FLEXPAD UPGRADE NOTES These notes highlight the major changes in FLEXPAD since its initial release (Version 1.0, January 1996). See the help and readme files for further information. -------------Version 2.0-------------- January, 1997 "." will no longer hide an entry if it is pressed during the middle of a text matching effort File|Export function has been significantly expanded You can now choose whether to export as pure text or leave Flexpad labels in their binary format If begun from a view, the export is based upon the matches in the view, with various fomatting options; you choose to have only the paragraph containing the matching label or text in the export or you can include all paragraphs that follow it until a blank line is reached or all paragraphs that follow until a paragraph with the same or less (tab) indentation is encountered Exported data can be deleted from the file at the end of a successful export (use with care) You can choose to append the exported data to an existing file From the weekly or monthly views you can create a text listing of appointments, arranged by date (for taking along with you, giving to your associates, etc) File|Import allows you to insert the contents of a file into the current file. If the file is a Flexpad file, the configuration information stored in the file (priority/category names, etc.) is ignored. Priority view now filters out done todos, except in the All Todos view which shows both done and pending todos Some searching work is performed in the background between keystrokes, thus speeding up searches when they must be rerun. New views have been added: Outline--replaces the All Paragraphs view. It shows the first line of each paragraph. Outline levels are indicated by indenting the first line of the paragraph with one or more tabs. You can restrict the view to the first 1-10 outline levels by pressing Alt-1 to Alt-0 (or Alt-L and the level number) or Alt-A for all levels. Use outline view to see your paragraphs in their larger context. Donetodos--shows all done todos, sorted by checkoff date. Archivable--shows all appointments before the view date and all checked off todos, regardless of checkoff date Tools|Restorelastdeletedlabel allows you to recover a label that has been accidentally deleted with Del or Bkspace. Only the most recent deletion is stored and only until you exit Flexpad. The View menu has been rearranged so that less frequently used choices are on an "otHer" submenu When in a view other than text, only or monthgraph, you've been able (since ver 1.2) to type text and have the cursor go to the first entry in the view that begins with that text. Ver 2.0 adds the ability to jump to the next entry with the same beginning text by pressing Ctrl-N and to jump backwards with Ctrl-P. The number of categories has been expanded from 50 to 99 File names are now checked for conformance to the DOS 8 by 3 naming convention Shift-F9 quickly marks a paragraph, supplementing the previous method of pressing F9 four times in succession You can now edit entries in the File|Previous picklist The Alt-I prompt is clarified to indicate that the ASCII number must be inputted, not the desired character (for example to insert "" you press Alt-I 4 Enter instead of Alt-4(numpad)) In Settings|File|File you can add a file "mask" to the directory specification (i.e., c:\mydata\*.flp) Edit|clone now marked text as well as a single label (the text must be 5kb or less in length) You no longer have to preface a filename on the command line with "/F:" in order to cause Flexpad to edit that file: Old way--Flexpad [other switches] /f:myfile.flp New way--Flexpad [other switches] myfile.flp Flexpad now displays an extra space at the end of a label if that label is not immediately followed by another label. This helps visually separate the label from following text. In text view, pressing Home takes you to the first non-whitespace character on the line, unless you are already at or to the left of that point; pressing Home again takes you to the left margin. You can now search for up to 5 individual search phrases at once in the Only view and F7 searches. Separate the phrases by "|" and a match for any of the phrases will be returned. The list of previously opened files has been increased from 5 to 10 members. A context function has been added so you can quickly see how a paragraph fits into context with the paragraphs that preceed it. Pressing Alt-P or Tools|showParents brings up a box in which the current paragraph is shown following the paragraphs before it that contain the most recent section label and any paragraphs in an outline hierarchy (if you've set one up by indenting paragraphs with Tabs). You can move the cursor to any of the paragraphs and press Enter to place the cursor at the beginning of that paragraph in Text view. Press ESC or F10 to leave this display. In the monthly graphical view you can now edit a label by pressing F2 while the cursor is on its time slot if it is the only label occupying that time slot. -------------Version 1.2-------------- September 1996 New files shipping with FLEXPAD: TOUR.FLP Flexpad formated file describing how to accomplish some commonly used Flexpad functions ADB2FLP.EXE Program which converts .adb files from the HP 100/200LX Palmtops to Flexpad's format (see the separate documentation for details) ADB2FLP.DOC Explanation of how to use the conversion program. Among other things the .adb file must first be processed with the freeware program ADBDUMP.EXE, available from other sources ADBDUMP.EXE program that converts HP 100/200LX appointment book files into an intermediate format that ADB2FLP.EXE can read You can change the name and location of the Clipboard file. By default it is [config directory]\FLEXPAD.CLP. With the "/L:[filename]" command line switch, you can change the name and subdirectory. If you do not specify a directory, the file will be given the name you specify in the config directory. Sorting of the matching labels in the Section, Bookmark and Category views can be toggled on or off (default = off) with Shift-F3. When sorting is activated, "S" shows on line two. You can checkoff a todo by pressing F4 while editing it. On a single date todo, it sets the checkoff date to the date you specify. For repeating todos, it asks you if you wish to set the next repeat interval, a date you specify, or make a final checkoff. If you say final, it puts the date you specify in the End date field and sets the Next date to the day after that. To set the next interval, it picks the next date which matches the repeating spec which is after the later of the start date, system date or the current "Next" date. This way if you pay a bill a few days before your next date, you can still go to the true next date. You can configure (on the Settings | Screen screen) the view that a file will be shown in when Flexpad first loads the file, either on startup or when the file is loaded after startup. You can set the default type of todo (No-carry, Target or Deadline). This setting will determine the type of new todos you insert or a todo you create from an existing appointment by pressing F3 while you are editing it. Pressing DEL when editing a repeating appointment field that allows multiple selections clears all selections. This is useful when you insert a new monthly repeating label; initially all of the months are selected. If you want to select just a few months, or a single month to create an annual event, you can unselect all of the months with DEL and then select the one or several months you desire. ESC, when pressed in a view, now returns you to text view at the last cursorposition as F4 already does. (If you want to go into text view and place the cursor on the point of the matching line in the view, press Enter instead.) You can change the time interval for the monthly graph view via the Settings|Screen|Graphint command, which toggles among the valid settings of 15, 20, 30, 60 and 120 minutes. F9, when pressed twice to mark a word, no longer marks the space, punctuation or carraige return following the word. When entering dates, in addition to specifying days of the week following the system (current) date, you can now specify the previous Mon, Tues, etc. by placing a Minus ("-") sign in front of the 2 letter code. Examples: [on July 1,1996--a Monday] Mo gives July 8 -Mo June 24 We July 3 -We June 26 You can also combine codes so that "-We++45" will give you the date 45 days after the Wednesday before the current date. When entering a date, "LA" gives you the last day of the current month. The pop up calendar shows the current day in . In the date related views, the current date is shown in the althighlight color. Also, pressing F5 while in the pop up calendar will move the cursor to the system (current) date (T already does this). The "T" (hoist line to top of screen while in a listing view) and "H" (jump to first todo or first appointment) functions are now Alt-H and Alt-J, respectively. This change was made to allow you to use the regular alpha keys to go to the first Section or Bookmark begining with that letter. In all views except Text, Only and Monthgraph, you can jump to the first entry which begins with a text phrase by typing that phrase. The characters you type are shown in the upper left corner of the display and the cursor is placed on the first match which begins with that text. Characters you press which will ot result in a match are rejected. A "Previous" search has been added to Find (F7) to search backwards from the cursor position. Press F6 (Bwd--backwards) after you type in your search phrase When editing a label, Shift-F10 ends editing and saves any changes just like plain F10 but the cursor will not follow the label to a new location in a view (if the location changes due to the revisions you've made). This is useful when you are editing a series of entries--you won't lose your place in the series. On the HP 100/200LX palmtops, when you zoom the screen while in one of FLEXPAD's views, it adjusts its screen size to the new screen size. It will not immediately adjust if you are editing a label or performing some other function but will do so once you return too a view screen. You can also have the 100/200LX automatically switch into 80 by 25 display mode when the Week or Monthly calendar grid views are selected. When you switch to another view, the previous display mode will be reactivated. Select this feature by starting Flexpad with the "/8" command line switch. You can force the 100/200LX display mode to your favorite setting by using the /S: command line switch when you start Flexpad: /S:4 40 x 16 /S:6 64 x 18 /S:8 80 x 25 The Copy, Cut, Paste, Date and Time function key combinations on the 100/200LX are now recognized and the appropriate Flexpad function is invoked when you press them. On generic PC's you can now mark text by using the Shift key in combination with the arrow keys. This does not work on the HP Palmtops, due to the way they emmulate the keyboard. F9 continues to work on all PC's, including the palmtops. -------------Version 1.1-------------- April 1996 ESCape no longer activates the menus. It is now used to cancel marking of text. F9 begins marking the first time you press it. Press it again and you mark the word at the cursor. Further presses mark the current sentence, then the current paragraph, then following paragraphs. This is a handy feature for quickly reorganizing text, especially when combined with the new Move marked text function. Weekly and monthly grid views have been added to complement the textual views. You use the arrow keys to move between the days and PGUP and PGDN to move among the appointments for a given day. The weekly view adjusts to the number of appointments for each day and will show multiple lines of an appointment's text if there is sufficient room. The monthly view always uses a single line for each appointment and omits the starting time in order to show more of the appointment text. If there are more appointments than will fit, an arrow will show in the lower right corner of the day's box. To view the full text of a particular appointment, place the cursor on it and press Enter. You can also read or edit an appointment label by pressing F2 when the cursor is on it. Auto indentation of paragraphs has been added as an optional feature (Settings|Default|autoIndent). When on, pressing enter will add after the carriage return the number of tab characters that are present at the beginning of the current paragraph. This is handy for making quick outlines and indented lists. By design, autoindent doesn't add tabs if you press enter while the cursor is at the left margin (column 1). A "move" function has been added. Mark some text, press Alt-M to enter Move mode, move the cursor to the new location and press Enter. The moved text is copied directly from the old to the new locations; the contents of the clipboard are not affected. If you want to move a portion of text to more than one place in the file, you must first cut it to the clipboard and then paste it at the desired locations. You can now "clone" a label under the cursor. Found on the edit menu, cloNe inserts a copy of the label immediately after it and moves the cursor to the copy. The interval label now displays the beginning and end dates if the interval is 1 day. This is a handy way to set up a multi-day appointment and see the date range without having to use the label editor. Similarly, for the Monthly repeating (position and day of month) labels, if 4 or fewer months are selected, the 3 character month names are displayed to make the label easier to read. If 5 or more months are selected, the existing method of displaying all of the first letters of the month names with the selected months in uppercase (i.e., JFMamjJASonD), is retained. The display of Done todos in text view now includes the done date. Insert label (F8) behaves as follows: If in a view, the new label is inserted at the end of the file. Use Shift-F8 to insert a new label at the current text view cursor position in the file. In text view, both F8 and Shift-F8 insert the label at the current cursor position. Only searches and Find (F7) now accept "?" as a wildcard in all but the first character position of the search phrase. The ? will match any character. If you select Find or an Only search while text is marked, the marked text (the first 30 characters) will be suggested as the find/search phrase. FLEXPAD now remembers the last 5 files that it has openned. To reopen one of those files, choose Previous from the file menu and pick one of the previously loaded files from the list. You can now save a file with a new file name via the saveAs command on the File submenu. You can also export all or the marked portion of a file as plain text, with the labels appearing as they do on your screen, with File Export. In places where you can call up a picklist (i.e., Only search and File to open dialogs) you now press the down arrow instead of F6 to activate the picklist. This was changed to more closely imitate the behavior of Windows programs. For the previous files and Only search phrase lists, you can delete an entry in the list by pressing DEL while the cursor is on it. In cases where the lists are fixed (Category and Priority labels) this option is disabled. If you type a character or Paste text while text is marked, the typed character or clipboard contents will replace the marked text. You can turn this feature on or off via the "Typed text replaces marked text" setting on the Settings|Defaults menu. Week of the Year is now displayed in the various views (but not the week or month grids) in the format w:[week number]. The alt-highlight color is now used to indicate days 10-19 and 30-31 on line 2 and to show the current date on line 3 of the monthly time graph view. The granularity (time interval per line) is adjustable from 15 to 120 minutes via the Settings|Screen|Graphint setting. You can now select from among 4 different date formats with the Settings Default Date: 12/1/96 12/01/96 1/12/96 01/12/96 In Daily view, pressing H "hoists"--brings to the top of the screen the first todo (if the cursor is on an appointment match) or the first appointment (if the cursor is on a todo). This was requested in order to allow quick transitions between appts and todos. Shift-F10 saves the file data to disk (if it has changed or is set to save regardless of whether there is unsaved data) but avoids refreshing the alarms.abk file that is used to set alarms on the HP Palmtops, making the save finish faster.