alternatively you can download and install the free edition of Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 and run it.)

 

 

To build and run this application, follow these steps:

  1. Get the latest Source Code
    1. Download the latest .zip file from here.
    2. Unzip the file to the project root folder (It can be any folder of your choice. We'll refer to it as <project root>.).
  2. Install the Project Code Name Austin Libraries. The Project Code Name Austin Libraries are a set of dlls and libraries necessary for the application to run. To obtain the libraries:
    1. Review the license terms for the Project Code Name Austin Libraries located in license.rtf.
    2. Download austin_libraries_neutral.zip.
    3. Download austin_libraries_x64.zip.
    4. Download austin_libraries_x86.zip.
    5. Unzip all three files to '<project root>\dependencies'.
  3. Install the boost Library 1.47
    1. Navigate to the boost library version 1.47 at its official release point.
    2. Download boost147_0.zip.
    3. Unzip boost1470.zip to 'c:\temp\boost1470'.
    4. Copy the contents of 'c:\temp\boost147_0\boost' to '<project root>\sdk\inc\boost'
  4. Install dbghelp (needed only if you intend to build the Win32 debug flavor of the project)
    1. Launch the Windows 8 SDK. Navigate to this page and click 'download'.
    2. Follow the prompts until the screen where you can select what to install.
    3. On the screen, make sure the 'Debugging Tools for Windows' component is selected, and then start the installation. Note: The rest of the components are optional to the purpose of building and running 'Project Austin'.
    4. Copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\inc\dbghelp.h" to "<project root>\sdk\inc\"
    5. Copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\lib\x86\dbghelp.lib" to "<project root>\sdk\lib\debug\"
    6. Copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x86\dbghelp.dll" to "<project root>\sdk\bin\debug\"
  5. Verify the tree structure

The directory structure under '<project root>' should look like this:

     baja<br>    baja.props<br>    dependencies<br>        hlsl<br>        includes<br>        x64<br>        x64_debug<br>        x86<br>        x86_debug<br>    journal<br>    journal.sln<br>    sdk<br>        bin<br>        inc<br>        lib

6. Open journal.sln in Visual Studio 2012 to build and run.