Gramotki

Version 1.5.6 (DRAFT)

Table of contents:
Introduction
Installing Gramotki
Using Gramotki

Note
Notes Storage
Notes List
Calendar
Preferences
Searching for a text string
Troubleshooting

Ideas and Uses for Gramotki
Specifications
Known Incompatibilities
History of Gramotki
Gramotki Home page (Internet link)

Introduction

Thank you for taking a look at Gramotki. It is our sincere wish that you find it both enjoyable and productive.

Gramotki is a small "sticky notes" type of application, which may be run continuously. In addition to low memory requirements and full drag and drop support, Gramotki is not encumbered by the 32K limit for styled text. There are many other useful features that you will soon discover. Installation is accomplished easily without the need for an installer program.

Gramotki saves what you type every second of inactivity.

Installation

After unstuffing, simply drag the Gramotki folder to the desired location on your hard disk, and it's ready to use.

You may wish to place an alias of Gramotki in your Apple Menu Items folder or on your desktop. You can also place an alias to any notes storage file into the Startup Items folder (inside the System Folder) if you desire to have Gramotki running upon startup.

Do not place the Gramotki application itself into the Startup Items folder - this may cause a crash at startup.

Gramotki's memory partition is set to a default of 384K (preferred 512K). To adjust it select the Gramotki application icon while in the Finder, and select "Get Info" from the Finder's file menu or press Command-I. If you intend to print notes, change the preferred memory value to at least 400k. Likewise, if your use of Gramotki increases significantly, increasing memory via the Finder will remedy any future "out of memory" instances.
If you have small amount of free memory, set this value to 256K, but don't try to print in Gramotki - since the print manager uses the application's memory, you may experience a crash with error -25 (fatal out of memory).

Under MacOS 8 you may note that Gramotki uses more memory than specified in the "Get Info" box; this is because Gramotki frequently uses temporary memory, if it is available, to speed up operations.

Using Gramotki

Note Window

Anatomy of a Note

The close box (top left corner) closes a note (but does not delete it) the same way a Finder window is closed. The boxes in the top right corner: the one on the right will toggle the note between a title bar and a note; the other will adjust the width and height of a note to the optimal. The grow corner (lower right) allows you to adjust the note size incrementally by dragging. You can drag note around the screen via the title bar or an invisible border at the right and bottom.

Text Editor in a Note

Text editor in the note supports all standard features and also some other (listed below):

Action	What it does
Double click	on alias: opens item via Finder
Triple click	Selects entire line
Command click	on URL: uses InternetConfig to launch helper application on switcher: toggles switcher state on picture: resizes picture
Option click	on picture: restores original picture size
Control click	on unlocked note: If you move mouse up it will scroll up, if you move mouse down it will scroll down. Click to exit this mode. You do not need to press the control key in a locked note.
Command Left Arrow (Command Right Arrow)	Moves cursor to the beginning(end) of the line
Option Left Arrow (Option Right Arrow)	Moves cursor to the beginning(end) of the word
Option Up Arrow (Option Down Arrow)	Moves cursor to the beginning(end) of the text

Note can be locked to prevent modifications. In this case you won't be able to resize pictures and change the switcher state. You can toggle the locked state and change the color of a note by using the "Note" menu.

Creating a new Note

To create a new note, choose New Note from the file menu or type Command-N. A Yellow note will appear. You can specify in the preferences whether to place the date and time in a newly created note or not.
At any time you can paste the creation date in the note using the Paste Creation Date command in the Edit menu.
If you hold down the shift key while creating a new note all of the switchers will appear in the note.

Deleting Notes

To delete a note, select it in Notes List and choose Delete from the File menu or invoke Command-K. To delete an opened note just delete it's content and close the window - the note will be deleted.
For your convenience, there is an option in the preferences to disable the delete command when more than one note is selected.

Exporting Text from a note

To save a note's text as a Simple Text file choose Save Text As... from the File menu. You can export any portion of a note using the Clipboard or Drag and Drop. Note, that embedded objects will only be seen in WASTE-based applications (one exception - aliases won't be seen in any other applications, since Gramotki use very different method of handling such objects). List of applications that use WASTE framework to handle text editing can be found on The WASTE Page.

Importing Text to a note

To import text file into a note choose Insert Text... from the File menu. This will import into Gramotki any Simple Text or WASTE-based text file including any embedded objects. (Note that embedded desktop items created in other WASTE-based applications will import correctly).

Placing Desktop Item Into a Note

To place desktop item into a note you can drag the file, folder, or application's icon from any Finder windows or from the desktop onto the desired note. You can even drag another Notes Storage File onto a note. (Please note that launching a different Notes Storage File will automatically close the current file and open the desired one). The original file/folder/application is not copied into a Gramotki note, hence an alias is established from which to launch the file, folder, or application. If you drag the alias to the note, it will be resolved.

Placing Switcher Into a Note

You currently have only one way to place switcher in a note - hold down shift key while creating new note. This will create note with all of switchers inserted in it. You can then move any switcher to another note.

Notes Storage

Creating a Notes Storage File

From the File menu, select New Notes Storage...

From here the standard dialog dox will prompt you to select a location for your Notes Storage file and give it a name. If the default notes storage file isn't in the folder with Gramotki, it will be created automatically and called "Notes Storage".

Opening an Existing Notes Storage File

Simply choose Open Notes Storage... from the File menu, or type Command-O; the standard dialog box is presented from which you can choose the desired Notes Storage File to open. Or, you can double click on the Notes Storage file icon to open.

Notes List

Anatomy of the Notes List

The close box lets you close the Notes List window. Scroll bar can be used to scroll the Notes List. Each note is represented by one line, which contains the note icon (it shows color of note and locked state) and text.
The text is the first line of the note (limited to 200 characters), so if you wish to title each note, use the first few words or line to do this. If the first item on a note is a graphic, icon, sound, switcher, or alias, the first text on that note will appear in the notes list regardless of how far down it is. If you specify Recognize header of text in preferences, the first paragraph of text, delimited by empty line will be treated as the header.
If the text and icon are gray - note is already opened. If text style is italic, the note is in its shrinked state.
If you double click on desired note it will open.
If you hold the option key down while opening the note, the note will open in its reduced state.
If you want to rearrange the notes simply drag selected notes to desired place.

How to open Notes List

Type Command-L or select Notes List from the Special menu.

Calendar

Anatomy of Calendar

Gramotki provides a calendar window allowing date data to be dragged and dropped to any note. The date will appear in the short or long format as specified in Preferences; by holding the shift key down (while dragging), the opposite format will be used.
While using the calendar, if you select Auto Advance from the Special menu, the active calendar will also default to the current date/month/year.
To make the active calendar show weekdays on top (as on the example image), select Show Weekdays from the Special menu.
Varying the font size from the Text menu, also varies the overall calendar size proportionally.
If you option-double-click on a date in calendar a new note for that date will be created.
To find a date reference just double-click on a date in the Calendar.

How to create calendar

Select Add Calendar from the Special menu

How to remove calendar

Just close calendar window

Preferences

Security

Protect storage with password...
This provides simple password protection. A flag in the notes storage instructs Gramotki to request a password, which is stored as a clear text. Previous versions will open password "protected" storage files just fine.
Delete only one note at a time
Since many notes could be erroneously deleted (not an "undo-able"transaction) selecting this will disable the delete menu if an attempt is made to delete multiple notes simultaneously.

In the new note...

You can choose whether to place or not to place date and time in newly opened notes.

User Interface

Long date format
Selecting this will change the date expression default to short for further notes creation or dragging of dates from the calendar.
Recognize header of text
Selecting this allows you to allocate the first line of a note as the header (for display in the list mode or while a note displays its title bar only. To make this feature work, there should be a full blank (no spaces) line following the text that makes up the desired header.
Open/close window animation
Selecting this enables finder zoom rects during opening and closing of Gramotki notes, list or calendar.
Shrinked note moves independently
Normally top left corner of note in shrinked state is always at the same position as in normal state. This option allows you to move note in shrinked state independently of normal state.
Sunday is last day of week
Adjusts display of calendar for many countries, where Sunday is last day of week and Monday is first.

Text

You may establish a default or "standard" font for notes with any installed font and with any desired font size. Keep in mind that you will retain the ability to vary your fonts/sizes in any created note. This is particularly useful in pre-determination of the calendar's font, since calendar adjustments are limited to font sizes (which also determine the overall calendar size).

Searching for a Text String

Select Find from the Edit menu or press Command-F, enter the search string into the dialog box and press the Return key. You can search in an active note or in all of the notes.

If you search in all notes, you can specify whether to search entire note or just header (first line of note, delimeted from other text with an empty line). After searching in all notes, ones that contain substring will be selected in the Notes List.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes you may experience problems with a Notes Storage. This may be the result of a damaged file system (after crash), intrusion of another application or extension in Gramotki's memory partition or other abnormal circumstances. General rule to prevent this is to make a backup as often as possible. We use a little AppleScript script to backup the notes storage at every shutdown.

What to do if you haven't backup? You may try optimize Notes Storage (this also repairs it). If damaged storage produces an error at opening try to hold down the control key when opening (this may be difficult on MacOS 8 - just select Open from contextual menu) for 3-4 seconds to initiate optimization. Otherwise you can start optimization from the Statistics dialog box.

During optimization Gramotki will perform a simple integrity check of every note and optimize their location in storage file. If a note is damaged and can't be restored it will be deleted. You will be notified about that and will be able to cancel optimization if you want. If the note can be restored it will be done.

You may disable automatic opening of notes at opening of storage by holding the shift key while opening.

Ideas and uses for Gramotki

As a Notebook

You simply create a note and type (or drag from another application) any information. If you want to have this note always on the desktop - simply leave it open, adjust the size as needed.

As a Daily Planner

You can create a new note, drag the date required from the calendar window to the note. Type activities planned for the day. Use of bold along with plain styles for comments may embellish your work. To find a particular note, just dluble click on the desired date in any calendar window. Since activities are not automatically updated by the program you may wish to update dates and times as needed.

One more Daily Planner

(Contributed by Michel ANDREU-SABATER)

Set desktop picture to image with weekly, monthly or daily table (we will make these tables available on our server). And then place Notes in respecitive cells.
The screenshot is obvious.
Please note, that if you draw desktop picture in a "Draw" (not "Paint") application and save as PICT format you can place image over your preffered desktop pattern and have it automatically scaled as specified in preferences

As a Next Day Reminder

You may make a note for yourself or other users which appears on the screen when you turn your computer on the next time. This is done by placing the note in the startup items folder inside your system folder. You can even leave a note that covers your entire screen.

As an application, file, or desktop item launch pad

Simply drag desired files onto a note, double click their icons to open.

As a Media Organizer.

You can use notes to store comments to any document (just drag that document to the note to have instant access). You can even paste picture preview in the note. If you will need to find the document anywhere later just use the Find... command.

As an Address Book

You can use notes to save your contacts information. In conjunction with an Apple QuickTake or other image camera you can even store photos (and voices).

As a Calendar

You can open and arrange multiple calendar windows as needed. Window placement information is saved between launches. Each calendar can show any month in between January 1904 and December 2039.

As a Checklist

You can build simple checklists using different switchers (they appear in note when you hold down the shift key while creating new note)

Specifications

Gramotki requires System 7.5 or greater.

A Gramotki Preferences file is established in the Preferences folder inside the System folder (this file contains registration data and other internal information). This is the only intrusion into the system folder; there are no inits, cdevs, or any other files placed into the System Folder.

Selecting "Statistics" under the special menu, produces a dialog box containing the number of notes, storage size and used storage expressed in kilobytes.

Known incompatibilities

Screen resolution changes (often required by games) - should be avoided while using Gramotki. Making such resolution changes may result in displacement of notes on desktop because Gramotki is coded to expect a persistent desktop.

ATM® Deluxe (thank to our PrePress bureau) - if you launch Gramotki at startup, the fonts manged by ATM will not be available in Gramotki's menu and in notes. This is because ATM does activating of fonts in the background. If you ran in this problem try to move your favorite fonts in the System's Font folder.

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