Copyright: Copyright Longreach Scientific   Mon Oct 28 15:10:37 1996


Notebook Help © 1996 Longreach Scientific Resources

You can access this help file at anytime from the program by pressing the F1 key while the notebook program has the focus.

Introduction 	 The Main Page	Changing the Font (Settings)

The Toolbar will dock to any of the 4 window sides.

Tool Bar Buttons

 Calendar

 Lists

 StopWatch

 Search

 Back One Day, Forward One Day, Today

 Cut, Copy, Paste

 Backing up and Synchronizing Notebook(s)

 About

Program Information

The Bottom Line, Registration and Licensing this Program

Known Bugs

Files Associated with this program

Settings: Customizing Fonts and Colors

If you’re a keyboard fan

Getting a Menu

Time Stamping

Time Stamping Notes

Formatting Text to get rid of extraneous carriage returns.

Formating Text

Hidden Keyboard Features.

Hidden Keys


Introduction

Welcome to the electronic world. I’ve kept a notebook for years now, each day making a note or two, maybe more, on what I did, to whom I’ve talked, all the stuff I’d like to remember but I just can’t. Along the same vein, I’m always in possession of innumerable scraps of paper with really important information on them. I bought a “Notebook” computer but I couldn’t find the equivalent of my paper notebook and scraps of paper so I wrote this program. I’m finding it pretty much handy, maybe you will too.

Unlike most programs there’s really no content that comes with this one.  When you first run it you’ll have nothing to look at, well except for the calendar.  There’s also little in the way of an interface. It’s meant to run when you start up your computer and just be there for you to jot notes on. Ok, it’s got a few more bells and whistles but they’re there to make things easier.

The Nickel Tour

The Main Page is for today’s notes. You get a fresh one every day. The old one is squirreled away. You can move back and forth between pages using the toolbar and the calendar, but as I said there’s no content built in so the first time isn’t very dramatic.

The toolbar is the primary interface. It’s dockable so you can drag it around the window to wherever suits your psyche.  You can toggle on menus and use them, but in the land of computer real estate it’s not location but size, so they’re hidden to start. You can access the calendar, a list manager ( for those little scraps of paper ), a stopwatch,  a search tool, back and forth day scrolling and a few other common actions. The calendar has a Settings button for changing the main page font and the calendar colors. The calendar also has Alarms, talk about handy.

That’s it. There’s more detailed information in the rest of the help file. I hope you find this helpful and unintrusive!


The Main Page

Notebook organizes notes by day. You can type them in or cut and paste to the page.  Each day you’re given a “fresh” page on which to make notes and the previous days notes are saved.  Fresh is enclosed by quotes because there are a couple of caveats. First curly brackets get special treatment. If you start a line (a line meaning up to the carriage return ) with “{ }”, bracket, space, bracket, or “{}”, bracket, bracket, it’s considered a  checklist item of sorts.  It’s not until you put a character between the braces, “{x}” for example, that it gets saved as part of a day’s notes.  This lets you carry over things from day to day until they’re either done or you can’t stand to look at them anymore.

The other caveat to fresh is notes from future days. It’s possible through the Calendar to add notes for a day(s) in the future. When that future day rolls around the program automatically adds that note to today’s page.  See the Calendar, [image] ,  and Notes help pages  for more information.

When pasting text from other sources you may find extraneous carriage returns make it hard to read. You can  reformat by selecting the text, in the notebook, and pressing the F4 key.

If you want to timestamp a note locate the cursor where you’d like the timestamp and press F5.

Depending on your screen size and resolution the initial font for the notebook may be too “loud”. You can customize the font by using the Settings dialog.


Calendar

This is a 5 week calendar. Using the Settings dialog you can change colors for different days. There are 4 scrolling buttons in the top center. The two outside ones scroll the calendar by months. The two inside ones scroll by week. To the right of those buttons is a drop down list for selecting months and also a spin control. And then again to the right of that is a spin control for selecting the year.

Each day has a 2 item menu: Notes and  Alarm . You just click over the day you’re interested in to get the menu. Notes lets you view the notes for that day. Once you are viewing notes for a day you can scroll back and forth through days. Alarm lets you set and edit alarms for that day.

The Lists and Search buttons are duplicates of the toolbar. They’re here so you don’t have to go back while you’re using the calendar view.


Lists

The List dialog has two parts. On the left is a list of the lists and on the right is the contents of the list selected.  To add a new list type your desired list name in the edit control and press Add. To remove a list, and it’s contents, select the list name in the list box and press delete.

Each time the program changes to a new day the lists are searched. If any line in the list begins with “{x}”, where “x” can be anything, that line is added to the day being archived and deleted from the list.

Lists are available from both the toolbar, [image], and the Calendar , [image].


Stopwatch

Start : Resets the stopwatch to 0 and starts the timer.

Lap : Records the current elapsed time and the lap time.

Stop : Stops the stopwatch.

Export to Notebook: This will export the list of lap times to the end of today’s page.

Close : closes the stopwatch dialog and toggles the tool bar button off.

The stopwatch toolbar button operates as a toggle. The first click opens the stopwatch the second click will close it.


Search
Searching

You may search your notebook for one or two pieces of text. If the second Search For edit box is left blank only the first one is used. The search defaults to a logical “and”,  i.e. look for both pieces of text. You can select the radio button “or” to change to looking for either piece of text.

Enter the text for which you are searching in the Search for edit box(s). Click on Start or press return. That’s it. Clever interface huh? Maximum Hits will stop the search after it’s found that many occurrences. Month’s back limits how far back the search will look. Done, closes the search dialog. Search results are listed by day. Use the backward and forward arrows to scroll through them.

Searching sometimes isn’t sufficient if you’re trying to reconstruct your thoughts from a specific time period. You’ll need to search for a keyword which will show you a particular day. Then use the Calendar and Notes to scroll around the week and try and remember. Good luck!

Search is available from both the toolbar, [image], and the Calendar , [image].

Tips:

Can’t find something?

Are you searching back far enough in time, the default is the last 6 months.

Is the back arrow enabled. Results are presented by page and you may have to back through them.


Scroll
Scrolling

These toolbar controls let you scroll sequentially through notes from previous days. You can scroll back as far as you’d like and hit the Today button to slam you back to today. You can also use the Calendar and Notes menu item on a particular day to scroll through days.

You cannot scroll forward to a future day using these toolbar buttons [image]. This prevents you from accidentally entering notes for the wrong day.  You can enter notes for future days but you have to go through the Calendar and Notes menu item.

Neither of these will let you edit notes from a past day. Think of it as ink. And please don’t try and change your computer’s clock to fool the program. Instead of fooling it you might just make a fool out of it.


Cut, Copy, Paste

These are generic Windows’ controls. If you don’t already know these keyboard shortcuts you’re encouraged to learn them. They come in handy just about everywhere now.

Cut : 	ctrl-x, removes the selected text and puts it in the clipboard

Copy :	ctrl-c, makes a copy of the selected text in the clipboard.

Paste :	ctrl-v, pastes what’s in the clipboard to the cursors current location.

Undo: 	ctrl-z, undoes any of the above.


Menu
Getting and Using Menus

The original mindset of this program was to make everything as close as possible and it’s hard to get much closer than a click on a button. That is if you like using a mouse. For those of you who are keyboard fans pressing F2 will toggle menu’s on and off.  From the menu you can toggle off the toolbar.


TimeStamp
Time Stamping Notes

Just before press time I got an inquiry about using Notebook as an activity log. I’m not sure what will come of it but I added a time stamping functionality of sorts. If you press the F5 key you’ll get a time stamp in  todays’ notes wherever the cursor is positioned.. It’s too kludgy right now to merit a Toolbar button. If you want to change the time stamps’ format go to the settings dialog. You get GMT, Greenwich Mean Time and 24 hour time format options there.

When you are using GMT or the 24 hour format the time stamp includes the date, Mon Oct 28 19:53:31 1996, for example.  When you’re not you get something like this, 2:54 PM:.


Formatting Text

This is another late breaking and pretty handy feature. Many times when you paste information into the notebook you get something with too many carriage returns. It takes up space and is hard to read. If you highlight the text and press the F4 key notebook will remove all the extraneous carriage returns. If you don’t like the results use Ctrl z to undo it.


Hidden Keys

These are features which either are so infrequently used they don’t merit a toolbar button or are new and it’s not yet clear they belong in the toolbar. Function keys seemed like a good compromise.

F2 Getting a Menu

F5 Time Stamping Notes

F4 Formating Text


Sync
 Backing up and then Synchronizing Notebook(s)

Some General Comments:

I’ve been using a desktop as well as a laptop computer for awhile now. I fooled around with Microsoft’s briefcase but  I never really warmed up to it.  Plus I wanted to be able to make notes on both my computers and then be able to synchronize them when I had the time.  While developing synchronizing I didn’t want to lose any data so I also added easy backup capabilities. The drill became backup, then synchronize and it’s kind of stuck. Synchronizing’s not available until you do a backup. I should note that I did this using a network connection between the two computers. If you have 2 computers I highly recommend you invest in a couple of network cards and cables. You don’t have to get the greatest, slickest, fastest cards just something middle of the road and it will pay for itself with its convenience in no time.

Using Backup:

The “Notebook Synchronize or Backup” has two parts to it but they’re incestuous. On the left is the backup button and a browse button. You browse for a directory where you want the file to be stored. I confess I was a little lax here and it asks you where you’d like to save “1996.nbk”. It’s really looking for the directory and will save all the Notebooks data  files . If you are using 2 notebooks and synchronizing them it will also backup the synchronized notebooks files. So before you jump into backup you may want to browse for another notebook.

In browsing a network for another notebook with which to synchronize you may want to use the network neighborhood as opposed to drive letters.  You’ll get something like “\\Ianslaptop\c\ NOTEBOOK\ 1996.nbk” as opposed to “d:\notebook\1996.nbk”.  I don’t automatically assign my notebook a drive because my desktop PC often automatically scans the drives connected to it. If my Laptop’s  hard drive has stopped spinning to conserve power, then it’s just another useless delay waiting for the drive to start spinning.

To summarize backup, you browse for a place to put the backup files and also for another notebook with which to synchronize. Then back them both up.  LocalNotebook and RemoteNotebook subdirectories in the backup directory are created to keep notebooks separated. The directories you browse for are saved so you don’t have to do it again.

Synchronizing:

Once you’ve backed up, Synchronizing is enabled. Synchronizing is easy, you press the synchronize button and then the “Today” ”, [image],  button on the remote notebook if it’s running ( see note 1 below). What happens during synchronization merits a little explanation. The program compares alarms, lists, archived days and the current day. Alarms are straight forward. A superset of both notebooks’ alarms is created. The current day, archived days and lists are all synchronized using some rules.

How Synchronizing works:

Local Notebook	Remote Notebook	Synchronized	Rule(s)
{}alarms are quirky sometimes	{x}alarms are quirky sometimes, you had a logic bug when the program was started after an alarm had expired.	{x}alarms are quirky sometimes, you had a logic bug when the program was started after an alarm had expired.	The local notebooks entry from the start of the line matched the remotes but was smaller so use the remotes’. The two entries are considered the same and one is checked so consider it checked.
{x}Pay your health insurance	{}Your health insurance is due	{x}Pay your health insurance {}Your health insurance is due	Although both entries are similar they aren’t considered the same.
Go to the dentist Go to the dentist Go to the dentist	Go to the dentist	Go to the dentist	The smaller day (local) is compared against the larger day (remote) line by line. “Go to the dentist” is repeated in the smaller file and is considered a duplication.

The Disclaimer:

You can see that there’s a possibility that information will be lost. It’s a trade off between keeping lots of duplicate information and keeping the essence of the information. Notebook was meant to keep track of small amounts of disparet information which may or may not be useful and keep it in an easy searchable format.

You can backup and synchronize as often as you like. Only files which are outdated or different are changed so the process is faster after the first time around.

Notes:

1) 	When you synchronize two notebooks the one doing the synchronizing knows it should update today’s page. The remote notebook doesn’t. When you synchronize with the remote notebook you replace the notebook.day file with a new one. Pressing the “Today”, [image], button on the remote notebook will show the new notebook .day page. If your remote notebook is running you should press the today button before making any new entry. Notebook will load in the new notebook.day file automatically when a new entry is made and overwrite the entry you were trying to make.

1) 	The remote notebook should be on today’s page. It shouldn’t be scrolled back, searching or anything else. Don’t worry if you accidentally synchronize while they are. You’ll get an error and they won’t synchronize, that’s all. When notebooks are scrolled back or searching they have the archive files open and you get a sharing violation.

1) 	While archived, past, days are compared one to one,  the comparison for the current day receives special treatment. First the reasoning. You have a list of things to do for which you’ve created {}, bracketed check items in the notebook on your desktop. You synchronize  them with your laptops notebook, take them somewhere on the laptop, check a few things as done,  and come home that night with no interest in plugging the laptop in and working some more. The next day the items you’ve checked on one notebook, the laptop, are archived on the day they took place and the corresponding items on your desktop’s notebook are still hanging around. What synchronizing does is compare today’s page with both the other notebooks today’s page and the last archived day in each notebook. So it will pick up your previous day’s checked items as having been checked.

1) 	Comparisons include white space. If you synchronize and it doesn’t do what you expect perhaps there is some white space preventing the program from getting an exact match..


About
The About Box

The About Box contains License and Registration information. This program is distributed as Shareware. The idea is you try it, and if you like it, you buy (Registration) it. Since it takes some time to evaluate its usefulness, it won’t start hassling you for 30 days from the first time you use it. There’s no need to wait those 30 days, however, if you decide it’s a worthwhile investment!


Alarms

Alarm is a catch all for reminders, birthdays, anything you want to put a date and time on. You can get to this dialog through the Calendar , [image]. Alarms are kept as a list by the program. Each new day it searches that list. After the search you get a Message Box showing all of that day’s alarms. During the day, as alarms expire, you get another Message Box with just that alarm.

From the Calendar, click on a day. You get a popup menu. Select Alarms, and you’ve got a dialog to edit that day’s alarms.

Alarms: This list box shows the day’s alarms, you probably don’t have any right now.

Alarm Name: This is the actual alarm text you will see.

Alarm Time: The time of the alarm, remember AM is different than PM.

Frequency : How often you want this alarm to occur. Alarms with a frequency of once are removed from the alarm list and added to the day’s page on which they expired. The other alarms hang around until you delete them.

Message Box: If this is checked then when the alarm’s time comes up you get a Message Box. Otherwise you don’t get a Message Box as the alarm expires. The alarm will always appear in the first Message Box for all the day’s alarms.

Visible On Calendar: The alarm will appear on the calendar on each day for which it is valid.

Add: Takes the parameters above, constructs an alarm and adds it to the alarm list. You must press the Add button to add an alarm. If you make changes and press Done without pressing Add you will lose those changes.

Delete: First select an alarm from the Alarms list. Press Delete to remove  that alarm.

Apply: First select an Alarm from the Alarms list. Make any changes. Press Apply to update the selected alarm.

Using GMT :

Switching to GMT using the settings dialog can produce some pretty puzzling results. The notebook calendar uses your computers local time. The interface to alarms is through the calendar. If you try and set an alarm for a GMT which is not the same day as the calendar day you’ll get an error.

For example, if you live on the East coast and you try to set an alarm for 2:00 am October 23rd, you will get an error. This is because 2:00am October 23rd GMT is really 10:00pm October 22nd local time. The interface wants to work with October 23rd so you’ll have to go to October 22nd to set your alarm.


Notes

Notes is another way to view and edit your notebook. You can only get to this dialog through the Calendar , [image]. From the Calendar, click on a day. You get a popup menu. Select Notes, and you’ve got a dialog to view and maybe edit  that day’s notes. Editing is qualified here because you’re only allowed to change today’s or  a future day’s notes. It’s the ink metaphor again.  Nobody can accuse you of doctoring your notes, unless he finally wins the presidency, in which case he might do anything.


Registration
Program “Registration”

Registration is such a benign word. It starts like regular and makes you feel part of the crowd. When you register your car they give you a license plate with some numbers on it and take your money. We don’t make any license plates here but we’ll give you a number and gladly take your money. It’s 20 US dollars, thank you very much. Rest assured, we’ll do our best to re-distribute it wisely.

30 days after the program is first run, if you haven’t registered it, it will put up a dialog hassling you each time you start it. The dialog gives you a program number and want’s a key to match up to that number. You can get the key from US and you can also send  US the money. To give you the correct key we need your key.  To get this Key click on the “?”,  on the toolbar to get the About Box. Then press the “Registration Key” Button.  Write down the “Program Key” and send it to US, with a check or money order. Remember to include your ADDRESS.  We’ll send you back “Your Key” by e-mail or snail mail. In the mean time, don’t worry about your data. The program won’t lose it, it will just hassle you.


Settings

Settings lets you change the calendar colors, the font for the main page, GMT versus local time and 24 versus 12 hour time format.. You can only get to this dialog through the Calendar , [image].

If your computer is set for a local time other than GMT, and you check GMT, remember to keep that as a consideration when using alarms. . If your local time is GMT then you don’t have to check this box.


US

Longreach Scientific Resources

Box 549

Orr’s Island, Maine 04066

e-mail: ian@lincoln.midcoast.com


Bugs
Known Bugs

Some computers, my laptop in particular, won’t change the day unless they’re restarted. If you know why please tell me. It’s a real pain.

If the program is running when the computer switches to Daylight savings time, the program may crash. I haven’t taken the time to fix it yet. You won’t lose anything.

If you cut an paste from a document with formatted text, centered for example, you may wind up with part or all of today’s page formatted that way. If this happens, scroll back a day and then forward. This should remove the extraneous formatting.


Files
Files Associated with this Program

Notebook.exe: This is the application.

xxxx.nbk: 1996.nbk. This file contains the notebook pages for 1996. 1997.nbk will be created for 1997 and so forth and so on.

Notebook.alm: This file contains the alarms.

Notebook.tdl: This file contains the Lists.

Notebook.fut: This file contains any “future” days you may have edited.

Notebook.day: This file contains today’s notes.

Notebook.hlp: This is the help file. You are here.

Notebook.ini: This file contains settings you have chosen, size, location, calendar colors etc. It will be in your “windows” directory.