Note Outliner 1.2 I. Purpose and Use A. What Note Outliner Does Ą Note Outliner adds an additional item ("Outline") to the menu that pops up when you tap the envelope icon that belongs to a note on the Notepad. If you tap the "Outline" item, the Note Outliner opens displaying the note as an Outline. Ą Note Outliner provides tools for building and manipulating outlines. It has the basic outline tools for creating new topics (aunt, sibling, child), expanding and collapsing families and the entire outline, promoting and demoting families and cutting and pasting families. In addition the outline can be scrolled. A selection of 4 label types (none, bullets, Harvard and Legal) are available. Ą Note Outliner will also let you put checkboxes beside topics. Ą Note Outliner does not have heavy-duty outline features: In the Notepad a topic that covers more than one line reverts to the right margin. In addition you have very little control of the presentation font and styles (but you can adjust these in the notepad after you're sure you won't be modifying the outline in the Outliner again). Note Outliner provides a form of "body text" but only if you have also installed Note Editor. B. How to Use It Ą You need to start with a note in the notepad. You can use a new, blank note if you want. Tap the envelope icon (the "Action" button) associated with the note you want to edit, and tap "Outline". You can now modify the note in the Outliner; When you quit Note Outliner (by tapping the close box) your changes are made to the original note (If you decide to forego the changes, tap the cancel button). Note Outliner is a text-only creature. If the original note contains drawings or ink, the drawings or ink will be lost (unless you tap "Cancel). II. Installation Ą Note Outliner installs the same way that most Newton packages do. However, no icon will appear in the Extras Drawer--the package can only be accessed from the action button in a note. III. Basic Features A. The Standard Stuff 1. Time and Battery Level Ą These are just like in the Notepad. 2. Close box Ą Closes Note Outliner and saves the changed note to the Notepad. If you don't want to save your changes, tap the Cancel button. B. Scrolling Ą The up and down arrows scroll the outline (15 pixels at a time). C. Overview of the rest of the screen The major features of the view are: 1. The Outline Title Ą This is the editable box across the top of the display with a rounded wide black border. If there is no title, it will be blank. 2. The Outline itself Ą This is located in the center-left. Ą The display has several features: a. A topic which has hidden subtopic is shown in boldface; b. The currently selected topic is shown in outline style. c. The text of the currently-selected topic is shown above the outline. Ą Tapping on an outline topic will make it the selected topic and put its text into the box at the top. It will also hide the subtopics of the selected topic they were visible, or make visible the first level of subtopics if they weren't. Ą Tapping at the far left of a topic will cycle through a blank, a box, and a checkmark. 2. The Action Bar Ą The bar to the right of the outline provides buttons for manipulating the outline. See description of the buttons below. 3. The Entry Paragraph Ą Above the outline is a paragraph showing the text of the currently selected topic. Changes in this box will be reflected in the outline immediately, although you won't see the effect until you tap the outline again. In addition the buttons at the bottom of the screen provide some auxiliary functionality: a. The "Ff" button Ą Lets you select either a big font (12 point) or a little font (9 point) for displaying your outline. The selected font will be applied to the outline in the Notepad also when the outline is saved. b. The "i" button Ą Brings up a short explanation of Note Outliner. c. The "Cancel" button Ą Closes Note Outliner without saving any changes back to the Notepad; d. The "Labels" button Ą By default, Note Outliner applies "Harvard" style prefixes (I.A.1.a.i.) to the outline. You can choose one of three other options, however: No prefix; bullets; and legal (e.g., 1.2.1). Each of these options is saved with the outline in the note, so if you reopen an outline, you should see the same prefixes. e. The "Ă?" button This brings up a pop up menu with the options "All" "On" "Off" and "None". "On" means new topics will be created with a checkbox. "Off" means they won't. "All" put a checkbox beside and topic that has a blank and turns checkboxes on. "None" removes all checkboxes and checkmarks and turns checkboxes off. f. The "Txt" button This button provides a body text capacity of a sort. The button will only function is Note Editor (also mine, also free) is installed. If clicked, the text of the current line is examined. If the current line contains a "link token" (explained later), it will open the note that the link refers to in Note Editor; if not, it will open a new blank note in Note Editor. When you close Note Editor the note will be saved and the link token for the note will be put at the end of the text for the topic. A link token is text that looks something like Ç241|4565433Č, which is one way of representing information needed ot find a note. g. The "()" button This will hide the the Action Bar. Tap again to show it. IV. Working With Outlines A. The Action Bar 1. "A " (Create Aunt) Ą Creates a new topic at the end of the family of the currently selected topic, which is one level shallower than the currently selected topic. 2. " S " (Create Sibling) Ą Creates a new topic at the end of the family of the currently selected topic, which is at the same level as the currently selected topic. 3. " C" (Create Child) Ą Creates a new topic at the end of the family of the currently selected topic, which is one level deeper than the currently selected topic. 4. "===" (Collapse to Level 1) Ą This will fully collapse the outline. Only the level 1 headings will be visible. 5. "+|-" (Collapse or Expand Current Family) Ą This will expand the current family to show the next level if it is hidden, or collapse it if the next level is already showing. 6. "-==" (Expand Entire Outline) Ą Makes every topic in the outline visible. 7. "+++" (Fully Expand Current Family) Ą Makes every topic in the current family visible. 8. " Ç " (Promote Family) Ą Makes each member of the current family a level shallower. 9. " Č " (Demote Family) Ą Makes each member of the current family a level deeper. 10. " X " (Cut Family) Ą Copies the current family to a special clipboard and deletes it. This works like a Macintosh cut: each succeeding cut replaces the contents of the clipboard. ("X" is used because it is the command key for the Macintosh "cut" command.) 11. " V " (Paste Clipboard) Ą Pastes the contents of the Clipboard immediately below the currently selected topic. ("V" is the Macintosh command key for the "paste" command.) B. The Undo Button Ą Undo is generally supported for action bar activities. (The built-in undo for changes to a paragraph applies to the entry box, as well). Undo is not supported for simply clicking on the Outline, since the process is not destructive. V. How Note Outliner Interprets Text In A Note A. How an outline is saved in the Notepad Ą An outline in the Notepad has the title on the first line. Each other line of the outline appears underneath, preceded by a tab for each level of indentation (which causes the various levels to line up correctly). Only the title line has no tabs. Ą Each line of the outline has the prefix you've assigned. If it is the Harvard styles, or legal, the prefix is separated from the text by a period and a space (not a tab). The Bullet prefix is separated only by a space. (The prefix type is preserved in invisible information in the Note.) Ą You care about all this information if you want to have Note Outline read Notes as outlines that it didn't create. Otherwise you can ignore it. B. How Note Outliner reads a note in the Notepad Ą Note Outline will read unmodified outlines it created fine. Everything else need to be considered carefully. 1. Finding Titles Ą Note Outline will always assume the first line is a title. If you don't mean to have a title, put in a blank line. 2. Line Levels Ą Except for the title, every other line in an outline is assumed to at level one or more. If a line has one tab at the beginning, it is a level one topic; two tabs a level 2 topic, and so on. If a line has no initial tabs, it is assigned to level one anyway. This works fine if none of the text is tabbed (e.g. a bullet list), but may seriously misread an outline created by another program. The natural fix, if the outline is on a desktop computer is to replace each carriage return by a carriage return and tab. If the Note is on the Newton, you might want to consider using Note Editor (also freeware) which let's you do find and replace on Notes. 3. Prefixes Ą Note Outliner determines what part of a line is a prefix by first checking whether the prefix type was previously saved in the Note by it. If so, it does a good job. Otherwise is looks at each line for a ". ". If it find it in the first 10 characters, it will treat the portion in front of the ". " as the prefix. This works pretty well except for lines that start with abbreviations like "Mr. " Ą Some outline programs put a tab after the prefix. Again the best answer is to search for .tab and replace it with .space. VI. TidBits Ą Note Outliner works pretty well as for making bullet lists or checklists (set labels to "none"). This may seem like overkill, but what the heck. Ą Note Outliner works fairly well with long outlines. Redrawing slows down a bit but not horrendously. Nonetheless, you should try to avoid using it for really long outlines. The Notepad gets upset with long notes. My advice is that if you get to around 4,000 bytes, you should stop. (You can find out how many bytes a note takes by clicking the little "i" button.) VII. Copyright, etc. ĄĘNote Outliner is c. S. Millman, 1995. My email addressees are StephenM3@aol.com and StephenM10@eworld.com. Ą Note Outliner is freeware. If you like it, use it with my blessing. Ą I usually try to help people who have trouble with my software, but you are using this entirely at your own risk. For what its worth, I haven't had any disasters recently.