Note Editor I. Purpose and Use A. What Note Editor Does Ą Note Editor adds an additional item ("Editor") to the menu that pops up when you tap the envelope icon that belongs to a note on the Notepad. If you tap the "Editor" item, the Note Editor opens displaying the note. Ą Note Editor provides a series of tools for making working with notes easier. The tools, described below in more detail, fall into three basic categories: 1. Note Viewing Ą The two basic viewing features are scrolling of the note and the ability to remove the notepad lines to be able to see the note better. 2. Text Manipulation a. cursor tools Ą Note Editor provides a set of buttons for moving the cursor and highlighting text, and easy access to the style palette. b. text tools Ą In addition, Note Editor lets you do Finds in the Note, Find and Replace, and spell checking. 3. Drawing Ą The drawing tools are designed basically to aid in making diagrams with text boxes and lines and arrows and for modifying such diagrams. Note Editor lets you put a box around a text paragraph that will move and resize with the paragraph. It also lets you turn normal drawing lines into "rubber bands" that let you move just one end. Finally, it will draw and remove arrowheads. 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 "Editor". You can now modify the note in the Editor; Anything you can do in the Notepad should work the same in Note Editor (except drawing a line to create a new note). When you quit Note Editor (by tapping the close box) your changes are made to the original note (If you decide to forego the changes, select "Revert" from Note Editor's Action button before closing Note Editor.) II. Installation Ą Note Editor 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 Editor and saves the changed note to the Notepad. If you don't want to save your changes, use the Revert option first. 3. Recognition toggle Ą This is in a weird spot (upper right) but otherwise works just like the one in the Notepad status bar. B. Scrolling Ą The up and down arrows scroll the note (18 pixels at a time). C. Removing the Guide Lines Ą If you tap the action button next to the close box, the second item reads "No Lines". Tapping this will remove the "guide lines" from the Note. This is only temporary. The guidelines will reappear in the Notepad and in the Note Editor if you close and reopen the Note. Ą The main reason for this option is to be able to see your work better. I sometimes find it hard to be sure what punctuation I've written when a semicolon or a comma is on top of a guideline. It also makes structure diagrams clearer. D. Reverting Ą Tapping the "Revert" item on the action button's popup menu at any time will redraw the original note. All your changes since opening Note Editor will be removed. Revert is available at any time. IV. Text Features A. Text Entry 1. ->, <- Ą These two buttons move the text cursor right and left (just like the similar arrows on the keyboards). You may not be able to see the text cursor if no keyboard is open, but its there. 2.," and "<-" buttons respectively except that the cursor is moved to the next or previous word in the paragraph, rather than the next or previous character. 3. H Ą This will highlight the word the cursor is presently within. Its a good way to find the cursor. Its also a good way to substitute another word. 4. Ff ĄĘCalls up the standard Newton text style palette. B. Text Content: Items on the Action Button 1. Find First Ą This opens the Newton's normal find box. That's all it does. Enter a string in the Find box, tap find, and Note Editor finds the first occurrence of that string in the note. This is different from the "normal" Newton search rule which looks for all entries containing the string. It is much more in the style of a computer word processor. (Searches are case-independent, by the way.) 2. Find Next Ą In the same vein, if you've already found the first occurrence of a string, Find Next will find the next occurrence. Successive taps will find successive occurrences. Again, this is like the corresponding feature in most computer word processors. 3. Find and Replace ĄĘAgain taking a cue from computer word processors, Note Editor will let you replace all occurrences on one string with another string. Tapping this item brings up a slip (the "Find and Replace" slip) in which to enter the string to find and the string to replace. Tapping the "Do It" button does it. You will see the progress. ĄĘThe Find and Replace slip must be closed manually. 4. Spell Check ĄĘThe Spell Checker really works, but you may find it frustrating because it uses the dictionaries in the Newton and these are very small. (If someone has a big Newton dictionary he or she wants to provide to the Newton community, I'll set Spell Check to use it if its there.) Basically, you need to tap the start button. Spell check will then highlight the first word in the text it can't find in a dictionary. You can then do several things: a. You can just fix the word, b. Your can tell Spell Check to add the word to you user dictionary (tap the "Add" button). c. You can ask spell check to suggest words (tap the "Suggest" button). THIS CAN TAKE A LONG TIME--UP TO ABOUT 10 SECONDS. Spell Check's suggest algorithm is optimized to correct errors common to users of Graffiti. Again remember that the Newton dictionaries are quite small. i. If you want to replace the highlighted word with one of the words on the popup menu of suggestions, just tap the word you want to use. If you want to skip the suggestions, tap somewhere off the menu. ii. If Spell Check can offer no suggestions, no menu appears. However, the "Suggest" button stays highlighted while Spell Check is looking for suggestions, and unhighlights when it is done. d. You can go to the next suspect word by tapping the Next button. V. Drawing Features Ą I need to do a lot of structure diagrams (other people call them "wire diagrams"). These consist of a bunch of boxes of different shapes containing text connected by lines or arrows. They tend to convey hierarchy or ownership structures or agreements, cash flows or transactions. When I first got the Newton I thought it would be ideal for structure diagrams. Boy was I wrong. First, drawing a box around text was a pain. Then drawing an arrow was nearly impossible. And then when I had to move an element or modify it (and I always have to do that many times), the work was immense: drag the text, but the box stays put. Drag that. Now try to move the line or arrow, but you can only move it as a whole, so you can't make it connect anymore from one box to the other. Ą The drawing features in Note Editor try to cut down on the burden the Newton imposes, without creating anything the Notepad is unprepared for. With these features you can create rectangular or rounded text boxes that move when you move the text. The box will also resize when the text does (either because you add more text or because you resize the paragraph manually). You can also create lines which can be edited by moving just one end and which can have an arrowhead. (The lines, however, do not self adjust when the boxes are moved. Moreover, you need to delete the arrowhead before you reorient a line.) A. Boxes Ą The buttons with a T in all relate to boxing text. The "+t" button creates a new text box in the upper part of the note. The boxed "T" buttons create the type of box shown around the paragraph containing the currently selected text. The unboxed "T" button removes the box from the paragraph containing the currently selected text. Ą After you box a paragraph, you will probably want to resize it. To do this, you do the same thing as in the note pad: Hold the stylus down outside the paragraph until you get the highlight sound, then draw a circle-ish figure that goes within the paragraph. The resultant "resize" border, can be dragged. It can also be resized (by dragging the lower right corner. Ą ou can move the text box more easily by selecting all the text in the box and moving the text: the box will follow after you let go of the text. Ą The two box shapes and borders are just two of the many the Newton is capable of, but two seemed to be enough for me. B. Lines, Rubber Bands, and Arrows Ą When you put shape recognition on and draw a line, you get a Newton line: if you highlight it, you can move the line, and you can stretch its containing box, but you can't reorient the points or move one endpoint without moving the other. Oddly enough this is just a dumb choice Apple made. The Newton recognizes open polygons and will let you move each vertex of an open polygon independently. If you make a two-vertex open polygon it looks like a line but behaves like a rubber band: you can move each vertex separately. Ą To do this, you need to select the rubber band (by holding the stylus down at its start until you hear the highlight sound and then dragging to its end). The resulting highlight will have a highlight circle at each end (which you won't see if you've got a line). Drag the circle and the end follows. Oddly enough the only difference between a Newton line and a Newton rubber band is that the data structure is called a line in one case and a polygon in the other. Ą Note Editor lets you turn a line into a rubber bank. If you highlight a line and tap the boxed "|" button, the line becomes a rubber band. (Don't worry, if its already a rubber band, nothing bad happens). If you tap the unboxed "+|" button, a new rubber band will be added towards the top of the note. Ą Finally, if you want an arrow, select a rubber band, and tap the "Ć" button. This will draw a pretty good arrow at the second endpoint of the rubber band. (Which end is the second endpoint? The one you ended at. The Newton remembers which point you started the drawing with and which you ended with, believe it or not.) Ą The arrowhead is not self-updating. Its orientation depends on where the line was when it was drawn. This means that if you want to move a rubber band containing an arrowhead, you should first remove the arrowhead, then adjust the line, then put a new arrowhead on. To remove the arrowhead tap the button labeled "No Ć". VI. TidBits Ą I find this is good way to take long notes. It doesn't really prevent the Notepad from getting mad at long notes, but most of the time the Notepad only does this is you add more text or paragraphs while in the Notepad. Ą I sometimes use the box ability to give my Notes a title that stands out. Then I move the dividing lines so only the title shows. This way I can see what's in a whole bunch of notes. To review a particular note, I then use the editor. VII. Copyright, etc. ĄĘNote Editor is c. S. Millman, 1995. My email addressees are StephenM3@aol.com and StephenM10@eworld.com. Ą Note Editor 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.