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Text File | 1993-08-25 | 20.5 KB | 588 lines

Outline A shareware outliner for the Psion Series 3. Disclaimer ========== No warranty is given on this program. No liability for any damage or loss to equipment, data or software will be assumed. You use this program at your own risk Money ===== The OUTLINE program is shareware. If you like it and use it after 14 days, you should send me £10. This will ease your conscience and my overdraft. I will send you a small file to disable the "nag" screens and show you as a registered user on the About screen. If you do not have an email id, then please ensure I have your name and address and state whether you have a 3.5 or 5.25 inch diskette drive (PCs only I'm afraid). Updates, bug-fixes etc. will be available from the lexsoft/todo conference on CIX. Errors ====== I don't know of any outstanding bugs (unless listed at the end of this document) but as with any piece of software I'm sure there are some. The program's error handler attempts to save the current file as ERROR.OUT before collapsing in the proverbial heap. Check this file out if an error occurs. If it appears ok copy it over your original file and continue. Please let me know of any errors. Distribution ============ This package may be freely copied, distributed as shareware so long as the contents remain intact and are not tampered with in any way. The ZIP file should contain: OUTLINE.FON OUTNORM.FON OUTLINE.INI OUTLINE.APP OUTLINE1.OPA OUTLINE2.OPA OUTLINE.TXT (this file) INTRODUCTION Outline is a program for the Psion Series 3 that allows you to organise your thoughts into tree-like structures. It is very useful for structuring ideas or for structuring reports, meetings or speeches. Type in your ideas and then move the lines around to form a tree structure with detailed items organised under major items. Branches of this tree can be hidden or shown, moved to other branches etc. If you have not used an outliner before, don't worry, it will soon become clear. Similar facilities are available in most modern PC word processors as well as dedicated PC outlining tools such as PC-Outline. The impetus for writing this program was to replace the very useful Sharp IQ outliner when I moved to a Psion Series 3. I would be pleased to hear from anyone with ideas for enhancing the program or from anybody who, unfortunately, finds any bugs. INSTALLATION Copy the OPA files to an APP directory or another directory of your choice on any drive. Install the program by pressing Psion-I on the System display, find OUTLINE and pressing Enter. Outline behaves just like Word, Data etc. by allowing multiple files to be open at one time. In technical terms, it is a type 3 OPA. Copy the two files OUTLINE.FON and OUTNORM.FON to any \OPD directory. Data files are normally stored in a directory called \OUT. Create this on any drive. Update the display by pressing the System icon. The program can then be started by pressing Psion-N for a new file or moving the cursor to an existing file, such as OUTLINE itself and pressing enter. Outline can create a file that contains default settings to be used for new files. This can be created from within the program and can be stored on any drive in a \OUT directory. This file is called OUTLINE.INI. Outline checks for the presence of the font files and the .ini file on the default drive first. If not found there, the drives are searched in the order Internal, A and B until found. This processing is carried out for each file so that each of these files may exist on a different drive. TUTORIAL Creating the First Entry Start an outline by positioning the highlight on the Outline icon and pressing Psion-N to create a new file. Type the file name "test". The title of the outline appears at the top of the screen as "TEST". To the left of this is a figure "1" which denotes that this entry is at level one, the top level. To the left of this is the cursor (an inverse ">") which denotes the current line. Change the title by pressing Enter. An "Edit Entry" dialog box appears. Type "Shopping List" and press Enter. The entry which previously said "TEST", now says "SHOPPING LIST". Creating the Second Entry Press E or Psion-E to add a new branch under the topic "Shopping List". An "Enter Line" dialog box appears. Type "Fruit" and press Enter. The new line is shown below the original line and you are then requested to "level the entry" (depending on the options settings), i.e. set the indentation level. The new entry is in the right place so just press Enter. Lines can appear on any level from 2 up to 256 so long as the parent of the entry is one less. In other words, you cannot make our new entry anything lower than 2. Note that only the first entry is at level 1. Add another new line by pressing E with the cursor on the "Fruit" item. (You use the up and down arrow keys to move between items). Type "Drink" into the "Enter Line" dialog box. Level the entry such that Drink appears on the same level as Fruit. Creating More Entries We've decided that, in general terms, we need to buy Drink and Fruit and now we're going to think in detail about which goods we're going to buy. We need some apples so we'll add that to the list. Position the cursor to Fruit and press E. Type "Apples" and press Enter. Level "Apples" indented from Fruit by pressing the right arrow key and pressing Enter. Add Bananas, Oranges and Plums in the same way, so that they all appear under Fruit. We need both eating and cooking apples, so move the cursor to the Apples line and insert "Eating" and "Cooking" under (indented from) Apples. Now add some drinks of your choice under "Drinks". Viewing the Outline We've now got quite a long list. To get a summary press "2". This shows only items at level 2 or above. Press "4","1" and "3" to see the effect. End up by pressing "3". Notice that a "+" sign appears on the Apples line. This denotes that there are branches of this item which are not displayed. Position the cursor to the Apples line and press "+". The hidden lines "Eating" and "Cooking"now appear and the plus sign disappears. Move the cursor to the "Fruit" line and press "-". This hides the lowest branch of the Fruit "family". Press "-" again to hide the next branch up. So, "-" and "+" hide and show one branch level at a time. The "*" and "/" keys show and hide all levels in the current branch. Try them out. That should give you an appreciation of the most basic commands. There are many more facilities and these are described in the Reference section below. REFERENCE In the explanations below, some terms are used which may need In the explaining: Family A group of items forming a complete branch of the outline tree. For example; 1 - Shopping List 2 - Fruit 3 - Apples 4 - Eating 4 - Cooking 3 - Bananas 3 - Oranges 2 - Sugar 3 - White 3 - Brown In this example the "Fruit" family is the Fruit entry and all other entries below "Fruit" i.e. 2 - Fruit 3 - Apples 4 - Eating 4 - Cooking 3 - Bananas 3 - Oranges The "Apples" family is: 3 - Apples 4 - Eating 4 - Cooking A family can be just one line so "Cooking" is a family. Parent The parent of a family is the entry at the head. i.e. the parent of the "Apples" family above is "Apples". (All families in OUTLINE are one-parent families!) Up Arrow/Down Arrow Move the cursor to the previous or next item displayed. E/Psion-E Enter a new item which will be positioned under the current item. Left Arrow/Right Arrow Indent or outdent (change the level of) the current item. M/Psion-M Move the current family. Position the cursor on the parent of the family that you wish to move. Press Psion-M. Then position the cursor on the line after the point at which you wish to move the family and press Enter. Note that hidden items as well as displayed items are moved. C/Psion-C Copy the current family. Processing is as for Move (above) except that the family is duplicated rather than moved. D/Psion-D/<-Delete Delete the current family. A warning prompt may be shown depending on your options settings (see below). Note that the very top level item (level 1) cannot be deleted. L/Psion-L Pull lines up. Deletes the current line only. Any child lines move up one level. Q/Psion-Q Push lines down. Adds a new line at the current level and pushes all new child lines down. +/Psion-+ Show another level of the current family. (see Tutorial above) -/Psion - Hide the lowest level of the current family. (see Tutorial above) */Psion-* Show the entire family. / Psion-/ Hide the entire current family (except for the top most item) Enter/U/Psion-U Update (edit) the text of the current item PgUp PgDn Move up and down one page at a time S/Psion-S Save the file O/Psion-O Open another file N/Psion-N Create a new file A/Psion-A Save the current file under, optionally, another name. I/Psion-I About box. Shows version number and credits. P/Psion-P Prints entire outline (including all currently hidden items) to a parallel or serial printer or a text file. B/Psion-B Change Options. There are two pages of options settings. On the first page: i) A header bar may be set on or off. The header bar shows the current date and Outline file name. ii) The font may be set to Small or Normal characters. The Small character set allows more text to be displayed. iii) Delete Warning can be set to 0-9 or 999. When deleting a family, if the number of lines to be deleted exceeds this number, a warning will be given. O means that warnings will always be given, 999 means warnings will never be given. The default is 4. iv) Auto Level. If set to "no" you will be prompted to set the indentation level for newly entered lines. If set to "yes", Outline will attempt to put the new line at a sensible level. You can, of course,always adjust this level. v) The font for levels 1 and 2 may be set to special On or Off. If special is set, the first level is printed inverse and the second level (normal font only) is printed bold. Note that this only applies when the Normal font is used. vi) "Show Level Numbers" denotes how inverse numbers denoting the level of the entry are to be displayed. If set to Off, then they don't appear at all. If "On" they appear as a leader to the entry. If "Left" they appear left justified. On the second page: vii) The default characters used to denote hidden entries links, and leading separator characters for levels over 9 may be configured. viii)The character that denotes an associated note (see below) can be configured. ix) The directory in which notes are stored can be set. All of the settings are saved with a file so that the display will look the same when a file is reloaded. The defaults for new files are derived from the settings held in the OUTLINE.INI file. K/Psion-K Reads, if present, the OUTLINE.INI file and allows global settings to be set. As for Psion-B above except that the option settings are saved in OUTLINE.INI. The directory for associated notes is not part of the OUTLINE.INI file but instead is always M:\OUT. The settings have no effect on the current file but affect only new files. Any numeric key between 1 and 9 Sets display such that only items with a level less than or equal to that keyed are shown. i.e. pressing level 3 displays only items with a level of 1, 2, or 3. Pressing '9' shows all levels. T/Psion-T Create a link. A link allows you to join any two items together so that you can use; G/Psion-G move between two ends of a link. H/Psion-H Remove Link. Both ends of the link are removed. ,/Psion Left Arrow Swap family with previous family ./Psion Right Arrow Swap family with next family V/Psion-V Revert to the latest save version of the file. Together with Save, this can be used as a form of "undo". F/Psion-F This can be used as a short cut to toggle between the two font sizes. Ctrl and Psion and Up Arrow Go to the top of the file. W/Psion-W Attach a note (Word document) to an entry. When this key is pressed, a dialog box will appear which will request the document name. The Word application will then appear. Type your note using all of the usual Word functions and press Psion-X when finished. You will then be returned to Outline. If this key is pressed when a note has already been attached, you will be positioned in Word with the note open. All notes will be created in the directory specified in the Options dialogue box. Note that if you change this directory after notes have been created, they will become "orphaned" unless copied to the new directory. Whenever a note is accessed it is assumed to be in the default directory. Y/Psion-Y Delete or unlink the attached note. A dialog box appears which allows the note to be deleted or merely unattached from the entry. R/Psion-R Attach an existing note to an entry. Again, the note must be in the default path. By using this option, the same note can be attached to multiple lines. P/Psion-P Print the contents of the current file to a printer or to a file. You are offered the choice of Parallel connection, Serial connection or File. Another dialog box then appears where you enter the "Lead Character" and the List Type. The Lead Character can be something like "-", and is prefixed to all printed lines. The List Type can be set to either "All" or "Displayed". "All" shows the entire outline, including items currently hidden from the screen display. "Displayed" prints the items currently "shown" on screen. Most of these functions are also available from the menu. Note that up to 70 items are allowed. Each can be up to 50 characters long. Unregistered users will get a "nag" message when entering all records after the first 20. Change History ============== 1.11 Added Tab Bar and corrected first-time only loading routine. (22 Nov 92) 1.12 Options Settings now saved with file so that the same options are set when a file is reloaded. Error fixed: Top level outline cannot now be deleted. 1.13 Many bug fixes. Save As and Revert options. Small font. Tab Bar changed to Header Bar with amended layout including time. Configurable delete warnings. Key usage amended to conform with Psion apps and with TODO program. (28 Nov 92) 1.14 ENHANCEMENTS Open File option added New File option added Print File option added Configuration options for new files can now be saved in a .INI file Push/Pull lines facility All files may now exist on any drive. Screen display speeded up by scrolling rather than redisplaying when moving one line off the screen. Screen display moved slightly to the left to show more of each entry Display now more intelligent following enter line, set level and goto link. Headers now same as Todo program (with Todo version 1.14) Special Fonts for levels 1 and 2 can be turned off. FIXES: Pressing the '9' key now shows all levels rather than just levels 1-9. Can now escape from Set Link Error following Enter line fixed: could sometimes cause program to abort. (5 Dec 92) 1.14a FIXES All keys should now work with CAPS LOCK on. Credit changed to Lexsoft from John Whiting. 1.14b ENHANCEMENTS Minor Programming changes including Nag screen. 1.14c (18 December 1992) FIXES Problem with copy past end of file when using small font fixed. Problem on Open file fixed which caused major error. 1.15 (31 December 1992) ENHANCEMENTS Notes can now be attached to any entry. "Nag" messages appear on file opening and entry creation (after the first 20 entries) Date display updated at midnight. 1.15a (3 January 1993) ENHANCEMENTS When creating note (Psion-W), program detects whether .WRD suffix is supplied. Name of note on a new line not being set to blank. 1.15b Not released 1.15c (5 January 1993) ENHANCEMENTS Psion-R now allows existing note to be attached. FIXES Note path now saved with file 1.15d (16 January 1993) ENHANCEMENTS Memory Usage when application is open but dormant is reduced by about 10k. Out of Memory error now displays message and allows user to shut down existing applications before continuing. Selection of default note path is via file selection dialog rather than text entry. Level number markers are now selectable. They can be on, off or left justified. FIXES If Psion is running in the mode where Enter closes any existing files open for the application, then opening an existing outline or selecting a new outline caused the open outline not to be saved. 1.16 (19 January 1993) ENHANCEMENTS Up/Down cursor processing speeded up FIXES Error introduced in 1.15d which caused files not to be saved if the application is terminated from the system screen. 1.16a (24 January 1993) FIXES Fixed error in error routine which displayed "MODULE ALREADY LOADED" 1.16b (31 January 1993) FIXES Fixed error in Revert which caused spurious additional lines. 1.16c (2 February 1993) ENHANCEMENTS Removed introduction message which flashed briefly on screen at start of program. 1.16d (2 May 1993) FIXES Fixed various obscure errors 1.17 (27 June 1993) FIXES Option to save ERROR.OUT to any drive. 1.19 (21 August 1993) ENHANCEMENTS Print Option added based on previous Export option. Top level module rewritten in C. FIXES Better handling of "Out of Memory" errors. 1.19b (24 August 1993) FIXES Default options set if INI file not found. John Whiting 3 Fitzwilliam Road Colchester Essex CO3 3RZ 0206 564042 johnw@cix.compulink.co.uk 100025,3337 on Compuserve