Jot-A-Lot is a program for storing small pieces of information, jots. It is supposed to be a replacement for all those small notes with scribbles that litter most peoples' desktops. Jot-A-Lot allows you to store any number of jots at the same convenient place and retrieve them with a fast free text search. You just start typing and Jot-A-Lot immediately finds all the records that match what you are typing.
For a program such as Jot-A-Lot to be useful it needs to be instantly accessible, so that you can type down your ideas before they escape your mind. I've trimmed Jot-A-Lot so that it starts faster than most other programs. You can use a utility program such as PopUp Folder or similar to tie a function key to Jot-A-Lot. Then, whenever you need to jot something down, you just have to press the key and the Jot-A-Lot window will pop up. Furthermore, the memory requirements of the program are so low, that you can keep it running in the background all the time if you so desire.
I've found Jot-A-Lot to be especially useful for storing such things as addresses, recipes, loose ideas, et cetera.
If you install Internet Config you can link Jot-A-Lot entries to web pages, e-mail addresses et cetera. Using the special tool Link GURL Handler supplied with Jot-A-Lot you can even create links to files, folders and applications on your hard drive and start them up with a single click.
2. Features
• stores any kind of styled textual information
• fast free text searches allow you to retrieve information instantly
• FAT binary version
• saves changes automatically
• magic command clicking
• links to web pages, e-mail addresses, etc
• links to documents and applications on your hard drive
• lean and mean -> uses only 120 K of disk space and RAM
3. Registration
To register this program send $5 or more to
Niklas Frykholm
Rothoffsv. 37 A
903 42 Umeå
Send at least $10 if you want a disk with the latest version of my shareware package. If you include your e-mail in the message I will put you on my mailing list and you will get updates and new programs by e-mail.
You can contact me using one of my e-mail addresses
r2d2@acc.umu.se
nisfrm95@student.umu.se
niklasf@cs.umu.se
Or by visiting my web page
http://www.acc.umu.se/~r2d2/
4. Using Jot-A-Lot
4.1 Pads
The documents that Jot-A-Lot works with are called pads. Each pad contains a number of jots, small pieces of textual information, just as an ordinary notepad contains a number of pages.
When you start up Jot-A-Lot it opens the Default Pad. This pad is stored in the same directory as the Jot-A-Lot application and is always opened when you start the application. (Unless you start Jot-A-Lot by double-clicking some other pad.)
The simplest thing to do is to store all your jots in the Default Pad. That way they will be immediately accessible whenever you start the application. It is however also possible to divide your jots on a number of pads. You may wish to do so to get a more structured workbench where different pads serve different purposes. You may use one pad for addresses, one for recipes, et cetera. Another reason to use more than pad is if you enter so much information into one pad that searches start to run sluggish. It might then be wise to divide your entries among several pads. You can create and open pads by using the "New Pad" and "Open Pad…" menu options.
4.2 Making searches
The Jot-A-Lot main window is divided into two different text panes. The upper pane is the search pane, which is used for searching among the jots in the current pad. The lower pane is the text pane, which is used for viewing and editing jots.
To start a search all you have to do is type some text into the search pane. Jot-A-Lot will then find all the jots in the current pad that match the text you have entered and display the first match in the text pane. The text in the lower left corner of the window shows how many matches that were found and which of them you currently are looking at. For example, suppose that you enter the text "fo" in the search pane and that there are 15 jots matching this text. Jot-A-Lot will then display the first of these in the text pane and show 1 of 15 in the lower right corner to show that there are 15 matches to the current search word and that you are looking at the first one.
When more than one jot match the search word arrows will be displayed in the lower right corner of the window. You can use the arrows to move between the matches. For example if you press the right arrow in the example above, the text pane will change to display the next matching entry and the text in the lower left corner will be 2 of 15.
Apart from using the arrow icons for moving between entries you can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard. When the insertion point is in the text pane the left and right arrow keys can be used to move between the matches. The up key means "move to the first match" and the down key "move to the last match". When the insertion point is in the text pane you have to press the command key together with the arrow keys if you want to use them in this way. Otherwise the arrow keys just move the insertion point.
The empty search string matches all records. Thus, if you delete all the text in the search field all jots will match and the text in the lower left corner tells you how many jots the current pad contains.
If no jots match the search word the program will play a warning sound.
4.3 Creating and deleting jots
You create a new empty jot in the pad by using the "New Item" option in the file menu. New items are always placed at the end of the current pad so you can get to them quickly by deleting all the text in the search pane and pressing the down arrow key.
There are two ways of deleting jots in Jot-A-Lot. You can either delete all the text in the text pane by selecting it and deleting it or choose the "Delete Jot" menu option. In both cases an empty sheet is left in the pad. The empty sheet is removed automatically at the next search operation. Note however, that you can always create a new empty sheet by using the "New Jot" option.
4.4 Editing text
You edit the text in the text pane in the same way as in most other applications, by typing, selecting, pasting, copying and styling it using menu options. There are however some notable differences between the Jot-A-Lot text pane and many other applications.
First of all, Jot-A-Lot does not use a scroll bar. This may seem strange, but it is sort of a trade off between space and convenience. I found that most of the jots I wanted to store were only short snippets of text that seldom had to be scrolled around a lot. So I decided to eliminate the scroll bar to save some display space. (You may compare this with the Post-It Notes program supplied with the MacOS, which also lacks scroll bars.)
The text in the pane can however still be scrolled, by dragging with the mouse, or using the scroll keys on the extended keyboard. (Those without extended keyboards can use alt or ctrl + the up and down arrow keys to get the functionality of the scroll keys.)
The second difference is that Jot-A-Lot has many more command key options than most programs, even some command key options for colors and fonts (Courier, Geneva, Helvetica, Monaco, Times). I find these shortcuts useful in a program such as Jot-A-Lot.
(If you're a ResEdit hacker you can use ResEdit to change the command key bindings of Jot-a-lot. You can also add new colors and text sizes to the menus, since the program reads the menu resource directly to find the color and the text size.)
5. Menu Reference
5.1 File Menu
"New Jot" creates a new empty jot sheet in the pad.
"Delete Jot" deletes all the text from the current jot sheet. When you move to another jot the empty sheet is discarded from the pad.
"New Pad" creates a new pad for storing jots.
"Open Pad" brings up the open file dialog box and allows you to open a pad file.
"Close Pad" closes the current pad.
"Import…" is used to import records from a file. See section 8 on importing and exporting.
"Export Found…" is used to export all records that match the current search string to a file. See section 8.
5.2 Edit Menu
"Undo" undoes the last action. Undo might sometimes undo more than you expect and sometimes less.
"Cut", "Copy", "Paste", "Clear" and "Select All" work as usual.
"Insert File Link" is used to insert links to files and applications on your hard drive. For file links to work, Internet Config and the Link GURL Handler must be installed. See section 7 for more information.
5.3 Font Menu
This menu is used to set the font of the selected text.
5.4 Size Menu
This menu is used to set the size of the selected text.
5.5 Style Menu
This menu is used to set the style of the selected text.
6. The Magic of Command Clicking
I always like to put a little magic into my programs. In Jot-A-Lot you call upon this magic by holding down the command key and clicking on a word in the text. What happens depends on whether the thing you are clicking is an ordinary word or an URL (internet address).
6.1 Command Searching
If you are clicking an ordinary word, Jot-A-Lot makes a search for that word and finds all matching entries, just as if you had entered the word in the search pane. This is thus a fast way of jumping between related jot sheets.
If you command click a word which is already in the search pane, Jot-A-Lot will instead display the next match for that word. You can thus cycle between the matches for a certain word by repeatedly command clicking in the search pane.
6.2 URL Linking
If the clicked word is an URL Jot-A-Lot will call upon the powers of Internet Config, provided it is installed on your system. Internet Config will then launch a program which is suitable for handling the URL. For example, if the URL begins with http, Internet Config might launch Netscape which displays the corresponding web page.
If you want URL linking to work you must install Internet Config on your system. You can download Internet Config from any major Mac shareware site.
7. File Linking à la Jot-A-Lot
Jot-A-Lot also has a file linking facility which allows you to link documents and applications to your jots. You do this by including file links in the text. Whenever you command-click a file link the corresponding item on your hard drive will be opened.
Jot-A-Lot handles file links by a special link URL which might look something like this
File links work just as other URL links. That is, whenever you command click a link URL, Jot-A-Lot will tell Internet Config to open the file URL, just as it opens other URLs.
Internet Config, however, does not handle URLs by itself, it just launches a suitable program, so we need a special program to handle the link URLs. This is the purpose of the "Link GURL Handler" program which is distributed together with Jot-A-Lot. All we have to do is to install the "Link GURL Handler" and then tell Internet Config that link URLs should be handled by that program. This is done by adding a link URL handler to the "Helpers" section of Internet Config. Detailed instructions are given in the help file for the "Link GURL Handler".
There are two ways of including a file link in a jot sheet. The simplest is to use the menu option "Include File Link". When you select that option the standard file dialog box will appear and allow you to select the file you want to link to. Jot-A-Lot will then insert the link for you.
The other way is to type the link yourself. This is generally not recommended because it is easy to make spelling mistakes or forget that certain characters (such as " " and "/") need to be coded in the URL string. There is however one situation where typing the link yourself might be a viable option.
Links that begin with "/" are absolute links. They specify the entire path to the linked file, starting with the volume name. Links without an "/" in the beginning are relative links. They specify the link to the file in relation to the "Link GURL Handler" program. This means that if you put an alias to Eudora in the same folder as the "Link GURL Handler" and name it "Eudora" you can create a link to it by simply writing
link:Eudora
You can put aliases to all the applications and documents that you use frequently in the same folder as the "Link GURL Handler" and give them suitable names. A number of simple links such as the one above can then be used to start the different applications.
8. Exporting and importing
Jot-a-lot also has facilities for exporting data to and importing data from text files. This is useful if you want to exchange information between Jot-a-lot and other programs.
All records are exported to (or imported from) a single text file. Each record in the file is separated by a special separator string. You specify the separator string in a dialog box when you do the export or import operation. Just type the string you want to use as separator in the dialog box. Tabs and returns in the separator string must be coded with the special sequences \t and \r respectively.
If the separator is \r\r***\r\r and the pad contains the three records Penny Lane, Montana and Cornholio, the exported file will look like this
Penny Lane
***
Montana
***
Cornholio
If the exported file would later be imported, using the same separator string, the same three entries would be added to the pad. However, if we instead used the separator string \r\rMontana\r\r when importing, we would get the two entries
Penny Lane
***
and
***
Cornholio
Using \r\r as separator would give us five entries Penny Lane, ***, Montana, ***, and Cornholio.
9. Jot-A-Lot vs OrgaNicer
Some of you, who are familiar with my other program, OrgaNicer, may wonder why I have created a new program with a functionality which in many ways is similar to the OrgaNicer's, instead of improving on the OrgaNicer.
The reason is that during the last few months I've experienced a growing dissatisfaction with the OrgaNicer. It is very useful for many tasks, but after a while I found that it was not very well suited to some of the things I wanted to do with it.
For example, the OrgaNicer does not cope well with large data files. When there are more than 100 entries, the scrollable field at the top of the OrgaNicer is practically useless, since it is too tiresome to scroll through 100 entries.
Furthermore, the OrgaNicer does not cope well with information that is highly disorganized (just about as disorganized as my brain). I often find myself wanting to store small snippets of information, such as ideas to a poem, etc. The OrgaNicer enforces an unnecessary rigid structure on these data.
In addition to that, the OrgaNicer is a bit slow at start up. I wanted something that would start instantly so that I could record an idea as it entered my mind.
For a while, I tried to use the Post-It Notes program included with the MacOS. It worked well, but it left my computer desktop just as cluttered with notes as my physical desktop had been before. I wanted something that would allow me to keep all that information and access it randomly and quickly but not force it to be visible at all times.
I realized that what was needed was something entirely new. The breakthrough came when my good friend Tobias Peciva showed me a small program of his creation. It contained two fields. One where the user could enter random search strings and another where the first record matching the search string was displayed. I harvested this idea, added the features I liked the most in the OrgaNicer, and a new program was born.
