AllWrite documentation

The file that you are reading right now contains instructions on how to use AllWrite, at least on the parts that aren't self-explaining. If something in this file is unclear, please tell me.

1. Basic writing

AllWrite works like a normal text editor in most ways. It does have some exclusive features that affect normal writing, though, and they will be described in the following chapter.

1.1 - Shortcuts
AllWrite lets you assign your most commonly used phrases (like your name, address, etc.) to the keyboard function keys F1 through F8 . When pressing a such shortcut, the phrase associated with it is inserted into the text. To edit AllWrite's keyboard shortcuts, select Shortcuts... from the Preferences submenu of the File menu.

1.2 - Abbreviations
Since typographical rules strictly deny the use of abbreviations (like "eg", "cm"), AllWrite has been created with these restrictions in mind. If you type a common English abbreviation and press control-tab, AllWrite will replace it with its full word equivalent. If you want to view a list of the supported abbreviations (future versions of AllWrite will let you edit this list), select Abbreviations Supported... from the Help menu.

1.3 - Numbers
Typing a number in digits (like "123") and pressing the same shortcut as above -- control-tab -- will make AllWrite replace the number with its English language equivalent (i.e. "one hundred twenty three").

1.4 - Automatic case correction
You can set up AllWrite to auto-capitalize letters in the beginning of sentences. The capitalization is made while you write. If you need to turn this option off, do so in the Main Settings dialog, which can be found in the Preferences submenu of the File menu.

1.5 - Caps lock disabling
Most writers hardly ever use Caps Lock (a.k.a Alpha Lock), and some people even find it annoying. If you want to get rid of the accidentally-hit-caps-lock risk, you can tell AllWrite to simply ignore the state of the Caps Lock key. To do so, go to the Main Settings dialog, which can be found in the Preferences submenu of the File menu.

1.6 - Intelligent quotation marks
Normal quotation marks (inches) aren't good looking in print, but they are convenient to type, as they look the same both in the beginning and in the end of quotes. Therefore, AllWrite's intelligent quotation marks option is quite useful. This option enables you to choose between six different types of quotation marks, that AllWrite automagically inserts when you type a normal inch character -- sensitively of if it's an opening or closing mark. This option can be toggled and adjusted in the Main Settings dialog.

1.7 - Ergonomic colours
The high contrast between the black text and the white background in text editors can be damaging to your eyes. If you easily get a headache when writing, try enabling the Ergonomic colours option. This adds a smooth yellow background colour to AllWrite's windows, decreasing the contrast between text and backdrop. The option, which gives the best effect if your monitor is running thousands of colours or more, can be toggled in the Main Settings dialog.

1.8 - Forward Delete substitution
PowerBook and iMac keyboards lack a forward delete key, and this can be quite irritating if you are used to typing on normal keyboards. If you are the unhappy owner of a small misfit keyboard (like I am), you can make use of AllWrite's delete key substitution option. Delete key substitution means that pressing option-backspace will give the same effect as pressing forward delete would do on a normal keyboard. Toggle this feature in the Main Settings dialog.

1.9 - Date & Time
AllWrite has two shortcuts for inserting the date and the time into the text. Both are situated in the Edit menu.
To edit the format in which AllWrite inserts the date/time values, use the two pop-up menus at the bottom of the Main Settings dialog.

1.10 - Cleaning the text
If you're new to typing on a keyboard, AllWrite's Clean Text feature might be useful. Using Clean Text, you can remove common typing errors such as double spaces, triple dots instead of ellipses, et cetera, with minimal efforts. To specify parameters for cleaning up your document, select Clean Text... from the Text menu.

1.11 - Twiddle
Twiddling means swapping the position of two continuous characters. This can be amazingly useful if you often do the mistake of typing letters in the wrong order (I sometimes do this mistake!). To twiddle, place the insertion point between the two characters you wish to swap, and press Command-E (or select Twiddle from the Selection menu).


2. Documents

AllWrite saves documents in plain text format, which makes it compatible with most (read: probably all) other text editors. It can, though, save some additional file information, that can only be viewed in AllWrite. This info is documented in this chapter.

2.1 - "About this document"
Having a document window open, you can select About This Document... from the File menu to view and edit information about the document (you can also double-click the document icon at the left top of the text window). This information is included in the file when it is saved, but it is only AllWrite that lets you make use of it. If you open the saved file in SimpleText, you will see only the text, not the document information.
The About-This-Document dialog lets you specify the following pieces of information:

The first four entries, the ones that provide information about the author, can be disabled, so that they aren't included in saved files. To do this, uncheck the Include Author Information box in left-bottom of the dialog.
Since your name and email address probably won't change that often, you can specify defaults for author name, organization, e-mail and homepage. To do this, select User... from the Preferences submenu of the Edit menu.
The Version Info and the Author Name entries will also be visible in the Finder's Get Info dialog for the file.
The Priority and Deadline entries are useful when you use the Organizer, which will be described later in this manual.
All the document information can be included as META tags in exported HTML documents.

2.2 - Saving window states
You can set up AllWrite to not only save the content and document information of a text, but also the position of the window and the text insertion point. To enable this feature, go to the Main Settings dialog and check the Remember Selection and Remember Window Position boxes.

2.3 - File comments
If you want to make additional comments about the file you are editing, enter them into the Comments dialog, which is shown when you select Comments... from the File menu. The comments you enter in this dialog are the same as the ones you can edit directly from the Finder's Get Info dialogs.

2.4 - Automatic font checking
If you are receiving a text file from a remote computer, chances are that the file is using fonts not installed on your system. Most text editors wont bother; they just replace the missing font with a default one. If you don't want this to happen, though, you can set up AllWrite to check all the document's fonts before opening it, and alert you if there are any missing ones.
To enable this option, check the Alert if Used Fonts Are Missing box in the main settings dialog.

 

3. Manipulating text style

1.1 - Basic formatting
To apply a style (which in this case includes both font, size, colour and text face) to the selected area of a document, choose the desired attribute from any of the Font, Size, Style or Colour submenus of the Text menu.

1.2 - WYSIWYG font menu
You can set up AllWrite to show the appearance of your fonts in the font menu. To enable this option, go to the Main Settings dialog and check the Show Font Appearance In Menu box. Please note that this feature is only available if you are running MacOS 8.5 or higher.

1.3 - Using style formats
AllWrite lets you define style formats (or style sheets) that make it simple to add a uniform layout to your documents. A style format is a set of text attributes that can be easily applied to a text selection. You can, for example, define one style format for headings, holding the text attribute Times 14pt bold.
To make use of a style format, select the text you wish to assign it to, and select the format name from the Format submenu of the Text menu.
To edit the style formats, select Edit Formats... from the Format submenu of the Text menu. In the dialog that shows up, use the plus sign (add format), pen icon (edit format) and trash-can (delete format) buttons to make changes to the list.

1.4 - Copying and applying styles
Another way to easily apply a certain text attribute to many different parts of a document, is to copy the attribute into the clipboard. To do this, select a piece of text that uses the desired attribute, and select Copy Format from the Edit menu (or press command-option-C). Once you've done that, you can apply the copied format to selected text snippets by selecting Apply Format from the Edit menu, or press command-option-V.

 

4. Printing, publishing and exporting

1.1 - Printing
To print a document, open it and select Print from the File menu. To quickly print one copy of the document, simply choose Print One Copy from the File menu. To adjust printer or paper settings, choose Page Setup from the File menu.
Needless to say, the printing feature requires a printer.

1.2 - Exporting
AllWrite can export your text documents into a number of different file formats. These formats are described below.

To export a document in any of these formats, open it and select the desired type from the Export As submenu of the File menu.

1.3 - Publishing
When you need to go one step further in presenting you textual content than just styled plaintext files, use one of the following features in AllWrite.

1.3.1 - Export as standard HTML
AllWrite lets you export your text files into HTML, the standard file format on the WWW. When exporting your documents, all text styles supported by the HTML format, are included. To export a document into standard HTML, select Export As HTML from the Publish submenu of the File menu. This dialog will appear.

Make sure the Standard HTML document button is checked and press OK. The dialog will close and another dialog -- the Standard HTML export dialog -- will appear.

In the Standard HTML export dialog, there are three options that affect the way the HTML code is created:

When you have set up all the options for your document, press OK, and AllWrite will ask you to save the finished HTML file.

1.3.2 - Exporting HTML using templates
If you want a more advanced layout than just the plaintext appearance of the standard HTML, you can make use of AllWrite's HTML template feature. A HTML template is a HTML document that contains a layout with headings and page footers, plus two special tags that specify where in the document the page title and the document text should go. When you export a document document using a template, AllWrite merges the template and the text together, inserting the HTML-translated text content at the position specified by the tags in the template file.
The two tags you need to use when creating templates, are:

[insert] -- specifies where the text should be inserted.
[title] -- specifies where the title should be inserted.

In the Extras folder that accompanied this software package, there is an example showing how to create a HTML template.

1.3.3 - Exporting to QuarkXPress
If you have applied style formats on a document, it can be exported into QuarkXPress tagged text. For every paragraph using a defined style format, a formatting tag is inserted. To export a document to QuarkXPress, select Export To QuarkXPress from the Publish submenu of the File menu.

 

4. Using the Organizer

The organizer is a floating window where you can keep the text documents you are currently working with. This is extremely useful if you are working with many texts at the same time, and want a simple way to overview your work.


To add a file to the organizer, open it, and drag the document icon in the left top of the window to the organizer list view. It will immediately show up:
The name in the left column, and the priority in the right one. (For more information about document priorities, look into the Documents
section.) You can not add an unsaved file to the Organizer.
You can sort the items in the organizer either by name or by priority. You change the sorting by clicking on one of the list headings - just like when
changing sorting in a Finder list view. If you choose to sort the organizer by priority, the files with the highest priority are shown first in the list, and the
ones with the lowest, last.

To open an item in the organizer, double-click it, or select it and choose Open from the organizer menu. To remove an item, highlight it and select Remove from the same menu. Note that when removing an item from the organizer, the actual file isn't deleted, it's just removed from the list.
If the deadline of an item in the organizer is passed, the item is marked with a stopwatch icon. This is to to immediately alert you if you have missed the
deadline. The deadline is set up in the About this document dialog of the document (again, see the Documents section).
If you want to easily access an organizer item in the Finder, select it and choose Reveal in Finder from the organizer menu.
To quickly change the priority of an item in the Organizer, without having to open it, select it and choose the desired priority from the Priority submenu of the organizer menu.

 

5. Backup

If you don't want to loose your work in hard disk crashes, you should make backup copies regularly. AllWrite provides some useful features that makes this procedure easier.

5.1 - Specifying a backup target
The first step in setting up AllWrite's backup system is to define a backup target. The backup target is the folder or volume where the backup copies are created. To set this up, do to the Backup Settings dialog, which can be found in the Preferences submenu of the File menu.

5.2 - Making backups manually
To manually make a backup copy of a document, open it and select Make Backup Now from the File menu. A backup copy of the document will be created in the target directory you've specified. If you haven't chosen any backup target, a folder called "AllWrite backups" will be created on the desktop.

5.3 - Setting up a backup schedule
AllWrite lets you set up a schedule for automatic backup making. This works similarly to the way you set up a schedule for hard drive indexing in the MacOS Sherlock™.
When creating the backup schedule, you specify a time of day and which days of the week the backup should be made. On the days given, all items in the Organizer will then be copied into the backup target. All the the copied files of the day are stuffed together into a folder named "Backup" + the day's date.
To enable/disable and edit the backup schedule, go to the Backup Settings dialog and click on the Schedule tab.
To see the current status of the schedule, open the Backup Status palette. You do this by choosing Backup Status from the Window menu.

 

 

7. Libraries

AllWrite supports text libraries, a technology for storing and accessing text snippets easily. The following section describes how to create, use and edit text libraries.

7.1 - Creating and using Libraries
To create a new text library, select "New Library..." from the Library menu (the one in the menu bar, but from here, "Library menu" refers to the menu in the window). You will be asked to save the library file. When you've done so, a floating library window will appear. (The picture shows a library that has been edited, but you'll get the point.)

To add a text snippet to a library window, select "New Post..." from the Library menu, or drag a text snippet to the window's list view.
To make use of a library post, drag it from the window into a text window.
To edit a library post, double-click it, or highlight it and choose "Edit..." from the Library menu. To remove a post, highlight it and select "Delete..." from the Library menu.
Library files are automatically saved every time you change them.

7.2 - Library information
You can enter additional comments about a library file in the Library Info window. To show the Library Info window and view/edit these comments, select About This Library... from the Library menu.

 

8. Using spell checkers

AllWrite supports Word Services, a standard technology that allows text editors to use external spell checkers. Basically, this means that you let another application check the words, while the text editing application provides the spell-checking interface. Even ClarisWorks/AppleWorks makes use of an external spell checker.
If you don't know of any good spell checkers that support Word Services, I can highly recommend one called Excalibur. It's free, and available on its own website.

8.1 - Selecting a spell checking application
To specify a spell checker application for AllWrite, choose Select Spell checker... from the Spelling submenu of the Edit menu. Once you've selected an application that supports Word Services, you can start checking the spelling of your documents.

8.2 - Checking document spelling
To check the spelling of a document, select Check Spelling from the Spelling submenu of the Edit menu. The spell checker app you've specified will be launched, and AllWrite will start processing the text. You'll recognize this process from most other spell-checking word processors.

 

9. Using AppleScript with AllWrite

AllWrite supports AppleScript, the MacOS standard scripting language. This makes it possible for you to create custom functions for AllWrite. Some example scripts are included. Script support will be greatly improved in the next version of AllWrite. Recording scripts is not supported yet, but will also be.

9.1 - The Scripts window
If you want to view a list of all installed AllWrite scripts, select Scripts from the Window menu. A floating window will appear, letting you execute the scripts by double-clicking them. To install a new script, put into a folder called "Scripts" in the directory where the AllWrite application resides.