This little utility program helps you manage notes by organizing them in a simple, hierarchical list of notes and folders. You can attach links to your notes that can take you to an email address, Web site, file or folder with a double-click. You can also attach times, dates and other attributes to notes so that NotePod can perform some functions of reminder and “to-do" list programs.
The NotePod list window
The first time you run NotePod, it contains only one folder, called “NotePod data,” the contents of which is displayed in the NotePod (main) window. Until you create notes and folders, the folder, and thus the window, will be empty. The popup menu at the top of the window displays the name of the current folder, and can be used to navigate to a higher-level folder.
You can create notes and folders in the NotePod window by clicking the “Create note" or “Create folder" button, which are the first two buttons to the right of the popup menu, and are identified by a picture of a note or folder. When you place your cursor over these buttons, help text will appear below the buttons to identify each button’s function. You can also create notes using menu selections or with drag-and-drop techniques, which are explained later.
You can also create folders by selecting “New folder…" from the Note menu. A dialog box will appear, asking for a name for the folder.
Click the blue triangle to the left of each folder to either open it, displaying its contents in an outline-like manner, or click again to close it (just like the Macintosh Finder).
If you select a folder (with a single-click), then create a note or folder, the new note or folder will be created in the selected folder. If you select a note, then create a note or folder, the new note or folder will be created in the same folder as the selected note or folder. If no note or folder is selected, the new note or folder will be created at the top level of the currently displayed folder.
Double-click a folder and its contents will be displayed in the main window. You can also select a folder in the list and then select “Open folder” from the Note menu. You can then use the popup menu at the top of the window to navigate to a higher-level folder, or type Command-D to go directly to the top level.
Option double-click a folder and a new folder will be created inside of that folder.
Command-click a note or folder to make its name editable within the list.
Select “Rename folder…" from the Note menu to rename a folder. A dialog box will appear to prompt you for a new name. If a folder is selected it will be renamed, otherwise the current folder (identified in the popup menu at the top of the NotePod window) will be renamed.
To delete a note or folder, select it and press Delete. Be careful, as this cannot be undone. If you accidentally delete notes, you can quit NotePod without saving the changes, then start NotePod again.
To cut a note or folder, select it and choose “Cut" from the Edit menu. Files and folders can then be pasted into another location. Notes, but not folders, can also be copied. After a note or folder has been cut or copied, it can be pasted into another location. If a folder is selected when you select “Paste" from the Edit menu, the note or folder will be pasted into the selected folder. If a note is selected, it will be pasted into the same folder as the note. If nothing is selected, it will be pasted into the top level of the currently displayed folder.
The NotePod list window also contains two other buttons. One is for managing a list of favorites and the other is for collapsing the NotePod list window to a floating palette. These will be described later.
As you’ll read later, notes can have dates associated with them. If its date works as a reminder, the note’s icon appears in the list with an alarm clock, and if the date has an auto-delete setting, the note’s icon appears with a pencil eraser. It’s possible to have both settings, so the icon may have both the alarm clock and an eraser.
Items that are marked as an Action Item will be displayed in bold, and items that are scheduled to be auto-deleted at the end of the day are displayed in italics.
Drag-and-drop techniques to create notes
You can use drag-and-drop techniques to create notes. Several types of information can be dragged into the NotePod list box to make a note containing the information:
- Selected text from a drag-and-drop aware application (such as Eudora email or Microsoft Word 2001). The dragged text will become the note’s contents, and the first 32 characters of the text will be copied as a temporary title.
- A text file or Finder clipping. The dragged text will become the note’s contents, and the title of the file or clipping will be automatically added as a title, which you may change if you’d like.
Editing notes
When a note is created, it will automatically be opened for editing (although this behavior can be turned off in the application’s Preferences). You can also open an existing note by double-clicking its icon in the list or selecting the note in the list and selecting “Edit note” from the Note menu.
In the Note window, you can edit a note’s title and text, assign a date value to it, and attach links to several types of information such as other files or Internet addresses. Links appear in a list near the bottom of the window, and the date appears in a button at the upper-left corner of the window. Next to the date button is a reminder button, which is described in more detail later. The two buttons in the upper right corner allow you to add the note to the Favorites menu in the NotePod window and mark it as an Action Item. Favorites and Action Items will be explained later.
You can select text and change its font, font size and formatting using the formatting options under the Edit menu. Styled text dragged into the Note window’s content field from other applications will retain its font format. The default fonts shown in most of the program’s windows can be selected in the Preferences, explained later.
The small text field at the top of the window is for the note’s title, which will appear in the main list in the NotePod window. Because this can be only one line, return characters are not allowed in this field. If you press the return or enter key, you’ll be taken to the beginning of the note’s content field. Pressing the tab key will also cycle between the title box, content box, and link box. If you want to add a tab character in the content field, type Option-tab. In the content box you’ll be able to enter return characters between paragraphs by pressing the return key, but pressing the enter key will invoke the OK key and close the window. Clicking OK will save the note’s settings in memory, but the changes will not be written to disk until you save the file (select Save under the File menu). You can save from either the Note or NotePod window. Clicking the Cancel button or pressing the Escape key will cancel any changes you’ve made in the Note window.
Date and time settings
Date and time settings can be set to perform several functions:
- As a date or time/date stamp, for reference only.
- As a reminder. It can be set to remind you at the time or on the date specified or a chosen number of minutes or days beforehand.
- As a date for the note to automatically delete itself.
To create or change a date (and, optionally, a time), click on the Date button in the lower-left corner of the Note window. By default, all new dates are created preset to the current date and time. The Date dialog box will appear.
The Date dialog box is divided into four tabs:
- Date tab—Here you can select the year, month and date. Click the “Today" button to set the date to the current date. Check the “Auto-delete note" checkbox only if you want the note to be automatically deleted on this date.
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- Time tab—Choose whether to save the date only or both the date and time. Click the “Now" button to change the time from its current settings to the current time. To edit the time, click a field in the time display to highlight it. Values here can be changed by clicking the little arrow buttons to the right of the date, typing new values, by pressing the cursor up/down/right/left keys (holding down the Option key changes minutes and hours in larger increments), or the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys. Press the Tab key to move from one field to the next.
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- Repeat tab—Check “Repeat this event" if you want the date to automatically cycle for repeating events. Select whether you want the event to recur every given number of days or weeks, every month on the set date, every month on the nth day of the week, or every year on that date.
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- Reminder tab—Check “Remind me” if you want NotePod to put up a dialog box alerting you when the set time and date arrives. You can also select how much advance notice you’d like. If you’re using the date only, you can select how many days before the date you’re alerted, or if you’re using time you can select how many minutes. Use the second checkbox to choose whether NotePod reminds you repeatedly until you dismiss the reminder. Reminders are covered in more detail later.
The behavior of delete dates and reminders is modified by options in Preferences, which is covered later.
To remove a date, either select “Remove date” from the Note menu or Option-click on the date button.
The reminder button (the small button next to the time button in the Note window) contains a picture of an alarm clock. When no time property is assigned to the note, this button is disabled. When there’s a date, but no reminder, the button’s picture is dimmed. When a reminder is set, the reminder button appears pressed. You can click this button to quickly toggle the reminder on and off (toggling it on will set it to alert you at the time or date displayed on the button, not before). You can also Option-click the button to go directly to the reminder tab of the Date dialog box.
Links
The link list at the bottom of the note window is used to store references to a variety of other objects and places. Dragging different types of information into the Links list creates link objects. Double-clicking on a link objects takes you to the object it represents. To create a link:
- Drag another note from the main window into the link list to create a note link. Double-click the item in the link list to open the linked note.
- Drag a file from the Finder into the link list to create a file link. Double-click the item in the link list to launch the file.
- Drag a folder from the Finder into the link list to create a folder link. Double-click the item in the link list to open the folder in the Finder.
- Drag a Web URL to the link list to create a URL link. Double-click the item in the link list to open that URL with your default Web browser.
- Drag an email address to the link list to create an email link. Double-click the item in the link list to send an email message to that address with your default email application.
- Dragging a note from the NotePod window to the desktop will create a clipping containing the note’s text, and then dragging that clipping into the link list will create a link back to the original note.
Searching for text
When editing text in a note, you can search for text by selecting “Find text…” from the Search menu. A dialog box will prompt you for the text to search for and whether you want the search to be case sensitive. Under the Search menu, you can also choose “Find again” to search for the next occurrence of the text last searched for, or "Find selection” to search for the next occurrence of the selected text. Case sensitivity of "Find again” and "Find selection” are governed by the last setting of the "Match case” checkbox in the "Find text” dialog box.
"Find text” searches only in the current note. To find other notes containing certain text or other criteria, select "Find note…” from the Search menu, which is covered later.
Preferences
To set your user preferences, select "Preferences…” from the File menu. In the Preferences dialog box, preferences are divided into three groups, each in its own tab panel:
- Reminders—This panel allows you to modify how reminders are handled. You can choose to ignore reminders altogether, to list the day’s reminders only once (on startup or at the beginning of the day), or to have the reminder dialog boxes pop up at the time they’re set for. See "Reminders and delete dates” below for more information.
- Deletes—This panel allows you to modify how delete dates are handed. You can choose to disable the self-delete behavior altogether, to list on startup or at the beginning of each day notes scheduled for deletion that day, or to have NotePod simply delete them when scheduled. A checkbox allows you to confirm before deleting any note.
- Display—This panel allows you to choose a default font and font size for all notes, as well as a font for notes shown in a list view. You can also uncheck "Use styled text” to force all font formatting to appear in the default font. The lower half of this panel affects the main NotePod window. The button with the green ball at the upper-right corner of the NotePod list window will cause the window to disappear. You can choose in the preferences whether it should be hidden (but leave the application running) or be replaced with a small floating global palette. If you choose to use a floating palette, clicking on the palette’s button will bring the NotePod window back. If you choose to actually hide the window, switching to NotePod from another application (either from the Application menu or Application Switcher palette) will make the NotePod window visible again. If you check "Remember opened folders” NotePod will start up with folders opened if they were open when saved, otherwise all folders will be closed at startup.
- Misc.—This tab includes three items. First is a checkbox for “Save data when closing notes.” When you close a note-editing window, it saves the note to memory, but not to the disk. If you would like to have all of your notes saved to disk every time one of the notes is edited, check this box. As your file gets larger, there may be a noticeable pause every time you save a note, and you may want to consider unchecking this in the future. “Open notes as they are created” will tell NotePod to open for editing any note created by dragging text or a file into the list window. New, empty notes will always be opened automatically. The third item, “Edit note contents directly in Contents box” will allow you to edit the text of a note selected in the NotePod list window. Please note that the first item, “Save data when closing notes” does not affect notes edited directly in the Contents window—these changes won’t be saved until you save them manually or a note editing window is closed with “Save data when closing notes” checked. Also, you will not be able to cancel your edits using this method. If you use styled text, text here will be displayed as styled text, otherwise it will be displayed in the font used in your lists. This tab panel also includes options for warning you before creating notes from dragging large files or files that are not of the generic “TEXT” type into the list window.
Searching for notes
To search for specific notes by a variety of criteria, select “Find note…” from the Search menu. A dialog box will prompt you for the search criteria. You can use any combination of three types of criteria. A note is considered "found” only if it passes all selected criteria:
- Text—Enter the text to search the title and text of the note for, and check whether the search should be case sensitive.
- Date—Type a date and select from the popup whether to search for notes based on the modification date or the note’s Date/Time property.
- Link—Type the text to search for and select from the popup menu whether to search for the text in Email links, URL links, or any link. Search is not case sensitive.
Next you’ll need to choose where to search. Your choices are:
- All folders—Choose this to search all notes.
- Current folder—Choose this option to search only in the folders visible in the NotePod window.
- Last find—Choose this option to refine a previous search.
Click the Find button to start the search. Chasing arrows will appear while the search continues. When all notes have been searched, the titles of those matching your criteria will be listed in a dialog box.
In the “Found notes” dialog box, you can open a note by double-clicking its title or selecting it and clicking the “Edit” button. You can refine your search by clicking the "Search again" button, or end the search by clicking the "Done" button.
Favorites
The Favorites button on the NotePod window brings up a popup menu listing any files tagged as a Favorite. If a file is currently selected, the last item on the menu will be a choice to either add that item to the Favorites or to remove it from that list. Selecting a note will open that note for editing. The Favorites button in the Note window will also select whether it’s included in the Favorites list.
Reminders and delete dates
NotePod can act as a reminder program, but unlike most dedicated reminder programs, it’s a conventional application rather than a control panel or system extension, so it has to be running (although not necessarily in the foreground) to alert you of events. When a reminder comes due and user preference settings allow, NotePod will put up a dialog box alerting you. In this dialog box, you will have three choices:
- Edit note—This will take you to the note that triggered the reminder.
- Later—If you’ve set your reminder to remind you again every day/minute, this option will postpone the reminder by one more day for dates or one more minute for times.
- Dismiss—This action tells NotePod that you acknowledge the reminder, and it will not remind you again.
Alerts for delete dates work similarly, except that there is no "Later" choice. The note is either deleted or it isn’t.
For a list of reminders, select "List reminders…" from the Note menu, and a window will list, in chronological order, all of the reminders that are currently set. You can select an item and click the Edit button (or double-click the item in the list) and go directly to the note in the note editing window.
If your preferences are set to "List the day’s reminders only once" then this window will appear at the beginning of your day, listing only the reminders set for that day.
At startup and again at 12:01 a.m. NotePod makes a list of all items scheduled for deletion prior to that time. If there are items to be deleted, they’re handled as specified in the user preferences. The first two options are similar to those for reminders, but the third is a bit different. It will quietly delete notes scheduled for deletion at startup or at 12:01 a.m. If you’ve checked "Confirm before deleting notes" a dialog box will appear to confirm that you really want to delete the notes. Notes scheduled for deletion at the end of the current day are displayed in italics in the main NotePod list window.
Action Items
Action items are notes that require some sort of action on your part, and can be thought of as items on a to-do list. In the upper-right corner of each Note window is a button with an "A" on it. If this button is set, the note is tagged as an Action item. Select "List action items…" from the Note menu to open a dialog box listing all notes marked as action items.
When the dialog box opens, action items are initially sorted by date, but you can click any of the list’s column headers to resort them. The first column has a checkbox, which allows you to remove the note from the list of action items, which you’ll probably want to do after completing the task called for. If you double-click an item or select it and then click the "Edit" button, you can go to the note itself.
Action items are displayed in bold in the main NotePod list window.
“Show contents” box
At the bottom of the NotePod window is a blue triangle and the text “Show contents.” Click the triangle and the window will expand to show a text box. The contents of any selected note will be displayed here. The triangle now points downward and the explanatory text next to it has changed to read “Hide contents.” Click the blue triangle again to restore the window size and hide the contents box. In the user Preferences (Misc. tab), you can choose whether the text in this box is editable, or shown merely as a preview to help identify the note.
The contents box will also tell you at a glance if the note has a time, time/date, reminder, repeating date, and if it is a favorite.
Printing
Select “Print” from the File menu to print either the contents of the NotePod window or a Note window, whichever is active at the time. It’s good practice to select “Page setup…” from the File menu first to be sure your printer settings are correct.
Keyboard shortcuts
In most windows and dialog boxes, there are keyboard shortcuts. You can always press Return or Enter for the default button (except when editing a note’s text, where Return adds a paragraph marker). Escape will invoke the Cancel or Later button. In the "Save changes" dialog box you can also type "s" or "y" for Save, or "d" or "n" for "Don’t save."
In the Note window, you can enter a tab character into note text by pressing Option-tab.
In the NotePod window, you can type a number of keyboard shortcuts:
- Cursor-up or -down to select the next or previous item in the list.
- Command-up to navigate to the next higher folder.
- Command-down to open the current note or folder as the main list.
- Command-O to open the current note or folder.
- Command-right to open the current folder.
- Command-left to close the current folder.
- Option-up to move the current item up one in the list (within its current folder).
- Option-down to move the current item down one in the list (within its current folder).
- Option-right to move the current item into a folder in the next line.
- Option-left to move the current item into the parent folder.
- Escape to deselect all items.
In the Note window, you can type these keyboard shortcuts:
- Command-up to go to the beginning of the note.
- Command-down to go to the end of note.
- Command-left to go to the beginning of the paragraph.
- Command-right to go to the end of the paragraph.
- Command-[ to open the previous note.
- Command-] to open the next note.
Text formatting
If you have selected “Use styled text” in the preferences (under the Display tab), you can apply various types of text formatting in the note window. You can select under the Format menu a font and font size, as well as bold, italic, underline, outline, shadow, condensed, extended or plain attributes. You can also select "Default font" to quickly apply plain text in the font and size specified in the preferences.
You can also select “Clean text” to clean out many of the extraneous line breaks and ">" characters that tend to accumulate in text copied from email.
Selected text can be converted to upper case, lower case or title case by selecting related items under the Format menu.
Exporting notes
You can export either an individual note or all notes to a text file.
While in the note’s editing window, select “Export…” from the File menu. You’ll be prompted for a file location, with the note’s title as the proposed file name. The file will contain the contents of that individual note, a listing of its date and time setting and any associated links. The note’s fonts and styles will be preserved in the text file.
While in the main NotePod window, select “Export…” from the File menu to export all notes to a text file. You’ll be prompted for a file name and location. The file will list the names of all folders and the names and contents of all notes, including their date and time settings and any associated links. The notes’ fonts and styles will not be preserved in the text file.
Advanced note creation tips
Before you begin creating notes, either select the folder new notes should be placed in, or navigate into that folder so that its name appears in the popup menu at the top of the window.
If you want to rename or edit your notes as you create them, you’ll probably want to check “Open notes as they are created” in the Misc. tab of the Preferences dialog. When you drag text or items into the main NotePod list window from other applications, the note will be created and its window will open. NotePod will become the frontmost application. When you close the note window, either by saving or canceling, NotePod will return the “frontmost” status to whichever application was active at the time the note was created.
If you prefer to create several notes and edit them later, you can do this in either of two ways. First, you can click the Hide button (the one with the green ball) on the upper right corner of the main list window to switch to a floating palette (be sure the preferences Display tab is set to collapse to a palette, and not to hide the window). As you drag text and files into the palette, notes will be created, but they won’t open. Alternatively, you could uncheck “Open notes as they are created” in the Misc. tab of the Preferences dialog. This way, notes will be created, but NotePod will not come to the foreground, and notes won’t be opened for editing.
Memory considerations
If you’re running Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9, you really need to read this section. If you’re running NotePod under Mac OS X or Windows, you’ll probably still benefit from reading this section.
NotePod keeps every one of your notes in the computer’s memory, not just the current note. This means that the program will respond faster to searches, etc., but it also makes it impractical to store large blocks of text unless you give NotePod a large amount of RAM to work with. NotePod is meant for managing notes, not novels. If the data you’ve accumulated is no longer relevant to your current projects, you should archive it if you’d like, then delete the old notes to keep your data current and manageable.
If you attempt to create a note for which you don’t have sufficient RAM available, NotePod will warn you and will not create the note. If you try to add large amounts of text to a note when your available memory has become dangerously low, you’ll be warned, and NotePod will limit its Undo feature for that note to conserve memory.
Help
Any time you need help, just select “NotePod help…” from the Help menu, press the Help key or type Command-? for an overview of the NotePod program.
Misc.
NotePod stores all of its data in a file called “NotePod data” in the Preferences folder of your System folder.
Notes dragged from the NotePod window can be dropped into drag-and-drop aware applications, where they’ll be interpreted as a block of text.
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This software is shareware. It will create up to 10 notes without a registration code, and you’re welcome to use it as long as you wish if that’s all the notes you’ll need. You’re also free to redistribute this software provided you do not modify it nor charge for it, and provided you include all files included as downloaded from the Graffix Web site. You may register this software using the Register program included, or through Kagi at the link provided at the Graffix Web site listed below. For a $15 registration fee, I’ll send you (preferably by email) a registration code that you can enter into the Registration dialog, accessed from the program’s About box. After you’ve registered, you’ll be able to add as many notes and folders as your computer’s memory will allow.
Please remember that this is development software. Don’t store your only copy of any valuable information in here, because something could go wrong, or a file format change in a future version could make your data file inaccessible, although that’s unlikely and I’ll make every effort to protect your data. This beta copy will continue to operate until the end of 2001.
Please note that no software company will guarantee that their product will work flawlessly every time under any condition, and that certainly includes me. I’m just an illustrator in Wisconsin who made a few tools and am willing to share them. I’ve done my best to make the software as reliable as possible, but I make no guarantees and assume no liability.
Revision history:
Version 1.0 development begun July 1999, details in release notes sent to beta testers.
