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Other links:
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Features include:
- Editable, searchable notes
- Spell checking
- Visual/Audio alarms
- Email notes
- Import/Export notes with Pilot features
- Calendaring
- Sync, backup, restore
- Install, delete, fetch Pilot db's & files
- Notes exchange between XNotes, Address Manager, and Todo Manager.

XNotesPlus: Users Guide - XNotes

  1. What is an XNote?
  2. The File Menu
  3. The Notes Menu
  4. Hidden Notes
  5. Cascaded Notes
  6. Categorizing using Projects




What is an XNote?

An XNote represents on of those little yellow sticky notes you use everyday. The primary difference between the two is that the flexability of an XNote goes way beyond the foldability of its paper cousins.

Each XNote is made up of two parts (plus the scrollbar): A text window where the text of the note is stored and a menu bar. To enter text into an XNote, simply move the mouse cursor into the text window and start typing. Use the mouse buttons and arrow keys to move around the window and for manipulating the selections for cut-and-paste operations. A number of translations - ie keyboard shortcuts - are available. See the section on Keyboard Shortcuts for more details.

The menu bar has four icons, each with its own menu. The first two icons are, by default, small gray circles. The leftmost circle is for alarms, the next one for anchors. The next icon, the file icon is for file operations such as saving or emailing the note. The last icon is the notes icon, which is used to access features such as naming the note, assigning it to a project or inserting a calendar.


Clicking the left mouse button on the first icon shows the alarms menu. There are two options: Set Alarm and Disable Alarm. To set a notes alarm, select "Set Alarm" from the alarms pull down menu. A window pops up with month, day, hour and minute fields. The default for each of these is the last alarm time that had been set (if no alarm had ever been set for a note then the time is actually the time the note was created). Use the arrow buttons on either side of each value to set each field to the day and time you wish the alarm to go off. You can use the Toggle button to reset the fields to the current time. When the alarm expires, a small window will pop up reminding you for which note the alarm had been set.

Beneath the alarm settings is a scrolled list of audio files you can choose to play when the alarm goes off. You don't have to play an audio file, its just available if you'd like to. A few default audio files should have been in the distribution you received. If you choose an audio file to play you will also need to select the number of times to play it. The Repeat field should be set to something other than 0 or else the audio alarm won't play.

Playing audio alarms requires that an application that can play the files be installed and XNotesPlus is configured to use it properly. See the section on Configuring The Audio Command.

If you wish to save this value between invokations you should use either the notes "Save" option or the "Save All Notes" option from the plaid windows menu. When a notes alarm is set the gray icon will be replaced with an icon of a clock (or wristwatch, if you like).

To turn off the a notes alarm, select "Unset Alarm" from the menu. This will disable the alarm for that note and remove the clock icon from the menu bar, returning it to the gray circle.

Next to the alarms menu is the anchor menu. This menu has only two options: Set Anchor and Disable Anchor. These do pretty much as you'd expect. An anchored note is one that will be at the bottom of the stack of notes when you cascade them. Only one of the two options in this menu will be active at any given time. If the "Set Anchor" option is active, then the note is not currently anchored. If the "Disable Anchor" is active, then the note is currently set as an anchored note. When anchored, the anchor icon changes from the gray dot to an icon in the shape of an anchor.


The File Menu

Each XNote has a menubar with multiple menus. The File menu contains options pertaining to file input and output for the current XNote.

Save

After entering text in the XNote, you may wish to save the note in a disk file using the file menus "Save" option. This way, if the machine goes down due to power failure, or if you simply exit xnotes+, the note can be restored when you restart the program. XNotes are also saved automatically (if saveNotes is true) if a SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGQUIT signal is received. Using "kill -9" on the xnotes+ process, however, will not allow changes to be saved. If you need to kill xnotes+ manually, use the "kill -s HUP " or "kill -s TERM" commands instead, and only use "kill -9" if all else fails.

To save the note to a disk file, click on the file icon and select the "Save" menu item. The note will be saved as the file "noteN" in your notes directory, where N is some number. Saving a note means to save it in the XNote format under whatever directory has been configured using the --notedir command line option or the noteDir config file entry.

It should be pointed out that the "Save" menu item will not allow you to save unless something has been typed in the text window of the note, the name of the note has been changed, the project has changed for the note, or the text of the note has been erased. This is a good way of checking if you've made changes to the note. If the Save menu item is "insensitive" (grayed-out) then you haven't made any changes to the note or any changes have already been saved.

It is important to remember that if you have disabled the auto-save (--sv) feature then the note will not be saved until you have used the "Save" menu item. Because of this, disabling the auto-save feature is not recommended. You can also make sure changed notes get saved on exit by enabling the Save on Exit feature.

Open

Used for importing a file into the note. The imported file must be an ordinary text file or the results of importing will be indeterminate. The imported file is inserted at the current cursor location.

Merge

Opens a list of available notes. Select the notes to merge into the current note, then click on the Accept button. The notes will be merged into the current note IN THE ORDER SELECTED. The Cancel button will close the dialog without merging any notes.

Export

Used for saving the text contents of the note to a non-XNotes (ie a regular) file. Only the text of the note is saved. Project and note name information is not exported.

Find

Simple search utility that will find a specified string in the note from which the Search dialog was opened. The search can be done forward from the current cursor location or backwards. The search does not wrap when it reaches the end or beginning of the note. Searches are currently case sensitive.

Spell Check

Notes can be spell checked using an external spell checking tool compatible with "ispell" ("aspell" is the default but this can be configured in the XNotesPlus.cfg file). Click on the Start button to begin checking the text. The Stop button stops the process. Questionable words are displayed in the "Current Word" field. Make changes in this field and click on Modify Word to update the note. Skip Word will move to the next misspelled word, if any. Learn Word will save the Current Word in your personal dictionary. When finished, click on the Done button to close the dialog.

Print

Prints the note using the defined printer command. See the --printcmd command line option for details on configuring this. Selecting this option causes the note to be printed immediately, if possible. No dialogs are opened with the Print option.

Note:You can now configure Print to use CUPS configured printers. To use this feature, you must compile XNotesPlus using the USE_CUPS option. See the config.h file for compile time configuration options. By default, this option is not enabled.

Email

Opens a small window in which you can type or select an email address. When you click on the Accept button the note is emailed to the specified recipient using the notes name as the subject of the message. Typing in an address in the text field and then hitting ENTER will also email the message. An address must be specified or an error message will pop up if you hit Accept or the ENTER key. The list of email addresses gets populated when this window is used in conjunction with the Address Manager. Selecting an entry from the Address Manager that has one or more email addresses associated with it will have those addresses added to the list of email addresses in the Email dialog.


The Notes Menu

The Notes menu contains items for managing individual notes: Hide, Erase, Destroy, Name, Project, and Insert Date.

Hide

To hide a note, you can click on the Notes menu icon and select it's "Hide" menu item. This will cause the note to disappear from the screen. The note is still available, it's just not visible. To bring the note back, select the "Hidden Notes" option from the Plaid Window's main menu. Then select the note you wish to make visible again.

Erase

To erase the entire contents of the text window, you can click on the Notes menu icon and select the "Erase" menu item. The erase is performed immediately and cannot be undone. The note is saved automatically by the AutoSave feature if you have not disabled it or if you choose the File->Save option of the "Save All Notes" option in the Plaid menu.

Destroy

To destroy an XNote, getting rid of its window on the screen and the disk file it is saved in, click on the notes menu icon and select the "Destroy" menu item. This will bring up a confirmation window with an "Accept" and a "Close" button. Clicking on accept will close the window and remove the associated file from disk. This process cannot be undone. The close button will cancel the destroy operation.

Name

A notes name appears on the window managers title bar (if you have these displayed - check your window manager configuration guides for information on enabling or disabling these). To rename a note, you can click on the notes icon and select the "Name" menu item. This will bring up a dialog box, which has two buttons labeled "Confirm" and "Cancel" as well as a field to enter text for the new name. If you press the "Confirm" button, the new name will be placed in the title bar of the note. If you press the "Cancel" button, the operation is canceled. If you type in a name in the text field and then hit ENTER, this has the same effect as hitting "Confirm" button and the name of the note will be changed.

Project

The Project option in the notes menu allows you to select one of the previously configured projects to associate with this note. The dialog is similar to the one accessed from the Plaid Window's main menu except this one does not allow you to modify the projects. You can only select a project here. Once selected, the notes background color will change to match the selected project's color.

Insert Date

Adding the date and time is done using the "Insert Date..." option from the notes menu. A dialog box providing a variety of formats is presented. Select the format desired by clicking on the format string and then click on "Accept". The text string will be inserted at the current cursor location. You can also choose between using abbreviated and full Weekday and Month names, and between using the computer's local time or convert the time to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Be sure to position the cursor in the note text prior to clicking on Accept.


Hidden Notes

Hidden notes are a convenient way of keeping data for long periods without cluttering your desktop. To hide a note, select a note's "Hide" option from its Notes menu. This will cause the note to disappear from the screen. To bring the note back, select the "Hidden Notes" option from the Plaid Window's main menu. Then select the note you wish to make visible again. Once hidden, a note stays hidden until you recall it with the Hidden Notes option. Once visible, the note stays visible until you hide it again. This is true in both cases even if you exit the program and start it again.

Cascaded Notes

Notes can be organized on your display to be laid out like a hand of cards. This is called "cascading" and is accomplished in two steps. The first is to select the notes which will act as anchors. All other notes will be cascaded from those anchor notes. To make a note an anchor, select the Anchor menu (the 2nd ball from the left in the menu bar of a note) and choose the "Set Anchor" option. To disable this feature, select "Disable Anchor".

Once all the anchor notes have been set, choose the "Cascade Notes" option from the Plaid Window main menu. All non-anchor notes will then be placed on the anchors, with the non-anchor notes distributed evenly between the anchor notes.


Categorizing using Projects

A Project is just a name and a color, nothing more. You specify a project name, give it a color, and later assign notes to that project. Once assigned, the notes text background will assume the color specified for that project.

Projects are defined through the Projects dialog, accessible from the main menu's "Projects" option. XNotesPlus uses the GTK+ Color Selection dialog to choose a color. This is a nice in that you're only likely to get available colors no matter what color depth to which your display is set. To select a color, left mouse click on the "Sample Note Text".

You need only type in the new Project name and then click on the "Sample Note Text" to open the Color Selection dialog. Once you've selected a color, close the Color Selection dialog, then click on the Accept button in the Projects dialog. The new project will be added to the end of the list of available projects.

You can change the color of an existing project by clicking on the projects name. The project name is displayed in the text field and the sample text background is updated with the currently configured color. Just select another color and click on the Accept button. The update is immediate. When you are done with configuring projects just click on the Close button at the bottom of the dialog.

A sample projects file should have been part of the distribution you received. This file is ordinary text and you can hand edit it by hand if you prefer. However, you're probably better off letting XNotesPlus manage this file for you.

In order to assign a note to a specific project you simply choose the "Projects" option from the notes menu in the XNote you wish to update. The Change Project dialog opens with a scrolled list of projects to choose from and a bit of sample text to show what the effect will be. When you've made your selection, click on the Accept button and the note will automatically be updated. Don't forget to save the note!



Michael J. Hammel
2004/02/27
webmaster@graphics-muse.com
http://www.graphics-muse.com