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OS/2 Help File | 1998-07-13 | 32KB | 491 lines

ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. Introduction ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Version 1.32 Copyright (C) 1997-1998 by Jeffrey Habets For a long time I've been using the paper PostIt notes to help me remind me of important things that I didn't want to forget. Problem with these notes was that they didn't stick very well to the edge of my monitor. So I searched for an electronic equivalent of the sticky notes. I tried several programs, but they all had either way to much functionality I did not need, or they were to simple to be paying a lot of money for. So I decided to write my own. PmNotes is the result of this effort, I hope you like it. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. The main window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Main window menu options All functions callable from the main window are accessed through te popup menu. Apart from calling the menu by clicking MB2 on the main window, you can also call it using the F10 key if the main PmNotes window is active. So a quick keyboard navigation to this menu from anywhere in the system would be CTRL-SHIFT-P (to acticate main window) followed by F10. Option Accelerator Description Hide Hides the main window. You can show it again using the defined hotkey combination for the main window or by double clicking the PmNotes entry in the OS/2 tasklist. Options... Pops up the Options window to configure various program settings. Export notes to Opens a dialog where you can select one or more textfile... notes from a list and write the contents to a textfile. Show note... Alt+S Popup a window that let's you select a note to bring to the foreground. Very usefull to find hidden notes or notes that are behind a pile of other windows. PmNotes by default doesn't put the individual notes in the OS/2 Window List to prevent clutter of your Window List. Show all notes Restores all hidden notes and brings all notes to top of Z-order. Hide all notes Hides all notes. New note Alt-N Creates an empty note. Note: You can also create a new note by "pulling" it from the main window using MB1 or MB2 (depending on your selection in the main window options). Paste to new note Alt+P Creates a new note and pastes the clipboard's contents (if it is text) to it. About PmNotes... Alt-A Displays a program information dialogbox. If PmNotes is unregistered this will also give you access to the registration dialog. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Notes ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Note menu options All operations concerning a note are accessible from the note popup menu except for one: You can 'stamp' the active note with current date and time by hitting Ctrl-T. This will insert current date and time at the cursor position in the notetext. The options available in the note popup-menu are strongly dependend on possible text selections in the notetext. All possible options are presented here. Apart from calling the menu by clicking MB2 on the note window, you can also call it using the F10 key if the note window is active. Option Accelerator Description Hide note Alt-H Hides the current note. You can show it again by using the Show note option. Delete note Alt-D Deletes the current note. Set alarm... Displays a dialog in which you can set or unset an alarm for the note. If this menuitem is checked, it means an alarm time and date is currently set for this note. When the time for which the alarm was set is reached, a beep will sound and the note forces it self to the foreground, even if it is hidden. Note options Submenu containing several individual note options. These are all on/off toggles, if a particular function is active, the menuitem will be checked. Titlebar Alt-T Toggles the titlebar on or off. Scrollbar Alt-S Toggles the vertical scrollbar on or off. Show in windowlist Toggles whether or not the note should appear in the OS/2 windowlist. If it is on, the first 50 characters of the note will be used as text for the windowlist entry. Float on top Like the main window, you can also let notes float on top of all other PM windows. Create URL object (Only available if a valid Internet URL is selected in the note text.) Pops up a dialog that let's you choose a title and destination for the URL object to be created. Destination can be any folder on the desktop or the desktop itself. The same operation can be achived by simply dragging the URL from the note to the desired destination folder. Clear Delete (Only available if text is selected.) Deletes the currently selected text. Cut Shift-Delete (Only available if text is selected.) Cuts the currently selected text to the clipboard. Copy Ctrl-Insert (Only available if text is selected.) Copies the currently selected text to the clipboard. Paste Shift-Insert (Only available if there is text available on the clipboard.) Pastes clipboards contents to note. Undo Alt-U (Only available if there was an action performed that can be undone.) Reverts the last Clear/Copy/Cut/Paste/typing action. Note: If you are running NPSWPS or a similar utility that provides a extra popup-menu for (Multiline) Entryfields, it is possible that you see this menu appearing instead of PmNotes' own menu. Try holding your MB2 a little bit longer then you're used to for invoking popup menus. You should now get the PmNotes popup menu correctly. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. Options window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ PmNotes configuration The options notebook contains three pages. You'll find a page to configure various aspects for the main window, one for the notes and one for the hotkey configuration. Main window tab If Float on top is checked, the PmNotes main window will float on top of all windows. If Time display is checked, alternating Time and Date will be displayed in the main window. If Animate on mouseover is checked, a stack of notes will be displayed in the main window while the mouse is moved over it, indicating that you can tear off a note. Mouse button drag action. Select whether you want to use mousebutton 1 to move the main window and mousebutton 2 to drag-create new notes or vise versa. The Window height and Window width fields specify the main window's dimensions. They can be anything between 32 and 200 pixels. If you have the Time display enabled, the width of the window will be scaled up if the width value is to small to fit the time/date text. In the Colors section, you will see three boxes: Active background, Inactive background and Date/Time display. You can drop colors from the OS/2 color palette on these boxes to customize the main window look. Note windows tab If Titlebar on new notes is checked, newly created notes will by default have a titlebar with creation date and time. If Scrollbar on new notes is checked, newly created notes will by default have a vertical scrollbar. If New notes appear in windowlist is checked, newly created notes will by default appear in the OS/2 windowlist. If 3D-look notes is checked, the notes will have sort of a 3D-ish look. (Registered version only) If Confirm on delete is checked, PmNotes asks for a confirmation on deletion of notes. Check New notes at: and one of the four radio buttons to make new notes always popup in the corresponding corner of the screen. Use titlebar to display. Select an option from the listbox to display note creation date, note last modified date, first 50 characters of notetext or alarm time (if set) in the titlebar. Note that if you select the creation or last modified date option while there are existing notes, the date and time for those notes will be set to current date and time. Alarm tab You can configure the Alarm type to be a simple bleep from your PC speaker or you can let PmNotes play a wave audio file for you. If you choose the latter, you can enter the complete path to the wave file in the Alarm sound file section. Like your clockradio, PmNotes can repeat an alarm every 1-59 minutes for you. You can set this in the Snooze time section. If set to a positive value an alarm note will popup every number of minutes specified here, after the initial alarm time set for that particular note was reached. This continues until the alarm is un-set (from the note popup menu) or the note is deleted. If set to 0, the note will popup and sound only once. Hotkeys (Registered version only) Here you can setup the hotkey combination to use for activating the main window and the Show note dialog. Note: You can reset these options to default by running the ResetIni.cmd REXX script. The script will ask for confirmation before each deletion. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 5. The Note selection window ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Finding your notes To prevent cluttering your windowlist, PmNotes has it's own 'tasklist' for notes. You can popup the window by hitting the defined hotkey (default: Ctrl-tab) while you're working in any other PM application or by selecting "Show note..." from the main window popup menu. The window contains a dropdown listbox containing the first few characters of each note (not counting empty lines) as the listbox items. The currently selected note will be displayed (in part) in the section below the listbox. You can browse through the notes using the up and down cursor keys or simply select an item from the list. A third possibility would be to start typing the first characters of a note (if you remember them, ofcourse) while the dropdown combo has focus. Hitting Enter or clicking the Show button will dismiss the window and bring the selected note to the foreground. Also, you can hold the Ctrl-key while selecting an item from the list to immediately dismiss the window and show the selected note. From the popup menu in this window you have the option to copy selected text from the note-section to the clipboard, delete the currently selected note or to reverse the order of the notes shown in the dropdown list. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 6. Dragging windows and URL's ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Drag and Drop capabilities Since the notes don't necessarily have titlebars and the main window hasn't got one at all, you have several other ways of moving these windows: The main PmNotes window can be moved by dragging with MB1 or MB2 (depending on your selection in the main window options) down. The notewindows can be moved by dragging with MB2 pressed. There's one exception where this will NOT work, if the currenty selected text in the note is a valid URL and you are running Warp 4, a URL drag operation will be initiated by dragging with MB2. If Date and time (titlebar) is being displayed in a note, you can also move the note by dragging (mouse pointer on Date / time display) with either MB1 or MB2 down. You can drag a URL object from your desktop or from your browser and drop it on a note to insert the URL at the cursor position in the note text. Any selected text will be overwritten. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 7. Colors, fonts and sizing ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ More Drag and Drop capabilities You can drop colors on the following note sections by drag and dropping from the OS/2 color pallette: Border (both active and inactive state) Text section (MLE) background Text section (MLE) foreground (hold CTRL while dropping color) Date/time header background (both active and inactive state) Date/time header foreground (hold CTRL while dropping color) You can drag and drop a (different) font from the OS/2 font pallette on both the text (MLE) section and the Date/time section. To make the colors or font for a certain note area default for all newly created notes, hold SHIFT while dropping. Note that new defaults are set per note area (MLE, titlebar or frame). So if you e.g. drop a font on the MLE while holding SHIFT, the colors of this MLE will also be read as the new defaults. The default colors and font for notes will also be used in the Show note window. The best way to adjust default note appearance is to simply drag a note of the main window and change what you want to change holding SHIFT while dropping. Sizing notes is pretty basic and the same as you are used to for all PM windows. You can change the default note size for new notes however by holding SHIFT while resizing a note. Tip: As a font, try " 10. Tms Rmn " with a blue color and the default note colors. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 8. System-wide hot-key support ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Hotkeys for fast access For fast access to your notes or the main PmNotes window, even if your desktop is totally covered with windows, there are two hotkey combinations defined. If the defaults don't suit you and you registered PmNotes, you can configure other combinations as your hotkeys on the Hotkeys page of the Options notebook. CTRL-SHIFT-P activates the main PmNotes window. CTRL-TAB activates the Show note window from where you can select a note to bring to the foreground. If you don't need or want the hotkey-support, simply delete or rename PMN_HOOK.DLL in your PmNotes directory. Note: If you are running more that one instance of PmNotes, the hotkeys will activate the instance that was first started. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 9. Licence ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Licence information First of all, PmNotes is not free software. It is distributed as shareware. As a nonregistered user you are granted a limited licence to use PmNotes on a 30 day trial basis to determine whether or not PmNotes is the program you're looking for. Use of PmNotes after this period requires registration. Registration grants you the right to use PmNotes on one computer. You may use it on more than one computer, but not at the same time. Furthermore, registration enables you to: Use more than a maximum of 5 notes (up to 200) Configure the system wide hotkeys Give your notes a more 3D-ish look It is not allowed to modify PmNotes in any way. This includes any possible way of reverse engineering the executable code. The PmNotes distribution archive may be altered to add additional files (e.g. BBS info or translations of documentation) provided all PmNotes files are kept in the archive in their original state. Subject to the above, PmNotes may be freely redistributed to others for trial use of the program, taking in account the following terms: No money may be charged, except for a very small fee to cover distribution expenses (like e.g. disks or CD-ROMs). PmNotes may not be redistributed in conjunction with any kind of software or hardware without the authors written permission. PmNotes comes without any kind of warranty. The only thing guaranteed is that the program uses harddisk space, RAM and CPU-time. The author assumes no responsibility for any damage or loss of data arising from the use or inability to use this program. BY USE OF THIS PROGRAM YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 10. Contacting the author ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Contacting the author For bugreports, suggestions etc. concerning PmNotes, you can reach the author in several ways. Snail-mail: Jeffrey Habets Generaal Eisenhowerstraat 41 6224 XH MAASTRICHT The Netherlands Internet e-mail: pmnotes@bmtmicro.com Fidonet mail: 2:284/312.3 Web-site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeffh ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 11. Registration ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Registration procedure When unregistered, the program is fully functional except for the following: You can have only a maximum of 5 notes open at any time. Hotkey configuration is disabled, you can only use the default hotkeys. The 3D-look for notes is disabled. To enable these features: Pay the author to get a unique key to unlock the features. (See the file REGISTER.TXT for details.) From the main PmNotes window popup menu, choose "About PmNotes...". In the About dialog click the "Register..." button. Enter your name and key exactly as you received it (case sensitive!) Click "Ok". The program will tell you if the registration went Ok and if not, why it failed. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 12. Usage hints ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ Hints 'n Tips Here are some hints on using PmNotes to make life easier. Do a lot of off-line newsreading? Bet you often bump into an URL you would like to visit sometime. - Select the URL in your newsreader and Copy it to the OS/2 clipboard. - From the PmNotes window (CTRL-SHIFT-P if you can't find it) pop-up menu select "Paste to new note" or pop-up on an existing note and "Paste". The URL will be inserted in the note. - Next time you are online, double-click the URL in the note to select it and drag it to your browser, et voila! You can also drag the URL to any folder you would like to keep it in and a standard OS/2 URL object will be created. See, a sort of temporary bookmark-list is born.. Use PmNotes as a clipboard extension for text. I found myself doing this very often to copy a number of non-continuous phrases of text from one application to another. Just as on the real life notes, write important things you must not forget on them. As soon as you click outside the notewindow, the text is written to disk. So you don't lose your recently created notes when system crashes or whatever occur. Use the hide function for notes to prevent clutter of notes all over your desktop. But ofcourse don't use it on notes that function as a reminder. If you use Stardock's Object Desktop (Pro), Open the Control Center properties. On page 2 of the Virtual Desktop tab, add PmNotes to the list of locked windows. The PmNotes main window will now show up on all your virtual desktops. (If you wish, you can do the same with notes that have a titlebar. You can identify them by the date and time.) Adjust the main window size so the height is the same as WarpCenter and activate the float on top feature. Position the window over an empty spot on the WarpCenter to make it look as if PmNotes were part of the WarpCenter. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden> ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ MB1: Mouse Button 1 In a standard OS/2 setup this will be your left mousebutton. ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ <hidden> ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ MB2: Mouse Button 2 In a standard OS/2 setup this will be your right mousebutton.