ASPOSTIT(1)ASPOSTIT(1)NAMEaspostit - X window system Post-it(r) notes
SYNOPSISaspostit [ -toolkitoptions ... ] [ -options ... ]
COPYRIGHT
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MER‐
CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
aspostit is made upon xpostit, Public Domain, by David A. Curry. (SRI
International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025) You can get
original public domain version on
ftp://ftp://ftp.ers.ibm.com/pub/davy/xpostit3.3.2.tar.gz
DESCRIPTIONaspostit provides a mechanism for manipulating on-screen Post-it(r)
notes. All six sizes of Post-it notes may be displayed, edited, and
saved to disk files. In addition, any on-screen note may be resized to
any arbitrary size either when it is created or at a later time.
All notes can be "hidden" - the notes are still available but not shown
on the screen until requested by the user. Hidden notes will stay hid‐
den when aspostit is exited and then restarted (as long as the user
saves all notes before exiting).
When aspostit is first invoked, it creates a small window with a plaid
background. This is the control window for aspostit. Additionally, if
any notes were stored in the save directory (see below), these will be
placed on the screen at their last locations, unless they were hidden
when saved (see below). Each Post-it note, when created, makes another
window on the screen. aspostit is controlled using the mouse buttons
and a menu. The Post-it notes are controlled by using a drop down
menu.
OPTIONSaspostit accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options
along with the additional options listed below.
-bs number
Specifies the size of the character buffer in which to save
each Post-it note. A note may not contain more than this num‐
ber of characters, including newlines. The default is 1024.
-nw pixels
Allows the user to specify the width, in pixels, for a single
character of text. This is dependent on the font being used,
but the Athena Widget set and the Xt Intrinsics apparently
doesn't allow a program to determine this value at run time.
This value is used to determine the width of the Name dialog
box, which is used to provide a title for a given note. The
default value for this option is 10 pixels.
-ao offset
The offset is specified in pixels and is used to determine the
X and Y offsets from an anchor note for a note being cascaded.
The default value is 15 pixels.
-dir path
Specifies the path name of the directory in which to store
saved Post-it notes. If path begins with a `/' it is taken as-
is; if it does not begin with a `/', the path is taken relative
to the home directory. If the named directory does not already
exist, then aspostit attempts to create it. The default is
~/GNUstep/Library/AfterStep/aspostit/.
-tmpdir path
Specifies the path name of the directory to use for temporary
files. By default ``/tmp'' is used.
-printcmd cmd
This must be a quoted command string that can be used as the
format string to sprintf(). It must include "%s" for the tem‐
porary file name used when printing a note. The buffer created
with sprintf(), this option value, and the temporary file name
is passed to the system() call to print the note. By default,
the printcmd value is ``lpr %s''.
-calendarcmd cmd
This is the command used to produce a calendar for the current
month. On most Unix systems this will be ``cal'', which is the
default. The output from this command is redirected to a tem‐
porary file and then inserted into a note at the current cursor
location.
-emailcmd cmd
The "Email" option from the notes menu will pop up a window
prompting for an email address. The -emailcmd command line
option or .emailCmd resource can be set to your systems mailer
command. The mailer must accept the text of the mail via stan‐
dard input (actually as a pipe from "cat tmpfile"). "cmd" must
be a Unix style command in printf() format. See the section on
Configuring the mailer.
-sb Enables scroll-bars. If specified, a scroll bar will be
attached to each Post-it note.
-sv Enables save-on-exit. When specified, this option tells aspos‐
tit to save all Post-it notes to disk files when exiting. If
not specified, notes can be saved to disk files manually by the
user or via the autosave feature. It is useful to specify this
option since hidden notes cannot be saved unless either the
"Save All Notes" option is used or the autosave option has not
been disabled. Its also to use this option since its not guar‐
anteed that the autosave feature will have saved all notes
since their last updates when aspostit exits.
-c Enables compatibility mode. Initially this is for notes cre‐
ated using the %! magic cookie. In version 2.2 this was
changed to %%!! because the original cookie was the one being
used for Postscript files. In the future this mode may cover
other items that are not compatible between versions/releases.
-ns Disables the autosave feature.
-na Disables alarms.
-interval
Sets the timeout interval (in minutes) for when the autosave
timeout should expire. When this timer expires, all notes are
automatically saved to disk. The default value is 10 minutes.
-homedir path
Specifies the base directory from which the File Selection Win‐
dow will look for files and directories. If not specified, and
the associated resource .homeDir is not set then the environ‐
ment variable HOME is used. If this is not set either, then
the File Selection Window uses the root (/) directory as its
start point.
-version -V
Displays the current version of aspostit.
-help -h
Displays a usage message.
WIDGET USAGEaspostit uses several widget types to construct the objects it uses.
The control window is a Plaid widget called ``Plaid''.
The menu is a pop-up shell called ``Menu'' containing a SimpleMenu wid‐
get. From this menu the hidden notes menu can be popped up. The hid‐
den notes menu is also a SimpleMenu widget.
Each Post-it note is a pop-up shell called ``PostItNote'', containing a
Form widget called ``Note'' which contains a Text widget called ``Note‐
Text'', and a MenuButton widget called "Options". The Options button,
when selected, pops up a drop-down menu called "OptionsMenu". Inside
of this menu are five menu items called ``Save'', ``Erase'',
``Destroy'', ``Hide'', and ``Name''.
The confirmation box is a pop-up shell called ``Confirm'', containing a
Form widget called ``Buttons'' which contains two Command widgets
called ``Confirm'' and ``Cancel''. There is also dialog box which pops
up when the Name menu item is selected which is called "Dialog".
RESOURCESaspostit understands all of the core X Toolkit resource names and
classes as well as those listed below, which are all of class aspostit.
.bufSize
Specifies the size of the character buffer used to store a
Post-it note. The default is 1024.
.nameWidth
See the -nw command line option. The default value for this
resource is 10.
.noteDir
Specifies the path name of the directory in which to store
saved notes. The default is /GNUstep/Library/AfterStep/aspos‐
tit.
.tmpDir Specifies the path name of the directory to use for temporary
files. By default ``/tmp'' is used.
.printCmd
This must be a quoted command string that can be used as the
format string to sprintf(). It must include "%s" for the tem‐
porary file name used when printing a note. The buffer created
with sprintf(), this option value, and the temporary file name
is passed to the system() call to print the note. By default,
the printcmd value is ``lpr %s''.
.calendarCmd
This is the command used to produce a calendar for the current
month. On most Unix systems this will be ``cal'', which is the
default. The output from this command is redirected to a tem‐
porary file and then inserted into a note at the current cursor
location.
.emailCmd
The "Email" option from the notes menu will pop up a window
prompting for an email address. The -emailcmd command line
option or .emailCmd resource can be set to your systems mailer
command. The mailer must accept the text of the mail via stan‐
dard input (actually as a pipe from "cat tmpfile"). "cmd" must
be a Unix style command in printf() format. See the section on
Configuring the mailer.
.saveNotes
Controls the state of the save-on-exit option. The default is
false.
.scrollBar
Controls placing scroll bars on Post-it notes. The default is
false.
.compatibility
Enables compatibility mode. This shouldn't really be set in
the app-defaults file. If you wish to use this feature, use
the -c option.
.interval
Sets the timeout interval (in minutes) for when the autosave
timeout should expire. When this timer expires, all notes are
automatically saved to disk.
.anchorOffset
The offset is specified in pixels and is used to determine the
X and Y offsets from an anchor note for a note being cascaded.
The default value is 15 pixels.
.noSave If set to true then the auto-save feature is turned off.
.noAlarm
If set to true then the alarms feature is turned off. This
will have the effect of graying out the ``Set Alarm'' and
``Unset Alarm'' options from each Notes pull down menu.
.homeDir
Used to set the starting directory for the File Selection Win‐
dow used with the Open and Export features.
ACTIONS
It is possible to rebind the mouse buttons in the Plaid widget to per‐
form different functions by changing the widget's translations. It is
not recommended that other actions (as specified in the application
defaults file) be changed, however. The raise() action, normally bound
to the left mouse button, raises all notes. The lower() action, nor‐
mally bound to the middle mouse button, lowers all notes. The menu
raising function, normally bound to the right mouse button, is per‐
formed by calling the actions XawPositionSimpleMenu(Menu) and
MenuPopup(Menu).
This can now be configured by changing the following lines in the Xpos‐
tit.ad file:
Xpostit*Plaid.Translations: #replace\n \
<Btn1Down>: raise() \n\
<Btn2Down>: lower() \n\
<Btn3Down>: XawPositionSimpleMenu(Menu)MenuPopup(Menu)
to the following:
Xpostit*Plaid.Translations: #replace\n \
<Btn3Down>: raise() \n\
<Btn2Down>: lower() \n\
<Btn1Down>: XawPositionSimpleMenu(Menu)MenuPopup(Menu)THE CONTROL WINDOWaspostit allows three operations to be performed from its control win‐
dow. Pressing the left mouse button in the control window will cause
all Post-it notes on the screen to be raised to the top. Pressing the
middle mouse button in the control window will cause all Post-it notes
on the screen to be lowered to the bottom. Pressing the right mouse
button in the control window raises the aspostit menu.
THE PLAID MENU
The aspostit plaid menu provides the following selections:
Create 1.5x2 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 1.5 inches tall by 2 inches wide.
The window will normally need to be positioned using the window
manager.
Create 2x3 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 2 inches tall by 3 inches wide.
Create 3x3 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 3 inches square.
Create 3x4 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 3 inches tall by 4 inches wide.
Create 3x5 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 3 inches tall by 5 inches wide.
Create 4x6 Note
Create a new Post-it note, 4 inches tall by 6 inches wide.
Raise All Notes
Raise all Post-it notes to the top. This is equivalent to
pressing the left mouse button in the control window.
Lower All Notes
Lower all Post-it notes to the bottom. This is equivalent to
pressing the middle mouse button in the control window.
Unhide All Notes
All notes that have been hidden will be unhidden.
Save All Notes
Save all Post-it notes to disk files in the save directory.
Hidden Notes
Pops up another menu which lists all the notes that are cur‐
rently hidden. The list contains the names of the notes so it
is wise to give a note a meaningful name (using the Name option
from the pull-down menu of each note) before it is hidden.
Cascade Notes
Each note can be "anchored". If one or more notes are anchored
and the "Cascade" option is chosen from the aspostit menu, then
all the visible notes are cascaded onto the anchored notes. An
attempt is made to distribute all visible notes evenly amongst
all the anchored notes. Each note also has an "unanchor"
option as well. Only one of "anchor" or "unanchor" is sensi‐
tive for any given note. Hidden notes are not affected by the
cascade feature. The default offset for cascaded notes (from
the anchor) is 15 pixels. This can be changed with the -ao
option or the .anchorOffset resource.
Find A Note
If you "lose" a note and want to bring it up at the cursor,
select ``Find A Note'' from the plaid menu. A pop up window of
all notes will be presented. Select the note you want and if
its not hidden it will pop up at the cursor. If it is hidden
it will pop up in the appropriate spot. The ``Cancel'' button
will close the pop up if no note is selected.
Exit Exit aspostit. If the -sv command line option was given, or
the saveNotes resource is true, all Post-it notes will be saved
to disk first.
To select an item from the menu, drag the mouse cursor to that item and
release the mouse button.
THE HIDDEN NOTES MENU
This menu pops up from the ``Hidden Notes'' option of the plaid menu.
It functions the same as the plaid menu except the menu does not disap‐
pear until either a menu option is selected or the label (at the top of
the menu) is clicked on.
THE POST-IT NOTE
Each Post-it note is made up of three parts (plus an optional scroll
bar): a Title bar, a text window where the text of the note is stored,
and a menu bar.
The menu bar has two menus: File and Notes . The first of these con‐
tains options pertaining to file input and output, such as Open (for
importing a file to the note), Export (for saving the text contents of
the note to a file), Print and Email.
The second menu contains items for manipulating the note: Hiding, Nam‐
ing, Erasing, Adding a calendar or date/time stamp, etc.
To enter text into a Post-it note, simply move the mouse cursor into
the text window and start typing. Since the text window is actually a
Text widget, all the Text widget translations are accepted. Essen‐
tially, this means you can use most of the EMACS control keys in the
window. Additionally, the various mouse buttons used for manipulating
the selections and cut buffer are understood.
After entering text in the Post-it note, you may wish to save the note
in a disk file. This way, if the machine goes down, or if you exit
aspostit, the Post-it note can be restored when you restart aspostit.
(Post-it notes are also saved automatically (if saveNotes is true) if a
SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGQUIT signal is received.) To save the
note to a disk file, click on the Notes button and drag the mouse cur‐
sor to the menu item labeled ``Save'', then release the mouse button.
The note will be saved as the file ``noten'' in your save directory,
where n is some sequence number. Note that the ``Save'' menu item will
not allow you to save unless something have been typed in the Text of
the note, the name of the note has been changed, or the text of the
note has been erased. This is a good way for 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 Text of the note. NOTE:
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 pressed the
``Save'' button. You can also make sure changed notes get saved on
exit by enabling the ave on Exit feature.
To erase the entire contents of the text window, you can click on the
Notes button and select the ``Erase'' menu item. This will bring up a
confirmation window, which has two buttons labeled ``Confirm'' and
``Cancel''. If you press the ``Confirm'' button, the text will be
erased. If you press the ``Cancel'' button, the operation is canceled,
and nothing will happen. NOTE: erasing the text in the window does not
affect any contents of the note you have saved on disk unless you press
the ``Save'' button again.
To destroy a Post-it note, getting rid of its window on the screen and
the disk file it is saved in, click on the Notes button and select the
``Destroy'' menu item. This will bring up a confirmation window as
described above. If you confirm the operation, the Post-it note will
disappear from the screen and the disk file it was saved in will be
deleted.
To rename a note, you can click on the Notes button 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.
To hide a note, you can click on the Notes button and select the
``Hide'' menu item. This will cause the note to disappear from the
screen. To bring the note back, select the ``Hidden Notes'' option
from the plaid pull-down menu. Then select the note you wish to bring
back up. NOTE: The hidden notes will not stay hidden between aspostit
sessions unless you first select the "Save All Notes" option from the
plaid menu or options to save on exit (see discussion above) have been
set.
To anchor a note you can click on the Notes button and select the
``Anchor'' menu item. This will mark the note as an anchor note.
Anchor notes are the bottom note, the "anchor", when the Cascade option
is chosen from the aspostit plaid menu.
To unanchor a note you can click on the Notes button and select the
``UnAnchor'' menu item. This will remove the note from the list of
anchor notes.
Note that only one of the ``Anchor'' or ``UnAnchor'' options will be
sensitive (allow user selection) at any time. They are mutually exclu‐
sive options within any give note.
To print a note, you must have configured aspostit with a valid print
command (via the -printcmd command line option or the .printCmd
resource). Select the ``Print'' option from the Notes pull down menu.
The text of the note is printed.
To email a note use the ``Email'' option. This option will pop up a
window prompting for an email address. Fill in the text field and
select ``Accept'' to send the message. The notes title will be used as
the subject line. Select ``Cancel'' to cancel sending the message.
To set a notes alarm, select ``Set Alarm'' from the notes Notes pull
down menu. A window pops up with month, day, hour and minute fields.
Set each of these for the day and time you wish the alarm to go off.
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 an icon of a clock
will be visible next to the Options menu button in the notes menu bar.
To turn off the a notes alarm, select ``Unset Alarm'' from the Notes
pull down menu. This will disable the alarm for that note and remove
the clock icon from the menu bar.
To insert a copy of the current calendar month in the text select the
"Insert Calendar" option from the notes menu. The text will be
inserted at the current cursor location, so you should be sure to posi‐
tion the cursor first. You can position the cursor by just clicking in
the text window of the note.
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 pre‐
sented. Select the format desired by clicking on the small box to the
left of the format string and then click on "Accept". The text string
will be inserted at the current cursor location. Be sure to position
the cursor prior to using the option.
To import a text file at the current cursor location in a note, use the
File menu's Open option. A File Selection Window opens. Choose a file
and select ``Accept''. See the section on the File Selection Window
for more details.
Exporting the text to a file is similar to opening a file for import.
Choose the Export option from the File pull down menu. Select a file
from the File Selection Window. Again, see the section on the ile
Selection Window for more details on how to use that window.
CONFIGURING THE MAILER
In order to use your systems mailer with the Email feature of aspostit,
you need to configure the appropriate mailer command using either the
-emailcmd command line option or the .emailCmd resource. The format
for both of these is the same: a double-quoted string which contains
the name of the mailer command, the option for providing the subject
line, and the addressee. By default the Unix command "mail" is used.
It is defined in the Xpostit.ad (and in the source code fallback
resources) as:
"mail -s\"%s\" %s"
The format is the standard format used by printf(). The first string
parameter is the subject line. The backslashes are required so that
the following double quotes are passed properly to the shell. If these
are left out the subject will be truncated to the first word of the
first string parameter and an attempt will be made by the mailer to
send mail to non-existant recipients.
The second string is the addressee. The order of the string parameters
is required (subject first, addressee second). The mailer command
accpets the text of the mail via standard input. This too is required.
If you use elm, you might want to change this to:
"elm -s\"%s\" %s > /dev/null"
The difference here is that elm prints out a few messages when it runs
in batch mode and you should send those to /dev/null.
USING THE FILE SELECTION WINDOW
The File Selection Window contains two scrollable windows, a text input
field, and two buttons. The scrollable windows contain the directories
(the left-side scrollable window) and the files (the right-side scrol‐
lable window) in the current directory. These windows may not be the
same size if the number of directories or files isn't enough to stretch
the window to its maximum size before it allows scrolling (ie don't
report the windows being different sizes as a bug - its a feature).
You can scroll the windows the same way you scroll the text of the
notes.
The buttons inside the scrollable windows only require a single click
to activate them. Clicking on a directory button will close the File
Selection Window and reopen it using the new directory as its base.
The scrollable windows will be updated to reflect the files and direc‐
tories in that directory and the text input field will be updated to
show the current directory.
Clicking on a button in the files scrollable window will cause that
file to be selected. If you are opening a file then the file chosen
will be added to the current note at the location of the cursor in that
note. Be sure to set the cursor to where you want to import text
before opening a file. If you are exporting a file then the text of
the file will be written to the file chosen. It is assumed that since
you manually selected a file known to exist that you want to overwrite
that file, so be sure you know what you're doing before you click on a
file for exporting!
The text input field can be used to manually type a directory or file
name. If the name typed is a directory, the File Selection Window is
closed and a new one opened using the new directory as the base. If
the name typed is a file then that filename is used for the current
task, either opening or exporting. If exporting, and the file exists,
a window is popped up asking for confirmation to overwrite that file.
Click on ``Accept'' to proceed with the export or ``Cancel'' to skip
it.
The two buttons in the File Selection window are the ``Accept'' and
``Cancel'' buttons. The Cancel button closes the File Selection Window
with no further actions taken. The Accept button only has meaning in
relation to the text input field. If you click on Accept, then what‐
ever is in the text input field is used as the filename for the current
task (open or export) and the appropriate action is taken.
SEE ALSOX(1)BUGS
The sizes of the Post-it notes are only as accurate as the display
dimension and resolution returned by the server. On the Sun server and
possibly others, this means they aren't all that accurate.
On Linux systems the word wrap feature of the Text Widget appears bro‐
ken. The words get wrapped to the next line but they do not get erased
from the previous line. I'm not sure how to fix this. You can resize
the note using AfterStep to clear the problem, or scroll the note win‐
dow.
The message: ``Warning: XtRemoveGrab asked to remove a widget not on
the list'' may be written to stdout after an alarm popup is dismissed.
This is a timing issue in the X libs, I think, and doesn't appear to
cause any problems.
The Dialog used to name a note doesn't limit the number of characters
that can be used in a name, although it does prevent (by use of trans‐
lations) a user from putting a newline in the text. The drawback to
not limiting the length of the name is that the dialog box's text field
won't resize or scroll to the right as characters are typed off the
right hand edge of the field. Bummer dude. This might be fixable if
key events force a resize on each keystroke. Hmmm. I'll have to think
about that one.
The -c option has been reported to not read in old notes properly. It
eats the first line. This can be worked around by adding a blank line
to the old notes. However, I couldn't reproduce this problem. I sug‐
gest creating a backup of your old notes before trying to run with the
-c option, just in case.
Hidden notes have their shell x and y coordinates set to 1 less than
the note originally had them set to when the program starts. I think
this is either a problem with the way fvwm was placing the notes when
they were visible (with window manager borders) or a problem with the X
libs. Probably fvwm. In anycase, over time, the notes will slowly
move toward the upper left, but only while invisible. When you pop
them up, things are fine. Basically, its not something worth fixing.
On some systems (all?), specifically Solaris, setting the num-lock on
prevents the pull-down menus from allowing the user to select menu
options. The fix: turn off numlock.
The File Selection Window is not graceful, but its functional. I could
have used the FWF FileSelection widget, but that required including the
complete FWF kit, which I didn't want to have to do.
Without a color display for canary yellow notes and red plaid, the aes‐
thetic value of aspostit cannot be fully appreciated.
AUTHOR
David A. Curry, <davy@ers.ibm.com> wrote original xpostit Michael J.
Hammel <mjhammel@csn.net> added many features Guylhem Aznar <guyl‐
hem@oeil.qc.ca> added little changes
``Post-it'' and the plaid design are registered trademarks of 3M.
Unix/X11R4-R6 21 June 1998 ASPOSTIT(1)
