MacPostit is a simple Macintosh application which allows you to create one or more “Post-It” notes which appear as small windows containing text. The windows can be resized and repositioned anywhere on the screen. MacPostit takes advantage of System 7’s ability to run more than one application at once, so that the notes appear on the screen whenever MacPostit is running. MacPostit can then save each note to disk, remembering the text of the note as well as its position on the screen.
Why you need MacPostit
I wrote MacPostit because my desk space at school is occupied by my Macintosh, a lamp, and yellow “Post-It” notes covering every other available surface. I use them to take down phone messages, remind myself to do laundry, record phone numbers, and many other things. Besides wasting paper, this situation was getting a little out of hand, so I decided to write MacPostit. Finally you can throw out that silly “Note Pad” desk accessory that came with your Macintosh! MacPostit lets you have as many notes as you like, each stored as an individual document on disk. Each note lets you store up to 32,000 characters of text, and best of all, you can make them any color you want! You can also customize the font, size, and position of each note. My friends use MacPostit to take down information as they talk to people on the phone, make lists of homework assignments to do, or to keep lists of files to download over the modem.
MacPostit is your friend
MacPostit was designed to be user-friendly, intelligent, and efficient. I’m tired of seeing software prices grow when programs run slower, take up more disk space, get harder to use, and ship on no less than ten installer disks. MacPostit takes up less than 100K in memory and on disk! Best of all, MacPostit is an application, not a system extension, so anytime you need to free up more memory, just quit MacPostit. MacPostit is your friend because it lets you customize your notes any way you like, and MacPostit can even remember a custom note style to use as the default for future notes. MacPostit is intelligent because it automatically resizes your notes for you as you type, so you don’t have to go resize the window every time you fill up the note. MacPostit can also save all your notes automatically to a special Postit Notes folder, and then open all your notes for you every time you launch MacPostit.
A typical Postit note
Besides the standard close box and grow box, each Postit note comes equipped with a pop-up menu which gives you easier access to frequently-used commands, such as Save, Save As, Revert, Delete, and Note Style. MacPostit also has a “best-fit” button, which sizes the note to best fit the text in the note, while automatically maintaining the same aspect ratio. The “best-fit” feature is also activated for you automatically as you type and when you paste text into the note, so that if the note is filled, it will grow for you as you type.
Customizing your notes
MacPostit allows you to customize each individual note, and to set a default style which is remembered by the MacPostit application. Each note can have a custom font, font size, font style, text color, and note color. This information is saved with each note, along with the note’s size and location. To customize a note, click once to select the note window you wish to customize, and then select “Note Style…” from the File menu. Use the dialog box to customize the style of this note. Click on the “Use As Defaults” button to save this style as the default style for future notes.
Application preferences
Pull down the File menu and select “Preferences…” to enable two special MacPostit features: AutoSave and AutoLoad. AutoSave tells MacPostit to automatically save all notes to a folder called Postit Notes which it will create for you in your System Folder. When you quit MacPostit, any note which has been saved before but has been changed will be saved automatically. If the note has never been saved before, then MacPostit will save the note for you in your Postit Notes folder, and give it a name such as “Note 1”, “Note 2”, etc. If you close an individual note from within MacPostit when AutoSave is enabled, it will be saved automatically only if it has been saved before. If it is a new note, then you will prompted to save it. If AutoSave is not enabled, then you will prompted to save each note any time you close a note, or quit MacPostit. When AutoLoad is enabled, MacPostit will automatically open every note in the Postit Notes folder when the application starts up.
Tips
• To have MacPostit automatically open every time you turn on your Macintosh, place
MacPostit (or an alias of MacPostit) in the Startup Items folder located inside your
System Folder.
• MacPostit will also recognize and open notes which have been made into stationery.
You can make a note into a stationery file by selecting the file in the Finder, and
then selecting “Get Info…” from the File menu. You might use stationery notes to
form a collection of “templates” of your favorite note styles.
• To override the delete warning dialog, hold down the option key while selecting
“Delete” from the File menu or from the note pop-up menu.
Getting help
In addition to this documentation, MacPostit has a help dialog under the Help Menu (the menu used to activate Balloon Help) which contains a summary of this information. While you’re there, you can turn on Balloon Help. MacPostit has Balloon Help for all of the application menus, the application itself (in the Finder), and the Note Style dialog.
System requirements
MacPostit requires a Macintosh computer running System Software 7.0 or higher. MacPostit supports balloon help, TrueType fonts, 32-bit addressing, and the core AppleEvents. MacPostit is set to use up 95K in memory, which is fine for comfortable operation with about five notes open at a time, which is all I use with my 13" monitor. But if you like to have lots of notes open, you may want to give MacPostit a little more memory. Select the MacPostit application icon in the Finder, and then pull down the File menu and select “Get Info…”. You can give MacPostit a lot more room simply by increasing the preferred application memory size to 100K or 125K. The number of notes open at a time is limited only by the available memory.
Version Information and Future Plans
1.00—First release of MacPostit.
1.01—Minor bug fix release.
• Added support for Macintoshes which do not have Color QuickDraw available
• Fixed bug which caused error in supervisor space when opening Note Style
• A few other small internal changes were made to the code and resources
1.02—Stupid bug fix release.
• Fixed the problem I created in 1.01 which wouldn’t allow the note or text
color to be changed
• Fixed the bug which caused the error dialog to come up when replacing files
with the same name from the Save As dialog
• Fixed the bug which caused a crash when opening existing notes on old
machines which do not have Color Quickdraw available
• A few other small internal changes were made to the code and resources
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who sent me email regarding MacPostit…and I’m not just talking about those individuals who sent compliments. I appreciate those of you who took the time to help me find problems and offer suggestions. Originally I had no future plans for the software, but because of the positive response from the Macintosh community, I am beginning work on version 2.0, which will be a major upgrade including most if not all of the ideas people sent to me.
Also, I appreciate everyone’s patience with me as I worked to resolve the bugs in 1.0 and 1.01…I’m still a beginning Macintosh programmer, and your feedback and ideas helped me to solve the problems you found. Thanks again!
Final notes
MacPostit is FREE! You can give a copy of MacPostit to anyone you like, but I do ask that when distributing MacPostit to your friends and favorite electronic bulletin boards, you include this documentation file along with the application.
I would like to thank my friends Dave Stevenson and Chris Gorski for letting me test MacPostit on their Duo 210 and Centris 610 computers respectively, and for their invaluable advice and encouragement on this project. I would also like to thank my friends Josh Freed and Dan Stux who provided invaluable emergency help with the 1.01 release.
If you find any bugs in MacPostit, if you have any suggestions for future improvement, or if you just want to mention that you use MacPostit and think it is a cool program, I encourage you to write to me, either by hand or electronically.
Michael Shapiro
Box 6198
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Send all email to: mws@cs.brown.edu
DISCLAIMER: I, Michael Shapiro, make no warranties, either express or implied, regarding the computer software program, MacPostit, which accompanies this documentation, regarding its merchantability or its fitness for any particular purpose.
