Outliner • Task Manager • Checklist • Note Taker • ToDo List • Organizer • Life Fixer
Handheld Reference Guide
Updated for Shadow Plan 3.0.0
This is the Shadow Plan Reference Guide; please see the FAQ and website
as well for additional documentation. For the Desktop application see its
own Desktop Reference Guide. For new users, see the
Quick Start Guide. For the website, head
to http://www.codejedi.com.
Please join the mailing lists so you can get informed of new updates to
the Shadow software,
or to join in the discussions and
feature requests! This can be very rewarding!
Website Mailing Lists
Section One: Getting Started
- Downloading and Installing Shadow Plan
- Downloading Shadow Plan
- Shadow Plan (Handheld only)
- Shadow Plan Bundle (Handheld + Desktop)
- Shadow Plan Expansion Pack (Desktop Only)
-
Installing Shadow Plan (Windows with Shadow Setup utility)
-
Installing Shadow Plan (Windows By Hand)
-
Installing Shadow Plan handheld (Windows without Shadow Setup utility, Mac, Unix)
-
Installing Shadow Plan onto expansion cards and flash memory
-
Installing Shadow Plan Desktop (for Mac and Unix users)
- Upgrading Shadow Plan
Section Two: A Quick Start Guide
- See the Quick Start Guide
Section Three: A Reference Guide
General
- Whats New?
- Shadow Tips / Discussion Forums
Managing Files and Getting Around
- File Selection Screen
- The pull-down menus and shortcuts
- File operations popmenu
- Recent Files (History) popmenu
- The screen
- The buttons
- Synchronization and Backups
- Your files and the desktop
- Your Shadow items and their linked counterparts
- Files, Categories, VFS, Expansion Media
- How files are stored
- How categories are stored
- VFS and Expansion Media (Memory Sticks, Compact Flash, etc. etc)
- Recent Files/History Screen
Using and Editing Lists
- List Preferences / New List Screen
- General panel
- Auto panel
- Options panel
- List View Screen
- The titlebar (for column titles and sorting)
- The pull-down menus and shortcuts
- The screen
- Flags and Popmenus (top right)
- Item title line icons
- Grafitti input
- Keyboard input
- Double tap
- Tap and hold
- Drag and Drop
- Virtual grafitti
- Portrait and landscape modes
- The buttons and graphical button bar
- On-screen Mini Editor
- Full-screen Item Details Editor
- The pull-down menus and shortcuts
- The screen
- The buttons
- Item Details Screen: Editing A Note
- Item Details Screen: Item Options
- Sorting the View
- Finding text in your list
- Using the Clipboard
Filtering, Tagging, Categorization, Alarms, Life Fixing
- Filtering and hilighting the display
- Built-in filters
- Building and using custom filters
- Greedy custom filters
- Tags and Categorization
- Tags - the concept
- Tag Manager - create, delete and edit tags
- Tag column and popup
- Tag filtering and categorization
- Tag examples
- Tags Wizard (for Fast Tagging and Quick Filtering)
- Fast tagging
- Fast filtering
- Alarms
- Setting up alarms
- Receiving alarm notifications
- The Alarm Manager
Technique: Integrating (or taking over) your ToDo list
- Automatic import of ToDo and Datebook items
- Automatic ToDo linking
- The handy ToDo link column
- Filtering by location/context
- Sending items to other lists
- Alarms and Repeats
Displays - "List Types", "Custom Views" and "Saved Custom Views"
- Built-in List Types
- Custom Views and Layouts
- View Manager
- Views with automatic filters
- An old recipe book and samples
Preferences and Customization
- Preferences
- Global preferences
- General Preferences panel
- Display Preferences panel
- Theme Preferences panel
- Link Preferences panel
- Apps Preferences panel
- Highres Preferences panel
- View Customization - Fonts
- View Customization - High Resolution
Importing and Exporting Items and Linking In/Out
- New From Screen (Import individual items from To Do/Datebook)
- Marked import from To Do list
- Link Manager Screen
- Linking to To Do items
- Linking to Datebook entries
- Linking to Addresses
- Linking to Memos
- Linking to Tags
- Linking to Other Applications (Organize other apps!)
- Setting a link/Copying to Other Database
- Link Details/Using or Modifying a Link/Severing a Link
- Synchronizing Links (automatic sync of link data to other applications
and even the desktop!)
- Importing Your Data
- From the ToDo application (replace your ToDo app!)
- From Other applications
- The memo format
- Example: Importing From BrainForest
- Exporting/Printing Your Data
- Exporting as text
- Exporting as HTML (print your lists!)
Miscellaneous
- Sony Jog Dial Control
- Palm 5-Way "D-Pad" Control
- Contributed Tools
Installation - Downloading Shadow Plan
Downloading the latest version of Shadow Plan is easy. Simply head on
over to CodeJedi.com to pick it up.
Specifically, you can go to the downloads page. You will always be able to find the latest
version (and older ones too, in case for some reason you wish to go back
a revision). The download will be clearly labeled and will include the
manuals, handheld application, desktop application.. the works.
Installation - Windows
Installing Shadow Plan with the Windows Setup Utility is very easy!
Simply run the "Setup*.exe" that comes in the distribution file, and follow
its directions. You will need to pick a directory to put Shadow Plan's
desktop files in, but you can leave the default if you don't know where
to put them.
Example: Shadow Plan 3.0's distribution includes Setup30.exe. The
version number is in the filename to make it easier if you have many versions
around and want to make sure you're using the latest.
Note:
The setup utility might take a minute to unpack itself and get ready for
the installation; it features a small progress bar so you can observe this
process, but it can be slow at the very beginning, while unpacking and
checking itself for errors, etc.
If you are having trouble getting through the setup*.exe installation
application for some reason, then you can perform a manual installation as
well. See the INSTALL.txt file included with the distribution for details.
After the installation, you just perform a Hot Sync and Shadow Plan will
appear on your Palm OS device, the manuals will be available in your Start
menu, the Shadow Plan Conduit will start syncing your selected files, and
the Desktop Application will be ready to use. See the Shadow Plan
entry in your Start menu.
Note:
If for some reason your handheld doesn't get a copy of the application,
or doesn't get updated with the latest, just double click on Shadow.prc
in the distribution and then sync, and you should be all set.
Installation - Windows By Hand
You should ideally use the Setup utility to do the installation; however
if for some reason its misbehaving on your system, you can still install the
works by hand, though it is more tricky.
Please consult the INSTALL.TXT file, found in the zipfile distribution for
the latest instructions on doing this. In general though, you go through
these basic steps:
- Double click on Shadow.prc; this asks Palm Desktop to install the
main handheld application for you. Pick the correct handheld user!
- Double click on ShadowSync.prc (to also install it)
- Synchronize; this moves the two handheld components to your handheld.
- Copy the By_Hand directory to somewhere on your computer; for
instance, you could copy it to C:\Program Files
- Rename By_Hand to "Shadow Plan" (or whatever you'd like it to be)
- Run Shadow.exe by double clicking on it; if Palm Desktop is set up
correctly, Shadow Plan Desktop should come up on your display.
- One of the pulldown menus is labeled "Expert"; pick it, and one of the
options is "Force Install"; pick that. This will ask the desktop to attempt
to copy the sync conduit and some other files into the right place for
synchronization to work. It should report a simple success or failure.
- If an error occurs, email support@codejedi.com and we'll be sure to
help you out!
Installation - Mac, Unix, Other platforms
(or for Windows users who do not wish to use the automatic Setup utility)
Installation of Shadow Plan is fairly straight
forward and should be done just as you've installed any other palm
application. Just follow these simple steps are you're ready to save
time!
NOTE: Windows users can install the handheld software using the
steps below. To install the Shadow Desktop application, you will have to use
the Windows Setup Utility.
- Obtain the Shadow Plan distribution file (you've probably done this
already, since you're reading this manual)
- Extract the distribution file (a .ZIP archive) into the directory you
wish to keep the files in.
You don't need to keep the extracted files
after the installation, but you may wish to keep them so as to have the
Reference Guides and Quick Start Guide available in the future.
- Install the Shadow.prc file into your Palm OS device.
This is the
tricky part, since you can do it in many different ways depending on
your OS and on your setup. On a typical Windows OS with Palm Desktop
installed, you can simple double-click on the "Shadow.prc" file
in the Windows Explorer, and it will set it up for install automatically.
You may have to run "InstApp" or other "Installer"'s and give them
"Shadow.prc" to install. Under unix (FreeBSD, Linux, etc) you can
easily use pilot-xfer to install the Shadow.prc.
- Thats it! All you need is "Shadow.prc" and you're ready to go!
Installing on Expansion Cards / Flash Memory
Shadow itself will run perfectly from expansion cards and flash memory,
but there are some things to note, particularly if you're using Shadow
Desktop!
- Shadow Plan runs perfectly from expansion media, including (but not
limited to) Memory Stick, SD (SecureDigital), CF (Compact Flash), and
others. You name it and we run on it!
- If you have moved Shadow Plan to expansion media, it is important to
leave a hidden little program called ShadowSync in main memory. ShadowSync
will not show itself in your launcher, and is specifically designed to be
small and left in main memory. It is needed for synchronization. You
needn't worry about it at all.. it clocks in around 4k or 5k, so is
almost unnoticeable.
- Shadow runs perfectly from internal flash memory. Simply use something
like Jack Flash to install Shadow there. Make sure to follow your flash
file managers manual so as to avoid messing up your operating system!
- Shadow runs perfectly from Visor flash memory modules; just use the
file mover utility on the card to move Shadow to the card and you're good
to go. Its wonderful.
- Shadow databases (your files!) themselves cannot be stored just anywhere
on a card; they need to be managed by Shadow's own file copying routines.
(Though the adventurous can move the files around themselves, of course.
See the VFS section of the manual for details). Shadow data files kept
on expansion media cannot be synchronized (as of version 2.8), though we
intend on supporting expansion media synch in the future.
- Shadow will be launchable just fine from PiDirect or other operating
system extensions, however you cannot store Shadow databases (your files)
on cards and access them through PiDirect.. since those programs require
the data to be read only, and obviously your Shadow files are editable!
Installation - Desktop (Mac, Unix)
These bulds of Shadow Desktop are less supported, but we still wish to
wave the flag for the small guys and so we make them available. We'll do
our best to support them and keep them up to date, but bear with us!
The Unix version is already quite usable and stable; it does not feature
a sync system since there is no prevalent sync system for Unix. There is no
Hotsync Manager. As such, you can use Shadow Desktop for Unix to directly
edit ".pdb" files; you can use pilot-xfer (part of the Pilot Tools set), or
JPilot, or KPilot, or any number of tools to up and download the .pdb
Shadow Plan list files,a nd then just use Shadow Desktop to manipulate them.
Shadow Plan for Unix is currently available for Linux, though please let us
know if you'd like a FreeBSD or other build.
Shadow Plan for Mac OSX is still in beta as it has a number of issues; it
is already very useful and usable, but does have some gotchas, so don't mind
a crash here or there. We're constantly working on improving it, but our
resources for Mac are limited, so we do our best.
Download Unix and Mac Desktops at the Codejedi website's
download page
Upgrading Your Shadow Plan
Upgrading Shadow Plan is very easy! Simply download the latest version you
wish to install from www.codejedi.com
and go through the normal Installation procedure. None of your Shadow lists
will be removed during the install! By installing a newer Shadow Plan program,
you will automatically update everything that is needed to get to that
version.
Example for Windows: For Windows users, simply download the latest
version and run the Setup*.exe that comes with it. Follow the onscreen
directions and you're all upgraded!
Example for Mac, Unix: Simply download the latest distribution and
install the Shadow.prc as you would any other .prc file. Your handheld will
now be on the latest version! Upgrading the Shadow Desktop application requires
using the appropriate setup utility.
NOTE: I do suggest keeping on top of major revisions; it is best
to go from the 1.3.x series to 1.4.0 and then to 1.5.0, for instance,
than to go from 1.3.x to 1.5.0 directly. This should work fine, as I
try and maintain forward compatibility. (We have had many people jump
all the way from 1.x releases through to 2.8 without a problem!)
Once you get extreme
like 1.2.x to 2.0, its hard to know for sure if everything will work and
so caution should be used.. perform full hotsync backups beforehand!.
So its best to check the website every month or two and install new
versions as you can. Remember, updates are always free!
Whats New?
See the file "WhatsNew.txt" included in the top level of the distribution
zipfile. You can also click here, but it may
or may not lead anywhere, depending how you installed this manual!
Shadow Tips / Discussion Forums
We host a number of mailing lists and forums so that everyone can help each
other, bounce ideas around, or make feature requests. You can find all of them
here:
Shadow Plan lists and forums
The main ones of interest are:
- Shadow-announce
Every Shadow Plan user should join this mailing list; when new releases
or updates are made, we post to this list. Only we can post to it, so there
is no worry about spam! This lets you stay on top of new releases with
a minimum of effort.
- Shadow-discuss
This one is available in both mailing list and web forum formats via
Yahoogroups. This can be a busy list where any member can read or post their
ideas, ask for help, or offer advice, help, and thoughts. This is an
excellent forum, though can be busy some days.
- Shadow-tips
Shadow Tips is a forum that is designed for those without the time to
follow Shadow Discuss, or who want to search through only the best ideas.
It is a moderated list, meaning that only good solid well thought out posts
are allowed through. Everyone is welcome to read it, and if you have a good
refined useful idea ("recipe for success"), please post it here. An
excellent resource for all!
Shadow Tips Summary
One of our friendly users went through the Shadow Tips forum archives and
formatted the majority of the postings to be easier to read on the handheld
screen. We've included his Shadow Tips Summary in the Shadow Plan
distribution. See the "Tips" directory in the .zip file you downloaded
with Shadow Plan in it. Open the Tips directory, and double click on the
included ShadowTips.PDB file, and it'll install to your handheld and be
available to read at your leisure in Shadow Plan itself!
One thing to note is that the Shadow Tips Summary is a pretty large file
with a lot of long notes. It might take a few moments to open on older units,
though should open in a blink for newer PDAs.
File Selection Screen
If no list is currently open, the file selection screen will be
displayed. From here you can do high level operations such as beam, delete,
rename, duplicate, import, export and otherwise manipulate whole files.
Most importantly you can open existing lists and create new ones. The actions
that can be taken from this screen are described below, starting with the menus
accessible by tapping the menu icon at the lower left of the graffiti
area.
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File Selection Screen |
File operations popmenu |
Recent Files popmenu |
Categories and one expansion card |
Pulldown menus and shortcuts
- Open List
Open list retrieves the currently selected list and goes to the
List View screen where you can manipulate the contents of the list.
This menu item to make keyboarding easier and the menus more
consistent.
- New List
New List allows you to create a new Shadow file. It brings up the
List Preferences screen from which you can either tap "Cancel" or
fill in the information for the new list and tap "OK". Hitting "OK"
moves you to the List View screen (see below). Sensible
defaults exist so you can just enter a filename and go if you
wish. You can return to List Preferences anytime you wish.
- Delete List
This will delete the currently selected file. In case you
picked the wrong file, an Alert will be shown to ask if you
are really sure about removing it. If you are sure, another
Alert will present itself asking if you would like to remove all
the "file links" to this file. Answering "Yes" to this dialog
will cause Shadow to search through ALL your lists for
occurances of links to this file and any that are found are
removed. If you choose "No", then Shadow will simply delete the
file without removing links to it. There are reasons you may wish
to do either one -- you may wish to delete the links to the now
removed file, so that you don't have "orphaned" links -- links
that don't go anywhere. Or you may wish to leave the links
going nowhere, so that you can create a new file and have all
the old links pointing to it, because you named it the same
as the now deleted file.
- Rename List
Renaming a list pops up a new form that shows you the current name
and allows you to enter a new one. By default it sets you up with
the existing name in case you just wish to change it a little bit.
Shadow will automatically go through ALL your Shadow files
and convert links to the old file to point to the newly named file.
If you have a lot of large files, this can take a moment.
- Duplicate List
This will create a new file with the same contents and settings as
the currently selected file and will prompt you for a name for the
new file. As with the Rename List command, the new name will be
initialized to the original name. If you do not modify the name,
then no duplicate file will be created. Duplicating a list can be
very handy. Suppose you travel from time to time and have created a
template packing list called "Packing". Now suppose that you are
about to head off to Paris. You can duplicate the template list and
give it the name "Packing for Paris". You can then modify the copy
for this specific trip and check off the items as you pack them.
When you are done with this list, you can delete it. Creating
templates in this fashion can be very useful.
NOTE: the shortcut for Duplicate List is "C" (as in Copy), since "D"
is used for Delete. Be careful!
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- Import From ToDo
Importing from ToDo allows you to bring in your Palm ToDo database
items as a Shadow list. This can be used to make replacing the
built-in Palm ToDo application easier, since your toDo items are
migrated nearly automatically! See the later section on "Importing"
for details.
- Import from Marked ToDos
If you do not wish to import all ToDo's, or all ToDo's from a single
category, but wish instead to import select ToDos or perhaps new ToDo's,
then you can use this operation. This lets you specify in your ToDo
application a list for the given ToDo to be imported into. In this way
you can at your leisure prepare your old ToDos to be imported into
Shadow, or even prepare them for import as you create them. To mark up a
ToDo, simply remember that the Shadow marking is like this: "[[["
followed by a list name or partial list name, followed by "]]]". For
example, if you have a Shadow List called "@Inbox", you could mark up
a ToDo with "[[[@Inb]]]" and that would be enough for Shadow to figure out
which list you mean. Make sure that it doesn't match 2 or more list
filenames though, or else you won't know which list will get the item!
You can specify as much or as little in the filename part of the marking
as you need to identify the list. Once you've marked up your ToDos as
you see fit, simply pick this option and Shadow will inform you of its
progress and how many items were imported in the end.
- Import from Memos
This item allows you to easily import lists from other outliner
applications or from your desktop. When importing from memos, the
memos must be formatted in a specific way that Shadow understands,
otherwise the import will turn out as garbage since Shadow only
understands a few layouts for lists. See the section on importing
for details.
- Export to Memos
Exporting allows you to get your Shadow files out of Shadow and
into another place -- another Palm outliner, a desktop application,
or even a web browser! You may wish to do this so you can edit
lists on a desktop, or so you can print or share with friends. An
exported list should also import back into Shadow just fine. See
the section on exporting for details.
- Export to DOC
Exporting allows you to get your Shadow files out of Shadow and
into another place -- another Palm outliner, a desktop application,
or even a web browser! You may wish to do this so you can edit
lists on a desktop, or so you can print or share with friends. A
Palm DOC file is a standard file for representing long text files
on the Palm, and is most commonly used for word processing or
for eBooks. Many programs for the Palm (and Windows and Mac) can
work with DOC files, so this is a very convenient way to get
data out of Shadow for printing, sharing, prettying up, etc.
- Beam Selected File
This will beam the currently selected file to another palm (even if it
does not have Shadow installed!). This can be handy for passing around
your templates, chore listings, work assignments, etc, to other people.
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- About shadow
This menu just gives you an informational screen. After reading it
over, you will notice that the bottom left includes either "Unreg"
or "Reg" to show your registration status. If you have paid for
Shadow it will say "Reg". If it doesn't, and your still getting
nag screens, you should contact support and get your registration
settled! If you have not paid, it should say "Unreg", which means
you'll get nag screens and should register the product if you
like it.
- Preferences
This pulls up the Global Preferences screen. See it described above.
You can also get this screen from within a List.
- Register
This command will bring up the Registration screen. It shows your
Hotsync ID (Palm Username), which you need when registering Shadow.
When you register, a registration key, which is a series of numbers
and letters, will be sent to you by email. Enter that string of
characters into the field on this screen. Provided you enter it
correctly, your copy of Shadow will become registered.
- Where To Purchase
This option just pops up a window informing you of the location of
our webstore, or the store you downloaded from, depending on our
agreement with the website you downloaded from. Shameless
plug: Buying from the Codejedi webstore gets you your registration
code in the fastest time.
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The file listing
The File Selection Screen is just that -- a way to select a file and
more so, to let you open it, delete it, etc. Most operations only work on
the selected item. Each line of the file listing shows a few pieces of
useful information:
- Filename of the list
- (For checklists) Number of completed items in the list and total number of
items in the list
- Size of the file in bytes (so you can be aware of how much memory is
being consumed by the list)
- File operations popmenu
Controlling the Selection
- You may tap on a line to select it
- You may double-tap a line to select and open it
- If there are so many files in the current category that some cannot
fit on-screen, tap the scroll arrows in top and bottom right
to scroll the screen to reveal the hidden files
- Use page up/down buttons to scroll it
- Use keyboard cursor keys to move the selection up and down
- The Sony Jog Dial will also function here
- The Palm 5-way Navigator will allow page up and down here
The completion-count for Checklists shows the number of items that
are checked and the total number of items in the list, giving you a quick
hint of how finished the projects/items are in the file. The
file size is the number of bytes of Palm memory the file occupies.
NOTE: A future version will allow you to hilight important
files and show more relevant data than the file size, if you like
Opening a file
You can double tap on a filename to open it. If the item is selected (from
a single tap), then you can tap on the "Open" button at the bottom of the
screen to open it. You can also tap on "Open" in the popmenu on the right
hand side of the file you wish to open. Lastly, you can use the keyboard
shortcut or the pulldown menus. Whew!
Deleting a file
You may delete a file by making it the selected file and hitting Delete
from the pulldown menus, or tapping on the trash can located in the bottom
right of the screen. The popmenu on the right also includes deletion
operations.
Changing the file listing's category or selecting an expansion card
In the top right of the File Selection Screen is the Category popmenu.
Tap on it to get a list of your current categories and expansion cards.
Pick one of them to change to that category or card, or tap on
"Edit Categories..."
to manage your categories. Once you have made a category or card selection,
the File Selection List will redraw to show you the files in the selected
location. In this manner, you can treat expansion cards as categories
of their own, though in the future you can expect some category management
of files on expansion cards, too.
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File Operations Popmenu
Most of the file operations that can be performed from the pulldown menus
and onscreen buttons can also be applied by tapping the arrow on the right
side of the filename. This will select the item and then apply the desired
operation, as if you'd selected the item and hit the appropriate pulldown
menu yourself. Operations include:
- Open
- Changing the items category (without having to enter the list and go to List Preferences!)
- Beam
- Rename
- Duplicate
- Delete
- Export to memo
- Export to DOC
- Move to card (or Move to internal)
- Copy to card (or Copy to internal)
"Move to card" and "Copy to card" are only available if you have an expansion
card plugged in and your version of Palm OS supports those cards as storage
media and you are currently viewing an internal category. If a card is plugged in and
you're viewing the card directory, the options "Move to internal" and
"Copy to internal" are shown instead. If you select one of the two "to card"
options, another list will pop up
letting you select which card to operate on, though currently you will
likely see only one card listed. (Future units may sport multiple card
slots.) If a file already exists on the card or internal memory target,
you will get an error -- Shadow will try to stop you from accidentally
clobbering a file that has the same name in the target location.
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The buttons
There are only four buttons on this screen; "New", "Open", "Recent" and
the "Trash Can". Hitting "New" is the same as tapping the "New List" menu
item (see above), allowing you to create a new list. Tapping
"Open" will open the file you currently have selected in the
File Selection List. Finally, tapping on the trash can will allow
you to delete the specified file just as if you'd tapped the
"Delete List" menu item. The "Recent" button performs as follows:
Recent Files (History) Popmenu
Shadow Plan keeps a list of files that you've recently accessed. The
way this works is each time you open a file, it is pushed to the bottom of
the history listing if it is new. If it is already in the history listing,
it is not moved. The reason for this is to keep you moving quickly -- moving
items around in the listing could make you pick the wrong file if you're
in a hurry. You can also perform a few operations on the recent files
listing:
- Pick a file to open it (regardless of category!)
- Clear the history (if its too cluttered, for instance)
- Start a new list. This is useful since you can pull up the
recent files listing while inside a file. Starting a new list
inside one file causes the current file to save and a new one
to begin right away
See the section on the Recent Files
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If you're careful with the order of opening some files after clearing
the recent files history, you can essentially create yourself a quick
table of contents to jump around your more common lists very quickly!
Synchronization and Backups
Synchronization is covered in detail in the Desktop Reference Guide. Please
see it for a discussion of that subsystem.
Some notes to consider:
Shadow links are synchronized
For example, if you have an item in a Shadow list linked to a ToDo item,
changes to it in either Shadow or in a ToDo program will be reflected in
the other program. Change the ToDo and Shadow will update its copy. Change
the Shadow item, and ToDo will be updated. This is a very powerful mechanism
for keeping things in order! Even changes made on your desktop ToDo will
get carried to your handheld's ToDo and then into Shadow!
Shadow tells Hotsync Manager to always Backup your files.
Backups are easily installed after a system complete reset, or if you
terrible mess up a file somehow. These are not part of the Shadow Desktop
system per se. I just wanted you to know that at minimum Hotsync Manager
always backs up your Shadow data.
Shadow can synchronize your handheld data with the desktop
Shadow Plan has a Windows desktop application; Our Mac and Unix desktop
applications are in the works and should be along shortly if they are not
out already. For a file to synchronize, you will have to have the
"Synchronize" checkbox checked in a lists List Preferences. We
do this so that you can pick and choose which files to synchronize.
Shadow synchronized files have many backups
When Shadow Conduit and Desktop are synchronizing files, at least 3 backups
are kept. Which is to say, you will have a file on your handheld, Hotsync
Manager will keep a Palm backup, Shadow Desktop will have its desktop side
file, and you will have 3 desktop-side Shadow Desktop backups. We're saying
you have a lot of backups, in case the worst happens.
Our synchronization technology is extremely safe
Our synchronization technology is quite intelligent; you can sync at home,
at work, both home and work, or even home, work, a friends place, and your
laptop.. as many locations as you feel like. If a power failure occurs or
a battery runs out in the middle of the sync.. no problem! Shadow will pick
up where it left off. If a tornado destroys your computer (then you have
bigger problems to worry about ;) during the sync.. thats fine. Just sync
somewhere else, and all will be well. As long as you do not lose both your
handheld and your computer at the same time, you'll be fine.
Files, Categories, VFS, Expansion Media
In general, you shouldn't need to worry about Shadow's file usage. It'll
take care of everything for you, and you can manage everything you need about
your files through the various menus and options available in the file
selection screen and list view screens.
How files are stored on the handheld
Each Shadow list is stored, along with the list preference settings
for that list, in a single Palm database (or .pdb) file. If you wish
to beam this file to someone else or download it to your desktop
(using HotSync or pilot-xfer or Shadow's Desktop Conduit, or other tools),
you can do so. It's just like any other .pdb file. The shadow file is
named "ShadP-FILENAME.pdb", where FILENAME is the name you gave to the
list when creating it with Shadow. Shadow Files are not categorized.
How categories are stored
Shadow Categories are stored in a special, separate database called
"ShadCat.pdb", which is a normal Palm database. Its sole purpose is to
store the last-specified category of each file. Keeping the categories
separate from files offers some advantages. For example, if you beam a
file in your Unfiled category to a friend, and they then move it from
Unfiled into Personal in Shadow, and you later beam it over to them
again, their new version of the list will still be filed under
Personal. You don't need to know much about ShadCat except that it is
there. What if you lose it? All your Shadow files simply revert to
being Unfiled. If you get a Shadow list that ShadCat doesn't know
about, it will be Unfiled.
Shadow Cache
Shadow uses a lot of runtime memory to help speed up its performance.
In addition to this memory, it caches various interesting calculations
into storage memory for later use this "session", so that it can avoid
recalculating things when it would rather be speedily working with
your data. This cache is removed when you exit Shadow, or at various
other times. Please do not delete it yourself unless you are sure
Shadow is not running, or else you will run into problems!
VFS and Expansion Media (Memory Sticks, Compact Flash, etc. etc)
There are many types of expansion media or plug-in cards that you can use
for various Palm OS units; Handspring units use Springboard modules, Sony
units follow their Memory Stick system, Handera and TRGPro users are
used to Compact Flash, and Palm units have a variety of cards they can use.
In general, data on these cards is accessed through an operating
system module called "VFS" -- the Virtual File System. All you need to
know is that data on the cards is not part of "internal memory" and so
programs need to be aware of VFS before they can access data stored in
VFS devices. Shadow supports VFS, so all is well in the world :)
You manage files on a card from the file selection screen just like
any other files; see that section for details.
There are some things to be aware of when using VFS data files, however,
so read on.
- Files are moved back and forth between internal memory and the
expansion cards using the "file operations popmenus" available in the
File Selection Screen. See that section for details.
- If you're adventurous, you can move files around yourself using
such tools as McFile, Filez, GentleMan, etc. Shadow files are kept in
/PALM/Programs/ShadowPlan.
- Though most handhelds have only one VFS expansion slot, Shadow supports
as many as a unit has.. so Shadow will work on future devices (or any
current devices I don't know about) with multiple expansion cards at a
time. Cards are accessed through the category picker, though, so you
can only list files from one card at a time, though you can
change which card you are viewing just as you would change category.
- Palm OS supports the concept of Categories as I'm sure you're
aware. This is why almost all Palm applications that use categories use
the same category system -- so that you the user can get around without
having to learn a new category system for each application. They all work
more or less alike in terms of categories. Palm OS does not yet support
categories for datafiles stored on VFS and as such, the majority of VFS
supporting programs do not support categories for data stored on cards.
Shadow will eventually be supporting categories for files stored on VFS
once we build our own category maintenance system, but for now all
Shadow files stored on a card have no category associated to them.
- When you open a file that is stored on a card, Shadow actually copies
the file to internal memory and opens it. When you close the file (or
change to another application, etc) Shadow saves the file to internal
memory and copies the file back to the card. This means you must have
enough free internal memory to hold the file, and enough free space on the
card to hold any changes made.
- Popping the card out while Shadow is running is unwise but ought to be
handled well. If you are looking at the directory of a card and pull the
card out, you'll just get an error when trying to open the files in the
directory (of course, since they're now unavailable!). Likewise, if you've
opened a file thats on a card, and then pull the card out, the file will
save to internal memory. Since the card is no longer available, it'll be
left it the Unfiled category of internal memory, and you can use it
as a normal internal Shadow file (since it now is one), or copy it back to
the card at your leisure. When you pop in or out a card while Shadow is
running, Shadow will leave you to determine what to do, since presumably
you know what you're doing when you pop in or out the card :)
- If you try and open a file thats on a card, while a file with the exact
same name already exists in internal memory, you'll get an error -- Shadow
is trying to protect you from accidentally clobbering a file that you've
got internally. (Perhaps you received a beamed file from a friend, or
just created an internal file with the same name as a card based file.
You may have yanked out the card at an inopportune time in the past and
left a duplicate file internally, or perhaps there was a rare Shadow crash
leaving a card based file on internal memory, that you need to move back
to the card or delete). Shadow will let you figure out what to do.. open
the existing file, remove it and make way for the card based file, or
the like.. theres no way for Shadow to guess what you wish to do.
Recent Files/History Screen
As you can see from the screenshots, the Recent Files popup can be summoned
a variety of ways. You can in fact summon in like this:
- Recent button on the File Selection Screen
- Recent Files menu item under Go menu in List View
- Under the [V] popmenu
- If Shadow is set to a hardware button, pushing that button while in
List View pops up the listing
Shadow Plan keeps a list of files that you've recently accessed. The
way this works is each time you open a file, it is pushed to the bottom of
the history listing if it is not in the listing already. If it is already
in the history listing, it is not moved to the bottom. The reason for this
is to keep you moving quickly -- moving items around in the listing could
make you pick the wrong file if you're in a hurry and used to its position.
You can also perform a few operations on the recent files listing:
- Pick a file to open it (regardless of category!)
- Clear the history (if its too cluttered, for instance)
- Start a new list. This is useful since you can pull up the
recent files listing while inside a file. Starting a new list
inside one file causes the current file to save and a new one
to begin right away
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If you're careful with the order of opening some files after clearing
the recent files history, you can essentially create yourself a quick
table of contents to jump around your more common lists very quickly!
Built-in List Types
Shadow has a variety of built-in list types that can be used for either
List Views or Individual Item Overrides. (By default, all items are of the
same type as the List they are in, but you may override this in the
full screen Details window of an item).
The various built in views provide a cross section of useful layouts.
They do not contain all of the widgets and columns Shadow Plan can provide
you -- you will need to design your own layouts in order to use all of
the widgets Shadow Plan provides! The built-in views are as follows:
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Checklist
For packing lists, record collections, things to do, notes.. virtually
anything at all can be a fine candidate for a Checklist.
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Note
Note lists feature minimal widgetry -- only the Link Arrow column is present.
You may wish to use a "bullet" auto-number to separate items on the screen.
Handy for meeting notes, school notes, jotting down things on the run,
making summaries or essays, writing a column for a newspaper.. anything where
a lot of prose is going on.
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Tasklist
This view is useful for project managers, people tracking things going on
over time, or who want to know how far along a given set of chores or
tasks are. It provides a percentage complete column/icons, priorities,
checkboxes and the ever-present link arrow.
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Flat
Can be useful for just squashing more information on-screen and getting a
simple list of what you need to do, without regard to parent and child
relationships. Often useful as a temporary view -- flip to it using the [V]
top-right popmenu, see whats going on, and then flip back to another view.
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Worksheet
This is a handy layout for doing an overview of work; you can quickly assign
items to someone, or add dependencies (via tags), set a date and see how long
until this date is due (or how late you are). Priority is also included, so
you can judge the importance of the items.
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Unique Custom List Views
Shadow Plan is extremely customizable; you can change your global
preferences (general, display and links), list preferences (mini editor,
to sync or not, colour backgrounds, auto numbers, etc), list options (suppress
word wrap, default todo link category), and even.. what widgets make
up your list display. This is a very powerful option and as a result, can
be very confusing.. especially when coupled with all of these others
preferences and options! But we prefer to give you the power when you've
decided to go looking for it, rather than limit you!
Each list has a "type", normally Checklist, Tasklist, etc. Really, these
are just built in selections of widgets to display in your lists -- a Checklist
is a list where its items have checkboxes (unless you've gone and overridden
the items in that list to be other types :). Should you wish a selection of
widgets not normally shown, you can make your list (or specific items) into a
Custom view. This lets you pick and choose which widgets to use from among
the library of widgets Shadow Plan supports.
Several widgets available are not turned on in any built in view.
For example, you may have wondered why no built in view sports a target date
column. It is definitely supported by Shadow, but takes up a lot of screen
territory, and not everyone needs it.. so we decided to make it purely
optional. A custom list is where you turn it on.
But first.. there are two types of custom view -- a unique custom
view, and a saved custom view. A unique view is one where the details
of which widgets are displayed are stored in the list itself, and no other
list knows about this lists setup. A saved view is where you use the
View Manager to define and save the view, and then ask this list to use
that view. The difference is that for a saved view, you can use the same
view layout for many lists, and changing that layout with the View Manager
changes all lists using that layout. A unique view is.. on its own. Updating
its layout has no effect on other lists. Using a unique layout, or a saved
layout.. is purely up to you. If you wish to have a consistent set of layouts
it is advisable to use saved views.. you can create a half dozen of them
the way you like, and then make all lists of that saved type, and life
is easy onwards.. but at that cost of creating the saved views!
To set what widgets are in the Unique Custom View, you must go to List
Preferences screen. In there, if your list is set to a Custom type, you
will have a Custom button at the bottom right of your screen. Even if you
wish to have the list as a (say) Checklist, but wish to have some items
as Custom, you will need to change the list to a Custom list, set the custom
options, and then change it back to a Checklist.
- Open the list in question
- Pull up List Preferences (List menu, Preferences)
- Ensure the list is set to Custom type
- Tap on the Custom button in the bottom right
- Select the widgets to enable for this list
- Tap OK
- Optionally, set the list view to the desired type; leave it at Custom
if you like, or change it to Checklist. Changing it to a non-Custom means
your Custom options will not be enabled except for specific items you've
overridden to be Customs.
- Hit OK to return to the list view; your custom settings will take
effect on custom items (which could be all of them for a Custom list,
or some of them if you've been playing with overrides)
The list of widgets to pick from is displayed on the right; a list with
most of them turned on is displayed below and right; you can see that turning
on everything leaves little room for actual text content, so be judicious!
What are the available widgets?
- Priority bubble
The priority bubble is the (1) through (5) (and (-)) you see on the main list
view in Tasklists; it can also be displayed as a bold 1-5 or - depending on
your preferences. Note lists, for example, do not have priorities.
- Checkbox
Either a check-circle or a check-box depending on your display preferences.
If present, an item can be checked to mark it as complete.
- Progress bar
Commonly seen on the Tasklist on the right; when present, you'll see a little
progress bar showing how far along the task is. If tapped on, you are able
to set progress in 10% increments. If the item is a parent item, its progress
is not settable, but is the average of its children's progresses.
- Target date column
Not shown in built in views; if enabled, the items target dates will be
shown in your Palm preferred date format. Tapping in the target date column
lets you specify an items target date right from the main list view.
- Start date column
Not shown in built in views; if enabled, the items start dates will be
shown in your Palm preferred date format. Tapping in the start date column
lets you specify an items start date right from the main list view.
- Finish date column
Not shown in built in views; if enabled, the items finish dates will be
shown in your Palm preferred date format. Tapping in the finish date column
lets you specify an items finish date right from the main list view.
- Link arrow column
Seen in all built-in views; shows presence of any link from the item. If
tapped on, allows you to GoTo links, change a todo links category, or
pull up the link manager screen where you have fine tuned control over links.
- ToDo link column
Not seen in any normal view; if enabled, a special checkbox will be displayed
on the right side of items. The checkbox will either be [T] or [] (or
occasionally [X]). A [T] indicates a todo link is present. Tapping on it
will toggle a todo link on or off as appropriate. This is the fastest way
to maintain a todo list from Shadow! If a link has been broken and is not
severed, the checkbox will show [X] instead of [T], and tapping it will
sever the link (and then retapping will of course assign a todo link).
- Days until due column
A very useful column not normally seen; if enabled, each item will be shown
with a number to its right side. The number can be negative, zero, or
positive, and can in fact also be "very negative" (-<<) or "very positive"
(+>>). If the number is negative, it will be displayed in red, and suggests
the item is that many days LATE. If positive, it will be displayed green
and suggests the item is that many days in the future. For example, an
item due in 3 days will be green +3, while an item 35 days in the past will
be red -35 (overdue).
- Tag column
This is available in two versions -- wide or thin. They are equivalent,
however the thin tag column takes up much less space on your display. If
you want it just for adding tags, or if your tags are very short, this is
the way to go. If you're using wide tag names like peoples names or the
like, you'll want the wide tag column, if you can afford it. See the
section on Tags for details.
- Suppress indent
If you want a "flat" display with maximum text space, this will do it.
- Suppress note icon
Normal items with attached notes will show a little note icon on their
right side (of the text); tapping on this will either expand/collapse the
attached note right on screen, or pull up the note editor (depending on
your prefs). If you enable this pref, however, the note icon will always
be hidden and notes will always be collapsed and hidden. You'll have to use
/A, the Item menu, or Details window to get to the notes. People may use
this to maximize screen space, or perhaps if they use Action Names,
DateBk4, or other apps which add "notes" to items all the darned time :)
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Saved Custom List Views
For a general discussion of custom views, see the section on unique
custom views here.
A saved custom view is a custom layout that can be re-used in
many lists. You define and save the layout using the View Manager and
then assign the view in List Preferences, just like assigning a built-in
view type. The difference between a saved view and a unique custom view is
that the saved view can be edited using the View Manager, and all lists
using that view will be updated to the new layout when they are opened. With
a unique custom view, the list is unique and changes to its layout have no
effect on other lists.
Saved custom views are very useful if you wish to have a consistent
layout across lists, or if you wish to define some handy displays with attached
filters. You can quickly change view types using the [V] top-right popmenu,
so it can be extremely useful to define yourself a few handy views, then
flip between them (and their attached filters) depending on your location
or needs.
Example: You could define a saved view that has an attached filter
that shows only high priority items with the tag "@Work". Define another saved
view with an attached filter for items "@Home". Your Work View could show
target dates and priorities, while your Home View could display just checkboxes
or tags (to display who is assigned to a chore, say). Then when you wish to
consult your Shadow Plan To Do list file, just select a Saved View from the [V]
popmenu depending if you are at Home or at Work, and see the desired
layout and filtered items.. all with only two taps!
In practice, once you have defined a saved view, it functions more or less
like a built-in view or list type. You can change a list to a saved layout
in List Preferences or using [V] popmenu. You create and manage saved views
using the View Manager, so see that section for details of those operations.
Changing Individual Item Types
By default, list items have the type "List's Type", which is to say that
whatever type your list is, the items automatically use. If you change the
list's type then the items also change to that type, which makes sense, and
keeps things simple for new users. If you create a Checklist list, then all
items will look like Checklist items... until you override this behaviour.
You have the option of forcing an item to a different type, built-in or
saved custom view. This means you can have a list that is a Checklist type,
and a bunch of items defaulting to "List's Type" (which makes them Checklists in this
example), and other items which are overridden and told to be "Tasklist" type.
These overridden items will not change when you change the list type, and
they will show percentage and priority widgets regardless of what the other
list items will look like.
Over-riding items types is useful in a variety of situations. Some people
just like to keep parent items as "Note" type so they're simple and to save
them from accidentally hitting a parent checkbox and checking a whole subtree
of children. In this case just set the List to Checklist or whatever you
like, and override the parents to be Note. Other people like to just have a
mixed bag -- the list could be a meeting notes, with some action items
(needing checkboxes) and some note items. Just override away as you go, or
change the items to their proper type later. No problem!
To override an item, just open the full-screen Details window, and change
the type in the top-right. The details window is displayed here. See in the
top right the override popmenu.
In the example to the right, you will notice the item is either forced
to Worksheet, or the List is a Worksheet list. If you tap in the top right
and change the override to "List's Type" it will now change with the List.
If you change it to (say) "Checklist", then this item will become a Checklist
until the end of time, or you change it's override again.. whichever comes
first :)
Most people will never need to use overridden item types, but if you're
a hungry power Shadow Planner, you'll end up here before long!
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View Manager
The View Manager is similar to the Filter Manager and Tag Manager -- it is
the tool you use to construct, view, edit, and delete Custom Views (whereas
the Filter Manager lets you perform these operations on Custom Filters).
But what is a Custom View?
There are two types of custom views -- unique custom views and
saved custom views. A list can have a unique custom view, which is to
say it has its own view that depends on nothing. Changes to that view will
have no effect on other lists. A saved view on the other hand, is a view
defined with the View Manager and that is assigned to the list just like
a built in type. Many lists can share a saved view, and changing the saved
layout will effect all lists using that view type. As such, saved views are
preferred over unique custom views, and provide you with a consistent look
across all of your lists. However, they are a little more complicated to
use, as a result.
The View Manager is rather simple to operate. It has limited operations and
these are the same as in other Managers. It can create new Views, show you
the Details and let you Edit a View, and Delete Views. The View Manager
is shown here:
Hitting "New" presents you with a simple window letting you name the
view, assign a filter, and pick which widgets and columns to display for
items using this view.
Tapping on the "Pick columns and buttons" button will present you with
the custom widget screen. This screen is documented in the
unique custom view section here.
Automatic filters: You can optionally check the "Select" box and
pick a filter. If the Select box is unchecked, then when a list opens or is
changed to this view, no filter changes are applied. However, if you do
check the Select box, then the filter listed to its side is applied when
you open a list with this view, or when you change the list to this view.
The selected filter can be "All" (to disable whatever filter happens to be
already present), or it can be a built-in or custom filter (to disable
whatever filter is current, and apply the specified filter)
One may use automatic filters for a lot of reasons, though a popular one
will be for quick queries. Consider this example: Perhaps you have a To Do
list in Shadow Plan. You might tag items with a location such as @Home or
@Work. You could build appropriate views for home and work (with work's
featuring date columns and priorities, say, while the home view includes
only checkboxes and tag columns to see who is assigned a task). Attach a
filter to each of Home View and Work View. Then with only two taps (one to
[V] top-right popmenu and another to either Home or Work View) you can
get a filtered and cleanly laid out list of your To Do's that is much more
useful that seeing the whole list in some confusing layout).
Note: Watch out for the Select checkbox - it can be confusing. If it
is unchecked, no automatic filter changes will occur. If it is checked, then
the filter selection *will* change when you open the list. If you check the
Select box, and set the filter to "All", then whenever you open the list the
current (last set) filter will be removed, and this may confuse you!
Assigning a saved custom view
Remember, to assign a saved custom view, you change the current lists type
in List Preferences just as you always did (since saved views will be listed
along with the built-in views). You can also quickly change the
list type using the [V] top-right popmenu!
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View Customization - a Recipe Book
In Shadow, every list has a "default view" you specify and every item either
inherits this default view or is overridden to have its own. A view
is the method used to determine how to draw each item onto the screen.
You can set a list view to be one of the built in views or create your own
custom view. Each item defaults to its list's view, but can be over ridden
to take on one of these other views.
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Change list to custom type, and a custom button appears
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Tap the custom button to customize the list view to your liking
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This section simply shows off a few neat screenshots with descriptions
of how they were built, so you can see some of the possibilities. There
are many more things you can do!
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Built-in Checklist View |
Built-in Note View |
Built-in Task View |
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Bult-in Flat View |
Custom View, with
most options turned on |
Custom View, with indentation
suppressed, checkboxes instead of
checkcircles, todo links so you can
have them on your todo list,
and larger triangles for your
mature eyes. Coloured background
also turned off. Numbered level 2
items, bulleted level 1.
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Custom view, with indented
priorities and collapse/expand
arrow; large arrow icon priority
number instead of bubbles; target
date column added. Priorities
present.
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Standard checklist view
Coloured an item via Details
screen. Added address book
and memo links through link
manager
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A list with button bar activated |
Sony Jog Dial Control
Jog Dial's go a long way in helping you get around your handheld, especially
when trying to use the unit one-handed (while shopping, or driving, or other
Olympic-class events :) Sadly, each vendor has implemented jog dials in
a different way so it'll be awhile before every application can support
every jog dial. We at Codejedi fell so in love with jog dials that we're
making sure to support them as fast as possible, however!
We currently support the Sony Jog Dial. We will be supporting Handera
type Jog Dials in around Shadow Plan 2.3, and hopefully Kyocera and others
around 2.4 or later.
Sony Jog Dial (and Back button)
The listing below shows the operations performed by the Jog Dial and
Back button in the various screens. We're confident you can maneuver around,
view lists, and change lists all with one hand, using the below operations.
- The jog dial will navigate popmenus and lists in all screens.
- The back button will attempt a Cancel or OK or Done (in that order) for
screens without special support (such as the filter screen).
- Remember that you can hold down the Back button to get a little cursor.
The jog dial then lets you select any widget on the screen and you can
attempt to operate it with the jog dial. Handy for the Details screen.
- While in the File Selection Screen:
- Back button, no file selected: Pops up the category listing
- Back button, a file selected: Unselects the file
- Jog up, no file selected: Scroll one page up
- Jog up, a file selected: Select previous file, scrolling as necessary
- Jog down, no file selected: Scroll one page down
- Jog down, a file selected: Select next file, scrolling as necessary
- Jog press, no file selected: Select first file
- Jog press, a file selected: Open the file
- While in the List View Screen:
- Back button, no item selected: Save and close the file
- Back button, an item selected: Unselects the item
- Jog up, no item selected: Scroll one page up
- Jog up, an item selected: Select previous item, scrolling as necessary
- Jog down, no item selected: Scroll one page down
- Jog down, an item selected: Select next item, scrolling as necessary
- Jog press, no item selected: Select first item
- Jog press, an item selected: Show item details of selected item
Handera Jog Dial
Not yet supported. Check back soon!
Kyocera Jog Dial
Not yet supported. Check back soon!
Palm 5-Way "D-Pad" Control
The newer Palm units include a little navigation disc on the units, in
place of the traditional page up and page down buttons. The disc is essentially
a 4 direction controller with a button in the middle.
We have implemented the 5-Way Control in much the same way as the Sony
Jog Dial, though of course it varies a little due to its difference in design.
In general, all you need to know is that it operates differently depending
if an item is selected or not. When no item is selected, pushing up or down
on the 5-Way will page up or down respectively. When an item is selected,
pushing up or down will select the previous or next visible item,
respectively. This lets you move around quickly or slowly, depending what
is selected. Handy.
You can select an item by pressing the center button, or by pushing right.
You can unselect an item by pressing left while not at a collapsed parent
item. Thats most of it right there!
List View:
- Push, no item selected: Select an item
- Push, an item selected: Open Details for this item
- Up, no item selected: Scroll one page up
- Up, an item selected: Select previous item, scrolling as necessary
- Down, no item selected: Scroll one page down
- Down, an item selected: Select next item, scrolling as necessary
- Left, an item selected, expanded: Collapse the item
- Left, an item selected, collapsed: Deselect the item
- Right, an item selected, collapsed: Expand the item
- Right, an item selected, expanded: Open Details
Detail Screen:
- Pushing the button is the same as hitting OK
- Left is the same as hitting Cancel
So you can think of "right" as selecting an item or going deeper into a
selected item, and "left" as unselected, or backing out of changes. Think
of "up" and "down" as getting around.
List Preferences
The List Preferences screen is used to define the overall options for
the list itself. For example, you may wish to synchronize this list but
not other lists. Since that is a decision you make on a list by list
basis, you set it up in the List Preferences screen. For options that
make sense effecting all lists, look into the Global Preferences which
are documented in another section of the manual.
This screen is usually opened when you make a new list, or when you wish
to change something about an existing list. It is common when making a new
list to just leave the defaults, as they're pretty good, and then return
later to set things up. You can change any of the List Preferences any
time you wish.
If you worked with List Preferences in versions prior to Shadow Plan 2.8
you may recall an Options button; it is now gone, replaced with a new panel
based system. Several "tabs" exist at the top of List Preferences now, and
tapping on a tab will switch to the corresponding panel of options. Most
people will be happy with the default panel of handy general options, though
if you want to get into the really powerful stuff, the other tabs are
very useful!
List Preferences apply only to a specific list, and are saved into it.
Changing any settings here will not affect any other list than the
currently loaded one. These items are basicly those things you may wish
to change about the appearance and formatting of a given file. This is
where some of the real power of Shadow Plan is :)
Shadow Plan will always pick sensible defaults. As such you need only
enter as little as you want into these screens. If you just enter a filename
you're ready to go. The other myriad of options are for your customization
and can be changed anytime.
General Panel
- Filename
You must enter a filename when creating a list. You can use
any characters you like in the filename, however Shadow will
strip out some particularly dangerous ones, such as "/" and
"(", since they can cause problems with Hotsync Manager. Once
a list has been given a name, the name can be changed only by
using the "Rename" menu item on the "File Selection" screen
(see that section of this manual). If you pull up the List
Preferences menu while an existing list is open, you will not
be able to make any changes in the Filename field. To ensure
that your files do not get overwritten by some other
application, the actual filename on the Palm is the
name you entered with the text "ShadP-" prefixed to it. You
will never see this in Shadow itself, but when you Hotsync
files you'll see the true name. Only one file with a given
name can exist at a time (even across categories - see the FAQ
for reasons why).
- List Type
Each Shadow list has a view type associated to it. Don't worry,
you can change the type anytime you like. The type is just
a general description which tells Shadow how to display the
information you're storing in it. A file can be a Checklist
(with checkboxes), a Memo (without any decorations), a
Tasklist (with Priorities, Checkboxes, Progress Bars, Dates, etc),
a Flat list (no indentation, but with a todo link checkbox for
faster todo linking), or a Custom view (where you can turn on
or off any feature you like!) You can pull up List Preferences
from within a list and change its view type at any time.
You never lose any information .. you just change how it is
presented.
Default: Checklist.
NOTE: Changing the list to a Custom view will activate
a hidden "Custom" button which allows you to customize your
list to your exact requirements. See the "Customization" section
of the manual to find out what you can do. If you don't set
any custom options, you'll have a custom view with no gadgets..
hardly any fun at all! Be sure to turn on some gadgets if
you need them :)
- Category
Palm files can be assigned to categories. Palm OS supports no
more than 14 user categories; fortunately, that usually
provides sufficient flexibility. You can create your own new
categories, rename existing categories, and merge two
categories. This item in the List Preferences allows you to
assign the new or existing list to a category or to carry out
the above category changes. The "File Selection" screen allows
you to show only the files in a particular category.
- Synchronize Checkbox
This is an important setting that controls whether or not the
Shadow Conduit will even look at this file for synchronization to
the Shadow Desktop application. Even if you do not set this pref,
Shadow will have the Hotsync Manager back up your files in case you
need to restore them later. With the Sync preference checked, the
Shadow Conduit will sync this file with the desktop during
Hotsync.
Default; Off. You may not wish to synchronize all files since
it can slow the sync down to have a hundred files being checked
each time.
- Mini-editor Checkbox
Shadow Plan lets you edit in two main ways -- via the full
screen Details Window (the default), or via the "on screen"
Mini-Editor. Theres advantages to both -- the full screen window
lets you change almost everything about an item, all in one handy
place. This lets you see all of the item in a glance, and change
it at will. The disadvantage is that you cannot see the items
around it, since the list view is covered. We call this "item
context view". With some lists (such as a shopping list) most of
your list is just plain text, and you needn't worry about setting
dates and tags up, but you may need to see what is going on around
the item. In this case, you would turn on the Mini-Editor, which
lets you edit the item text right on the main list view, in a
little window at the bottom. The advantage is you can see your
list layout while editing. The disadvantage is you do not see
much of the item detail. This keeps "list context" in your head.
The mini editor has a button to pull up the full screen Details
Window when you need it, of course. (We do not offer an edit
system with the cursor right in the text in the list view due
to limits of the Palm OS edit gadgetry and high res screens).
So turn on the mini editor if you think you need to see the list
structure while you are creating items.
Default; Off.
- Colour Theme Checkbox (Coloured Ledger Background)
Normally Shadow uses a white screen under your list. With this
list preferences checked, an alternating blue/white
background will be shown behind the list. This can really
ease readability for some users.
Note that the colour backgrounds will not show up on older
model Sony Clie devices while in "low res mode" or "high res assisted
low res mode", but will show up on those units in Shadow "high
res mode". The reason is due to bugs in the Sony OS and not
due to a limit of Shadow. Sony has corrected this bug in later
units such as the Sony NX.
Default: On.
Note that you can change the colours used by setting up the
Theme Preferences, a global preference panel. See elsewhere in this
manual.
- Show Headings Checkbox - Fast access to sort, column titles
When checked, the first list display row is taken up by a set of
column headings. When you're changing views a lot, or just starting
out with Shadow, its nice to know what the columns are for.
Furthermore, tapping in a column on the titlebar offers you
the option of sorting (Ascending or Descending) on that column,
saving you from reaching for the List pulldown menu.
Default: On. Its handy for newbies and oldbies alike!
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List Preferences
Tap on Opt to get List Options
Change list to custom type, and a custom button appears
Tap the custom button to customize the list view to your liking
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Auto Panel
The "Auto Panel" is for options that generally enable or disable Shadow
automatic behaviour. For instance by default Shadow will check a parent item
if all of its children items become checked. Sometimes you may not wish this
automated behaviour, so you can disable it here, for example.
- Auto-Numbering
Auto-numbering is one of the special features that Shadow offers.
You can specify an automatic numbering preference for each of the
first three levels in the hierarchy. Lists themselves allow the
sublevel under each item to use its own numbering sequence. This can
result in strange looking lists (for example, if you have the top
level numbered 1-2-3-4-5 with the children of one item numbered
i-ii-iii and those of another item numbered A-B-C-D). You can use
the List Preferences auto-numbering settings to enforce a uniform
numbering system. When any selection other than "No preference" is
made, it overrides any individual settings that may have been made
previously and locks out the numbering setting on the "Details"
screen for individual items at that level. A setting of "None"
forces items at that level to have no numbering at all. Auto
numbering can save you time by automatically choosing the correct
numbering convention for you when you create a new item.
- Always Link New Items to ToDo
For some lists, with a high concentration of tasks, you may wish
to have all items linked to the ToDo database. Activating each one
(even with the custom view ToDo link column) can take an extra few
taps you really don't have time for. By activating this option,
all newly created items will link to ToDo automatically, saving
you the taps. Its generally not something you want for every
list though, so I put it in this option screen. You can disable
the link afterwards, at your leisure, if undesired.
Default: Off
- Always import new ToDo items
This option is very handy if you're replacing your Palm To-Do
application with Shadow Plan. By checking it, Shadow will look for
new ToDo items each time you open this list. The new items are
imported and linked, so that you can now see the item in both
Shadow Plan and Palm ToDo. You can edit the item in either
Shadow or ToDo, or even MSOutlook or Palm Desktop or DateBk5 or
Agendus.. Shadow will take care of all the synchronization for you!
Default: Off
See the Options Panel for some options for this feature.
- Always import new Datebook items
This option is very handy if you're replacing your Palm To-Do
application with Shadow Plan. By checking it, Shadow will look for
new ToDo items each time you open this list. The new items are
imported and linked, so that you can now see the item in both
Shadow Plan and Palm ToDo. You can edit the item in either
Shadow or ToDo, or even MSOutlook or Palm Desktop or DateBk5 or
Agendus.. Shadow will take care of all the synchronization for you!
Default: Off
See the Options Panel for some options for this feature.
- Suppress Autocheck
This is a toughy. Autochecking is the behaviour of Shadow to
check a parent when all of its children become completed, or to
check all children when a parent becomes complete. For instance,
if you define a project or story to be comprised of 4 sub-items,
and then a month later complete the last item (by checking it off)
then the parent item will autocheck, so you know it is complete.
Many people like this behaviour, and coupled with filters or
hilights or sorts, much time can be saved. However, its not for
everyone. So by activating this option, some autochecking and
automatic behaviour is disabled. Shadow Plan will improve in this
arena, but this first step ought to help a lot of people.
Default: Off
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Options Panel
List options are part of a list's preferences, but are less frequently
changed by most people so are grouped aside. There are some very
handy options here for power users!
- Create ToDo In
When you create a link to the ToDo database from a Shadow item,
it is created in the category specified here. This allows you to
change it from Unfiled to some other category, causing all
new ToDo links to go to it. Existing links are not moved to the
new setting. In an upcoming version, you will be able to override
this on an item by item basis, too.
Default: Unfiled
- Suppress title word wrap
Title text, like attached note text, word wraps and can
spread across many lines of the display. Some find this takes
up too much space even when the title has a lot to say. This
option keeps the title text to a maximum of one line on the
display and draws an ellipses ("...") after title text that
would normally take more lines on the screen. With this
option enabled, you maximize the number of items you can
squish onto the display (after collapsing all memos, of course)
Default: Off -- Hiding of data can look like something was
lost. Only each user can pick whether they like this or not.
- New items take sibling's view
If this pref is set, new or edited items will pick up the custom
view settings of their siblings. Handy so you can set up a sublevel
style you like and then all new items in that sublevel will magicly
look like the other items in that sublevel!
Default; Off. Can be confusing.
- Suppress scrollbar
A list will show a scrollbar if it is longer than the screen.
However, if you don't wish to have a scrollbar for this list, because
you generally access it linearly up and down, or just dislike
scrollbars.. check this preference to totally disable it. When
enabled, this pref stops the scrollbar from being rendered and
returns that valuable screen space to your display!
Default; Off. New users may need the scrollbars.
- Always sort undated to bottom
By default, when sorting dates, Shadow counts an item without
a date as being "very low", so sorting "ascending" will put the
undated items at the top of the list. Many people will wish
to have the undated items sort to the bottom of the list and so
we provide this option.
Default; Off.
- Auto import non-Shadow only*
If you have enabled the Auto Import options from the "Auto Panel"
(described above), then this list will pick up new ToDo and/or
Datebook items. Well and good. However, what if you created these
items from Shadow Plan? If this list is your master ToDo
list you likely still want the items auto imported. But if this
is a list of "inbox" ToDo items, then you may only want new
ToDo items that are not already in Shadow Plan. Checking this
option will attempt to auto import only ToDo or Datebook items that
look like they came from outside of Shadow. How do we know? I'm
glad you asked... Shadow Plan can be told (using a Global
Preference!) to mark a linked item by adding a "Shadow Origin
Stamp" to the ToDo or Datebook item's note. So if you check this
"Auto import non-Shadow only" option, it will only work if you
also enable the "Shadow Origin Stamp"ing feature in global
preferences.
Default; Off.
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Options panel
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List View Screen
After a list has been opened, the list view screen will be displayed.
The actions that can be taken from this screen are described below,
starting with the menus accessible by tapping the menu icon at the lower
left of the graffiti area.
Optional Titlebar
By default, lists have a titlebar (though if you're upgrading from an
older Shadow Plan (prior to Shadow 2.5) your lists may need to have the
titlebar activated in List Preferences.) You toggle the titlebar on and off
in List Preferences. It occupies the first display row on your screen
and simply displays column titles for the visible columns. This can be
very handy for newbies, and I think it is rather attractive anyway ;) It is
also functional, for tapping on a column in the titlebar pops up the option
of sorting by that column, ascending or descending. So this is really a very
handy little gadget, though if you're tight for screen realestate you can
as always turn it off.
Pulldown menus and shortcuts
- New Item
This will bring up the new item "Details" screen (see below),
allowing you to create a new item for your list. If an existing item
was selected at the time this command was issued, then the new item
will be placed immediately after it. If no item was selected (e.g.,
when the list was just opened), then the new item will be placed at
the end of the list. In either case, after the new item has been
added, the item selection cursor will move to the new item so that
consecutive "New Item" commands will create items in a row down the
screen.
- New Child
This, like "New Item", will bring up the "Item Detail Screen" and allow
you to build a new item. The difference is that when the item is saved
into your list, it'll be a "Child" of the item that is already selected.
The item selection cursor will move to the new item.
- New (Up a level)
This is the same as New Item except it is the same as moving the
selection up a level first. As such, this operation only works when on
an item that is a child of some other item. The purpose of those operation
is to make quick list creation easier. If you need to lay out a list
that is like this:
Then you need to New Item (to make "A"), New Child (to make "1"), and
then New Up to make "B". You don't need to mess with the screen much to
accomplish this.
- New From...
This allows you to create a new Shadow item derived from an existing ToDo
or Datebook database item. For instance, you may create some items from
MSOutlook or Palm Desktop in your calendar. Since Shadow doesn't know
they exist, they won't show up in a Shadow file. Just hit New From and
pick the week containing the ToDo or DateBook entry, pick the ToDo or
Datebook selector to show the right kind of entry, and pick it from the
list. Voila, a Shadow item now exists! You can optionally link back to
the original item, too, if you wish to have synchronization occur, etc.
- Delete Item
This command is used to delete the selected item (you'll get an
error message if no item has been selected). To protect against
accidental deletions, a confirmation alert will pop up. After "OK"
is selected, the item is deleted along with ALL OF ITS
CHILDREN. This CANNOT BE UNDONE. Be careful! If there is
any doubt, click "Cancel" on the alert screen. [You may be able to use
the "Revert" command to return to the last saved version of the list.
This will undo all work since the last save, including these deletions.
Reverting is very dangerous since it cannot restore deleted links and
other complex pieces of data, so odd things can sometimes occur.]
- Delete Children
This is like "Delete Item", above, except that it will delete all children
of the selected item. Since this is a dangerous operation, a confirmation
is required.
- Promote Item
Promoting an item will move an item up a level. If it is at the top
level, it won't go anywhere. This exists mainly for its shortcut, so
you can use grafitti keystrokes to move an item up the hierarchy. If
you wish to do it onscreen, use drag and drop instead.
- Demote Item
This is the counterpart of Promote Item. You use it mainly via a
grafitti keystroke. The selected item is moved down a level, to become
the child of its immediate previous sibling. A handy shortcut. If
you want to tap on the display, just use drag and drop...
- Item Details
This pulls up the full screen Details Window for the selected item.
- Item Links and Tags
This option pulls up the Link Manager, which is the
same screen you would get if you
were to tap on Link from within the Item Details window. This screen
allows you to change any links an item may have on it.
- Item Fast Tag
This menu item pulls up the Tag Wizard. The Tag Wizard is documented
elsewhere in the manual, but in essence is a screen for very easily
and quickly setting which tags are associated to the selected item.
For instance, you can associate a half dozen tags to the item with
only a few taps.
- Add/Edit Note
Immediately bring up the note editor for the selected item. This saves
you tapping on Details and then Note, quickly allowing you to add a note
to an item, or edit an existing note. Very handy in reducing your tap-count!
- Toggle Checkbox
This toggles the checking of the item. Note that the shortcut for this
menu item is Cmd-Spacebar!
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- Preferences
This brings up the List Preferences screen. See above.
- Revert To Last
When this command is executed, the current list in memory is
discarded and the last saved version of the list is loaded back
into memory. You must be very careful using this operation, since not
all data can be restored. (If you delete linked objects, for instance,
Shadow cannot restore that data! Due to some complex operations being
irrecoverable, strange things may occur if you Revert!) You may, for
example, have worked for 10 minutes without saving your list. If you
decide that don't like your recent changes, just tap "Revert" and you
are back where you started. This can be handy if you wish to
experiment. Save your current list using "Save Now" (see below), and
then make some changes. If you don't like them, revert back to the
save point. Further, if you make a mistake and accidentally delete
some important items, just revert to bring them back (but remember
that you'll lose other recent work at the same time). So it's a very
good idea to "Save Now" after making changes that you know you want
to keep. Then you can always come back to them if you make a mistake
later.
- Save Now
This command saves your list immediately, but unlike the "Done"
command, it does not exit to the File Selection screen and allows
you to continue working on your list. So if you have reached a point
where you wish to save, tap this menu item, or use its graffiti
shortcut. (Shadow saves automatically when you exit the program or
follow a link to another file or perform any other file-changing
operation.)
- Sort
See the section on sorting. You can apply a sort to your list, which
will juggle the items around into a hopefully more useful ordering.
A sort only applies to the items on the same level, though a sort
will occur against the whole list (ie: It won't move items between
levels.. just re-order them *on* a given level).
- Filter
See the section on filters. Filtering is the act of having Shadow
temporarily hide some items from your view that you don't wish to see
right now. If you wish to hide all items that are checked for instance,
no problem. They're still there.. just hidden. While a filter is active,
You will see a hilighted [F] flag icon in the top right of the display,
to show you that a filter is active and hiding items.
- Hilight
Hilighting is like filtering, except that unmatching items are not hidden..
instead the items matching the selection criterion are bolded, and even
coloured if your device can handle that.
- Expand All
This will expand ALL parent items. So all of your items will
become visible (unless filtered or offscreen, of course). This can
be handy if you wish to open up a dozen entries and don't wish
to tap away for a minute.
- Expand All Memos
This will expand ALL memos. So all of your items that have
memos will have their memos opened up, saving you the work of expanding
each one individually.
- Collapse All
Like "Expand All", this will collapse all items, removing as mant
from view as possible. This can be handy so you can quickly navigate
up and down the list or wish to just see the top level items and
hide the detail children items.
- Collapse All Memos
Since each memo item can be expanded and collapsed on their own, and
can be very long (20 pages easily!), this menu item can be
very handy for getting around. Rather than scroll up 50 times,
you could collapse all the memos and get right to the point. Can
seriously unclutter your screen.
- Sever All Broken Links
If you link to various files or other databases, but then delete
those items, the links will point to "nowhere" and are thus called
"broken". Usually when you open a Shadow file, you will be notified
of any broken links and given the opportunity to sever them.. but you
may have disabled this with a preference, or chosen not to sever
the links. You can still sever them link by link in the Item Details
screen, though this can be tiresome if you've broken many links at
once. So to save the work of looking for broken links, you can just
go and pick this menu item, which will have Shadow go and find any
links it used to think are broken and reverify their integrity. If
they are still broken, they are "severed", meaning the link is removed
forever from the Shadow item (which is otherwise left alone). After
this menu option has completed, your remaining links should all be
working links.
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- Cut Item
This cuts the selected item (and thus its children, since they
are attached to it) out of your list, and keeps it on the Item
Clipboard. The Item Clipboard is not pastable to other applications
since they do not understand things other than text. The Item
Clipboard is maintained while you are in Shadow, so you can
Paste into other Shadow list files even! Very handy!
- Copy Item
This is similar to Cut Item, except that the selected item is
copied and not removed from your list. This can be useful for
template items, or items you wish to just duplicate. Copy
an item, and paste it in.
- Move Clipboard Item
Move is like Paste, except that it clears the clipboard afterwards.
You can only Move once, and then you'll have to cut/copy again
to get something into the clipboard. If you wish to move a node
far in a list, you could Cut it, and then scroll the screen to
where you want to put it, select an item as an achor, and then
Move Clipboard Item to put it into place. This is very efficient
on speed and memory.. since a Cut just brings an item into the
clipboard (without copying), and Move puts it into your list
(without copying). It also doesn't leave wasted memory in the
clipboard.
- Paste Item
This copies an item from the clipboard into your list. If no item
is selected, the paste will go to the last item on the display,
otherwise it will go after the selected item.
- Paste As Child
Same as Paste Item, except the copy will become the child of
the selected item.
- Clear Item Clipboard
Erases the item clipboard. This is mainly used to save memory --
if you have copied a very large item (with lots of children or
memos attached), you can clear it to free the memory.
- Uncheck All
This item turns off the checkbox of all items in the list. You could
wish to use this when you are done with a list and wish to re-use it
later, for instance. You could also uncheck all items, then check
a couple to delete and then hit "Delete Checked" above.
- Delete All Checked
This command deletes all items that are currently checked off. This
is another potentially dangerous operation and, therefore, requires
confirmation. If you tell Shadow to go ahead by tapping "OK", then
all items that have their checkbox (or checkcircle) active will be
deleted, as well as ALL THEIR CHILDREN. This can delete a
huge number of items and CANNOT BE UNDONE (except as noted
above under Delete Item), so be very careful!
- Delete Sel. Checked Children
Like "Delete Checked Items", above, except that only children of the
currently selected item are examined and removed. A confirmation is
required due to the danger of this operation.
- Copy All Checked to Clip
All checked items in the current list are copied into the clipboard.
Remember that in single-clip mode, the existing clipboard item will be
clobbered, and in multi-clip mode the clipboard will be added to (if it
contains anything already). This can be handy for duplicating a part of
a shopping list, or packing list, for instance.
- Copy and Uncheck All Checked to Clip
Also useful for packing lists, shopping lists, etc, is the ability to
copy all checked items in the whole list to the clipboard.. and at the
same time uncheck them so you know they're done, or to reset the list
for re-use. Very handy. Be sure to check your clip-mode! (See clipboard
section)
- Cut and Uncheck All Checked to Clip
Again for list making, you may wish to cut all checked items out of the
current list, and paste them into another list. This option will cut
all checked items in the entire list, and uncheck them, and then put
them into the clipboard. Remember to check your clip-mode! (See clipboard
section)
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- Top Item
Use this to jump from anywhere to the topmost item in the list.
Handy for getting around.
- Bottom Item
Jump from anywhere to the bottom of the list. Just handy for getting
around.
- Next Item
Go to the next item that could be visible. The main use for this
seemingly useless menu item is for when you have large memos open and
you need to step over them. Rather than page down for perhaps 10
screens, just jump right down to the next item.
- Prev Item
Same as "Next Item" above, except it goes to the previous item that could
be visible.
- Zoom
Zoom is the ability to drill down to a sublevel and restrict your view to
only those items. If your list is very deep, this can be very useful so you
can see the deeper items without having them word-wrap like crazy and
without confusing yourself with the items above or below the sublevel.
A side effect of zooming is that many operations restrict themselves to
"visible" items.. for instance: Collapse All will collapse all items in
the list... but when Zoomed, it will collapse all items in the current zoom!
- Un-Zoom
This returns your view to the very top level of your list, so that
no items are being hidden.
- Find
This brings up the Find window, allowing you to jump the selection to
an item with some matching text. See the section on Find for details.
- Find Again
Once you have done a Find and found an item, you may wish to find the
next item that also matches you search criterion. Keep hitting Find Again
to keep jumping to the next matching item.
- Recent Files
This summons the Recent Files popmenu, where you can choose to jump to
another file without having to return to the File Selection Screen.
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- Preferences
Same as in File Selection Screen menu. Allows you to edit global
preferences. See the section of the manual dealing with the manu
preferences for details of what all the settings mean.
- Manage Tags
Summons the Tag Manager screen, which is documented elsewhere in the manual.
- Manage Filters
Summons the Filter Manager screen,
which is documented elsewhere in the manual.
- Manage Views
Summons the View Manager screen, which is documented elsewhere in the manual.
- Manage Alarms
Summons the Alarm Manager screen, which is documented elsewhere in the manual.
- About Shadow
Same as in the File Selection menu. Tells you if you are registered or not,
what version you are running, and gives the website address.
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The screen
The screen can br broken down into three main regions, each with their
own set of functions.

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- Top
The top is mainly for filename, indicators and the popmenus.
- List View
Where you do most of your work. You can see your list contents here,
slide items around, bring up the details and links, and otherwise
poke around, read, or manipulate your data.
- Bottom
The button bars. Large scale operations such as creating or deleting
items, summoning the detail windows, scrolling, or doing searches.
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These three regions cover a LOT of functionality. Its best to just
play around to discover the uses of most of the various widgets and operations
since there are just so many of them -- though they tend to be pretty easy
to understand. But do read this section, since many very useful operations
are HIDDEN since they do not have a button to begin them, or have
a context sensitive nature meaning only some operations are visible at
a time.
Parts of the screen
- The titlebar contains the filename of the currently open file, or if
Zoomed then ">" and the title text of the item the view is "inside of".
For instance, if you see ">Top level item", then you know that the list
is zoomed and you are currently viewing only items inside of "Top level
item".
- The pop-menus. These are an EXTREMELY useful context sensitive
operation menu system that also serve as indicator lamps. There are
three pop-menus all tucked in side-by-side: Clip, Filter, and View.
Jump
The first top-right popmenu is the Jump popmenu. This can be a very
big time saver for your large or complex or deeply nested lists.
In short, this menu lets you do two main things: 1) Jump up and down
a list very quickly, or 2) Jump into and out of items (Zooming) very
quickly. When you tap on the jump popmenu, a popup list of options is
shown; the first option is always "Set Zoom On" or "Set Zoom Off".
If an item is selected, there may be a few more options. Otherwise, the
main body of the listing is an abbreviated name of all your top level
items. The jump menu is in either "Zoom mode" or "Jump mode" (where
Jump is the default; the mode is saved for the list too, so if you
change the mode it will always be the same until you change it
again!). When you tap on an item's name, Shadow will either scroll
down to show that item and select it (jump mode), or it will "zoom into"
it (in zoom mode). When zoomed, Shadow Plan shows the current top level
items for the jump menu, so this lets you quickly zoom into an item,
then zoom into its children, and so on.. letting you dig deep into
your list without touching the main screen at all. In non zoom mode,
it lets you scroll up and down the list very quickly.. handy for
those with long To Do style lists, or writing books or the like.
Additionally, since the jump button lets you drill down and zoom
into items, it also lets you zoom back up, one level at a time, as
a conveniance.
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Clip
The clip popmenu is for clipboard operations. This saves you doing
grafitti shortcuts or reaching for the Edit pulldown menu. All clipboard
operations are available here, plus some you can't get in the pulldown
menus! If an item is selected, you can Copy or Cut. If items are in the
clipboard, you can Paste or Move or Clear the clipboard. A new and
easily confusing and overlooked feature is the ability to set the
clip-mode of the clipboard. The clip can be in "holds one"
mode, or "holds many" mode. See the clipboard section for details, but
essentially when the clipboard is in "holds one" mode, any copy or cut
operation will replace any existing data in the clipboard (since
it can only hold one operation at a time). If the clipboard is in
"holds many" mode, a copy/cut will simply add to the end of the
clipboard, allowing you to do several copies from different parts
of the same (or different!) lists, and then do one big paste. Very
handy for moving a volume of data around!
When data is in the clipboard, this popmenu will be hilighted
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Filter
This popmenu allows you to invoke or shut off Filters and Hilights.
If a filter is currently active, the popmenu will be hilighted.
This tells you that items may be hidden, so don't panic if you can't find
an item you're looking for! See the sections on filters for details
of how filters and hilights work. Also note, that if you deactivate
a filter, this popmenu will allow you to instantly turn it back on
without having to go into the filter menu! |
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View
The view popmenu is the fastest way to change views and zooms. It can
save you many taps to bring up List Prefs, for instance, since you can
change between the various views instantly! Change a list from a
Tasklist to a Customlist in one tap, or zoom in or out of a
sublevel with one tap! Just too darned handy! When any Zoom is
activated, this popmenu will be hilighted! |
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- Category popup list. This is a standard feature among Palm applications,
though to conserve space the current category is not displayed as is
customary. Tap on the little arrow in the top right to bring up the
category listing, and tap on an item to change the current file to
that category. This is the same as entering the List Preference
screen and changing category there.
- Button bar along the bottom of the screen .. handy buttons/shortcuts
for common every day tasks like creating new items or summoning details
- Shadow Find button (looks like a magnifying glass) to bring up
the Find window. See the section on Find for details.
- Trash Can iconic button, for deleting items. Same as hitting the
Delete menu item or using the /D shortcut.
- Repeating Scroller Arrows -- if your list is too long to fit on the
display, scroller arrows will appear. You can tap on them, or hold the
pen on them, to zoom up and down the list. You can also use the
hardware scroll buttons to move, though they jump further at a
time.
- The list display.
The list display will look different for different
list view types (especially if you have customized the view!), but
generally has the following items possibly visible in it.
The colour and black and white versions look very similar... just
colour gets colourized icons, backgrounds and item colour
over-rides.
- Expand/collapse arrow -- tap this to toggle display of children
or indented items. When expanding to reveal children (indented items)
the screen will scroll to show as many children as it can.
- Priority -- contains -, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 if displayed at all.
You can tap on the priority number to get a popup priority
changer, or you may change it inside the Item Details screen
- Checkbox or Checkcircle -- either on or off. Tap on it to toggle.
Various menu items can apply against checked or unchecked items,
and a checked item is always displayed with progress of 100% since
it is assumed to be completed. (It also factors in at 100% for
averaging). If strik-thru in the Display Prefs is active, a checked
item will be struck-thru to show its completion.
- Auto-number -- each item may have an auto-number associated to it.
See List Preferences for details of setting auto-numbers, which
are usually numbers, but may also be bullets.
- Title text -- each item has title text (which may be empty). The
title text is always displayed (unless filtered out of view), but
has limited length. The title is usually displayed in full but
a display preference can restrict the title to a single line.
If the text has been cut off at one line (due to the pref), and
some text is hidden, an ellipses ("...") will be drawn after it
to queue you to the hidden text.
HINT: If you double tap on the item text, the Item
Details screen will open automatically.
- Note icon/text -- A note is usually hidden from view, though
if it exists at all a "note icon" will show up to the right of
the title text. Tapping on the note icon will expand
the note below its title text. Tapping it again will collapse
the memo, hiding it from view. The note icon may be suppressed
in a custom view, in case you're sick of seeing DateBk4 added
notes :)
- Progress bar -- shown for Tasklists only. Displays the progress
of the item, as entered by the user, or as an average of children
items. If the item has no children, the user may enter a progress
by either tapping on this icon, or by changing it inside the
Item Details screen. If the item has children, then its progress
percentage is equal to the average of its immediate children
(remember, that if an item has a child, and that item has children,
those children will average to the child, which will then average
to the parent. Very handy.)
- Target date column -- in activated in custom views, the target date
will display an items target date as well as allow you to quickly
change the target.. just tap on the existing date!
- Todo link column -- if activated in custom view, this column allows
one-tap to turn on or off a todo link. Saves having to go to the
item options window.
- Link Arrow -- if a link has been assigned to the item, than
a link arrow will be displayed on the far right. Tapping on it will
pop-up a list of what links the item has and in turn tapping on
a link will jump to the destination of that link. For instance,
an item may link to ToDo, Datebook and even another Shadow file
all at the same time. Soon it will also link to a Phonebook
entry as well as DOC files and who knows what :)
Tapping on the link arrow can bring up a menu with various options,
but a sample menu could be:
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Grafitti Input
Entering any grafitti characters in the List View Screen, while no dialogs
are open, will open the New Node screen and enter your characters into
the title for you. This is a quick way to start entering a new item, without
even having to hit "New".
Note that almost all of the pulldown menu items have Grafitti
Shortcuts associated to them. These shortcuts can be used by a keyboard
user or done from the grafitti area of your handheld.
There are some special grafitti shortcuts as well:
Stroke |
Actual Grafitti stroke |
Effect |
Swipe right |
Space |
Demote item |
Swipe left |
Backspace |
Promote item |
Swipe Up |
Prev Field |
Move item up screen one line,
unless it would have to go up the
hierarchy (become a parent) |
Swipe Down |
Next Field |
Move item down one screen line,
unless it would have to go up
or down the hierarchy. |
Keyboard Input
More and more keyboard supporting is being added all the time. Please
make suggestions, as well!
Any alphanumeric character |
Start a new item with that character |
Up Arrow |
Move selection up to previous screen item |
Down Arrow |
Move selection to next screen item |
Left Arrow |
Collapse level and move selection to parent |
Right Arrow |
Expand child and move selection to first item in sublevel |
Space |
Demote item |
Backspace |
Promote item |
Page Down |
Scroll down one page |
Page Up |
Scroll up one page |
Double tap
Double tapping on an item will bring up the Item Details screen, just
as if you'd tapped the "Details" button.
Tap and Hold
After you tap on an item and hold the pen down for a second or two, the
"Glance window" will pop up automatically, giving your some extra
information about the tapped down item. The glance window contains much
of the information from the Item Details series of windows, and perhaps
other sources. It is all displayed in one place for a quick overview of
off-screen information. On newer Palm OSes, the glance will automatically
go away after a few seconds, though older OSes may require a tap anywhere
on the screen to "wake up" the glance and tell it to go away.
Drag and Drop
If you wish to move an item from one place on the screen to another (such
as to turn a child into a sibling of its parent, or to move an item from
a deep level to a higher level, or vice versa), there are many ways to do it.
For example, you could use the "push arrows" from the button bar (see below)
if you have enabled it. You can use the clipboard "cut and paste"
operations. Or you could just tap on and it push it where you want it.
Thats right.. its almost that easy!
Tap on an item and then start dragging it. If you let go too fast.. don't
worry, Shadow will assume you wanted to abort and just stop the drag and
drop operation. If you want to drag off the top or bottom of the screen,
that'll work no problem, and Shadow Plan will scroll to follow your pen.
Where to drop? Well, its not too hard, but there are a few rules to remember.
While dragging the pen, you'll notice that when the pen is hovering over
the middle belly of an item, a rounded rectangular box will surround the
target row. If your pen is hovering in between two items, you'll see
that an insertion line is shown.
When dropping on an item (in rectangle mode), the item being
dragged will become the last child of the target item.
When dropping between two items (in insertion line mode), the
dragged item till slip right where you're pointing.. between the two
items.
When dropping between two items of different indentation level
the drop will go to the deeper of the two levels. This works out quite
nicely at easily resolving the question of "where do you really want to
drop?" when dropping in an awkward position.
When dragging across a multiple row item, then note that you
can drop only above the first row, below the last row, and while pointing
at the middle rows, only drop as a child. Treat the big tall item as a single
row item for the rules above.
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Virtual Grafitti
Some Palm OS devices feature "virtual grafitti", which is where the
grafitti writing area of the screen can be minimized and then used for
normal screen space. Handera devices were the first to offer it and
Sony quickly followed suit.
Shadow Plan supports virtual grafitti for Sony, Handera, Palm, Garmin,
and as more units come out, we'll support them too. The virtual grafitti
mode is only supported in the list view currently. When you are in full
screen mode, and pull down the Tag Manager for example, the grafitti area
will be shown so that you can use it for entering text. When you leave
the Tag Manager, the virtual grafitti area will be returned to the size
it was before entering.
On some units, the size of the virtual grafitti area is
remembered between Shadow Plan
invocations; if you leave Shadow with the VG area minimized (full screen
mode), Shadow Plan will open and set the VG area to minimized.
On all units, Shadow Plan will try to bring up the virtual grafitti
writing area for screens where it is needed; when Shadow Plan brings up the
VG area, it will also remove it again when you return to the list view, so
that everything is just how you left it. In general, Shadow's approach
to VG is very natural and works just how you would expect it to!
Portrait and Landscape Modes
Palm OS handhelds vary a lot in their display technologies; while
most are portrait devices (tall and skinny), some are very much landscape.
The Alphasmart Dana features a very wide and short display attached to
a storng traditional fullsize keyboard; the Palm Tungsten T|T3 is normally
a potrait device, but with the tap of a button rotates the screen so that
it is now a wide and short display instead. The Sony UX-50 device is
a landscape horizontal clamshell design.
Shadow Plan supports them all in both our normal and full
compressed high res modes! It "just works" -- on the Dana just install
Shadow and it will use the wide screen. On the T|T3, minimizing the
virtual grafitti works as expected, and rotation of the display is handled
magicly.
Note: The T|T3 requires a couple of PalmOne libraries to be
installed before you can take advantage of the fancy display; PalmSource
didn't have them ready for PalmOne at the time the device was released,
so we include them in the distribution as T3_Enhanced.zip or the like.
All 3rd party applications need this installed, so you likely already have
them. But if not (or if you don't know), just install them and you're
good to go!
Example from the Palm Tungsten T|T3:
Expanding and Collapsing Links
Shadow Plan has the ability to expand some item links in
a list below an item's title text. This can be very helpful if you manage
a lot of links -- say you wish to appoint 10 people to a task, or wish
to link to sales contacts, or to a series of store locations for a
store name. Just expand the links under the item to give yourself a
very fast way to visually see the links of an item, instead of having
to pull up the link manager and navigate up and down with its more limited
interface.
To expand or collapse the links, tap
on the link arrow for an item with Address or Memo links (since the
others cannot be expanded). The link arrow will feature a "Collapse"
or "Expand" option, so simply tap on it. Expanding Address links will
show the list of address links below the item, with an icon representing
a person beside them. These expanded links will have their own link
arrows letting you jump to an address program to view the link details.
You may expand and collapse links as you desire. Try it.. you'll
love it!
The buttons and Graphical Button Bar
Shadow Plan has two button bars; by default you see the text button
bar consisting of 4 buttons for very common operations. However, you can
easily enable a graphical button bar which features more operations and
looks spectacular!
To enable the graphical button bar, see the
Quick Start Guide
The text button bar
4 buttons exist for common performed tasks. These will save you hitting
the menu bar a lot for every day tasks. Buttons exist for "New" and
"New Child", corresponding to their menu bar entries. These create
new items either as a new sibling or child relative to the selected
item, or if no selected item, down at the bottom where possible. The
"Details" button will display the Item Details screen and allow changes
to be made. Finally the "Done" button will save and exit the list,
returning to the "File Selection Screen" |

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The graphical button bar

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The graphical button bar has more operations than the textual button
bar, since it can squeeze more buttons in. In order across the screen
the buttons are:
- New Item
- New Child (Indented item)
- New (Up a level) (New Parent)
- Details
- Move selected item up
- Move selected item down
- Promote selected item
- Demote selected item
- Done (go back to file selection screen)
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On-Screen Mini Editor
Shadow has many screens to edit your data, though typically most data is
edited through tha main List View (by tapping on widgets like the checkbox),
the full-screen Detail's window (tap on the Details button to summon it, or
hit New if you've not set new to use the mini editor), or the new mini
editor.
Normally when you hit New on the button bar you get a whole new
screen to let you edit the item data. This keeps all of the relevant data
in one convenient location, but has the side effect of hiding the list
structure from you while editing. Perhaps you wanted to see the list text
while working on the new item? This is what the mini editor was created for.
You can enable the mini editor by following these instructions in the
Quick Start Guide. Essentially,
though, the mini editor is a List Preference so that you can enable
it on a list-by-list basis. Some lists you may want as quick note takers
so use the mini editor. Others you want as task project lists where you need
fine date control.. use the Details editor.
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The mini editor features only a few controls on it:
- The largest field is the text entry field; this is where you enter or
edit the item's title text.
- The [D] button. Pressing this opens up the full-screen Details
window so you can really get to it if you need to :)
- The checkmark is analogous to an OK button but much
smaller. Since the point of the mini editor is to be.. mini we
use icons instead of text buttons.
- The X is analogous to a CANCEL button for the same reasons
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Item Detail Screen
This screen is used for entering item data (or changing existing data).
- Title text field
Enter the item title text in the large field on the form. This text will
always be displayed (unless filtered away), and may be pretty long (up to
about 250 characters long).
- Item Type
In the top right is the item's type; by default this is "List's Type", which
is to say that this item is a chameleon and always assumes the type the
List currently is. However, you can forcefully override this type so
that the item shows whatever widgets you desire, and never changes
with the list. For details, see
here.
- Target Date
The Target Date is most important of item dates -- the date at which
the item must be completed by. This is the date used when creating links.
Like all dates on this screen, you tap on the popup beside the title
and may set the date via a number of methods. You can set the date to
"today", or "tomorrow", or even "next week", or various other options.
If there is no quick option you like, just use the Picker to pull up the
standard Palm date picker window allowing you to specify whatever arbitrary
date you need. Dates will eventually allow for smart queries and
colourizations and hilighting, so keep an eye out for betas :) All dates
may be sorted on and show up in the Glance window.
- Target Time
Each date also has a 'time' component; if you pick a date, but do not
specify a time, it defaults to the real time that it was when you specified
the date (though this may change in the future). You can set the time
by tapping on the little clock beside the Target Date.
- Start and Finish Dates
Same as the target date, but not as often used. They are not used for
linking, but like Target Date can be used as criterion for sorting and shown
in the Glance window.
- "cr" - Creation Date
This field cannot be edited; it is simply the date the item was created.
- Auto Number
This is where you set custom auto-numbering; remember, you set the
level preferences in the List Preferences screen. You cannot change the
numbering prefs here if you have level prefs set. If the level prefs
are set to "no preference", than you can set them on this screen to
anything you like... allowing for very flexible auto numbering.
- Priority
Available only on Tasklists. The sets the priority for the item. This
is displayed on the main List View, and may be changed there as well
by tapping on it. It is mainly used for informational purposes when
looking at the list, or for sorting to reorganize items by importance.
- Progress Percentage
Available only on Tasklists. Set the progress completed %age. This can
also be changed on the main display by tapping on the progress bar. The
bar is a visual representation of this number. If this item is a parent
item, you cannot change its %age, as it is based on the average of
its children's %ages.
- Note
Hit this button to attach a note (previously called "memo") to the item.
A note is a text field that can grow very long, and is optionally displayed
on the main screen. See below for details.
- Link
Hit the Link button if you wish to fiddle with item's links. The
Link Manager window includes the ability to link to other applications,
perform tagging and other advanced operations.
- Colour Picker (colour units only)
If you have a colour device, you will be able to tap this little square
to bring up the colour override picker. This is the same as hitting the
colour picker on the Item Options window. The colour will be used for
this items title text on the main display, allowing you to do quick
hilights.
- Bold Override
If an item is important to you, just tap on the Bold Override button
to select it. The title text will be displayed in bold on the main
list view.
- Buttons; hit "OK" to save and exit the item. Hit Cancel to exit
without applying any changes.
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Details subscreen: Editing a Note for an Item
- Note text field
Enter the item note text in the large field on the form. If a note is
present on an item a little "notepad" icon will appear beside the title
text suggesting its presence. The note icon will toggle display or hiding
of the note. A note can be very long (a 4k or 4096 characters).
- Delete
As with other palm apps, the Delete button on the note screen will delete
the note from the item entirely.
- Buttons; hit "OK" to save and exit the note. Hit Cancel to exit
without applying any changes.
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Details subscreen: Editing Item Links
- File Link
A file link allows one Shadow item to link to another Shadow file. If any
link is present on an item, a link arrow will show on the main list view
screen. When tapped, the link arrow will list off the items links and
in turn tapping on a link will jump to that file or other application.
This can be a very powerful tool for organization of your complex lists.
Example: I commonly track large projects, and instead of putting all of
the information in one file, I create sub-files and link them all together.
For instance, a project is made up of many tasks, and each task has
subtasks. I detail the task in the text and note, and if there are
complex checklists or dependencies I'll create another file and link to it
from the appropriate item. In this way I can "zoom" in on the details
of a task, which are actually kept in another file. Or you could keep
everything together in one place.
- ToDo Link
The ToDo database is used by a lot of programs, and is often synchronized
to the desktop PIM (like MS Outlook). If you'd like to track Shadow items
on your desktop, you can do so as a Datebook entry or as a ToDo entry
(with more options coming later). See the section on linking for more
details.
- Datebook Link
The Datebook database is used by a lot of programs (like DateBk4, a super
popular Palm app), and is often synchronized to the desktop PIM (like MS
Outlook). If you'd like to track Shadow items on your desktop or set Palm
alarms on them, you can do so as a Datebook entry. See the section on
linking for more details, but consider this: Setting a link to the datebook
can create a link which shows up on your desktop calendar, in your DateBk4
application, or in any other Palm app that uses the Datebook. This can
be handy, since you have have Shadow items appear in your daily calendar
in seconds with the built-in palm applications.
- Tags
Tapping the Tags button will summon the Tag Wizard, detailed elsewhere
in the manual.
- Buttons; hit "OK" to save and exit the note. Hit Cancel to exit
without applying any changes.
- See the section on the Link Manager for more details!
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New From Screen

The New From screen allows you to easily
create a new Shadow item derived from an existing ToDo or Datebook item. Often
you will add items to Shadow lists, and then realize you want them in your
calendar to have an alarm, or show up on your desktop PIM. Easy. But if you
then create an item on your desktop, how do you get it into Shadow without
re-entering the data? This is exactly what the New From screen was created for.
Simply select to scan for ToDo entries or Datebook entries by picking that
button on the screen. By default, ToDo entries will be scanned.
Only items in a given week will be shown (so as to not overwhelm you with
possibilities if you have 2000 todos :). By default "this week" will be
shown first, but if you wish to create Shadow items from Todo or Datebook
entries from a previous or future week, just tap on the Pick Week button and
pick a week from the calendar shown.
To actually create the Shadow item, select one of the ToDo's or Datebook's
from the list, and hit OK. It will show up after the selected item in your
list, or at the bottom of your list if no item was selected. Just like
hitting "New item" from the menu on onscreen button... except it is
created form data already typed in!
By default, the Link Back option is checked. The newly created item will
automatically have a link back to the original ToDo or Datebook (meaning
changes will change both the original and the Shadow item, and all the
other benefits of linkdom). You can disable the link back if you do not
want a link to be established (ie: If you just wish to import or copy
the item, for instance.)
The list of ToDos or Datebooks will format the information like this:
25d (1) [] Some todo item
28d Some datebook item
The number for the "d" (like 25d) is the day the item occurs on during the
month it resides in. The (1) implies priority 1. The [] implies unchecked,
while [X] implies checked. These symbols just represent a quick shorthand
so you know a little about the item. I'll be prettying this up in a future
version.
Marked import from To Do list
Marked import is otherwise known as "Import Marked ToDos", for it is a tool
to let you mark your To Do items (from within your preferred ToDo application
such as the built-in To Do, or To Do Plus, or Action Names, or DateBk5 or
whatever you happen to like) and then bring them into your Shadow Plan lists.
To use this feature, perform the following:
- Mark up your To Do items as detailed below. You can do this from Palm
Desktop, Microsoft Outlook, other Palm applications like DateBk5 or
To Do Plus, or whatever. Anytime you are in a program that can edit
or make To Do's, you can mark them up for Shadow Plan importing.
- Open Shadow Plan
- Go to the file selection screen (you may need to close a currently
open list to do this)
- Bring down the "Transfer" pulldown menu, and tap "Import Marked ToDos"
- Hit "OK" a couple of times, and you're done!
Marking up To Do's for auto-import
Simply preceed the To Do item's title with the following text:
[[[file]]]
Which is to say, put three left brackets ("["), then a piece of a
Shadow Plan filename (it need not be all of it, or case sensitive, as long
as it is some match for a Shadow Plan file), then three right brackets ("]").
The filename piece should be unique because Shadow will just match the
first filename that it can and push the To Do item to the top of it. Once
an item has been imported, the "[[[junk]]]" is removed, and the Shadow item
will get a To Do link back to the originating item.
Example: If you have three Shadow Plan files, named "Work", "Home"
and "Stuff", then you could simply prepend "[[[W]]]" to a ToDo item and invoke
the auto-importer to bring in the item to your "Work" list. However, if you
have three files "Work", "William" and "Wilma", then you have no idea to
which the "[[[W]]]" item will go.. so you had best use "[[[Work]]]" in that
case, just to make sure you know where the item will go.
NOTE: Some few handhelds seem to have a problem importing To Do's
when the filename portion is very short. If you seem to have that problem,
be sure to specify a filename portion of 5 characters or more. We are not
yet sure what causes this, but it seems to be very rare.. the majority of
people need only specify one or more characters to have the To Do items
successfully imported.
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Link Manager Screen
The Link Manager is a powerful addition feature of Shadow Plan; in addition
to the old reliable links to ToDo and Datebook and other Shadow Files, you
can manage links to Addresses and Memos now, and in the future other types
of files too. An item can only link to a single ToDo or Datebook, though
it can link to as many Addresses and Memos as it likes -- you can set a
whole list of family members to their chores, assign employees to tasks,
specify where an event will take place, where to buy something, etc etc.
Extremely handy!

Using the Link Manager is pretty easy. You can use it to set the normal
links, or to do "goto"'s of address or memo links (though you can also
"goto a link" from the main list view by tapping on a link arrow. "Goto"
is when you leave Shadow and enter another program to view the details of
a link. For instance, to view the details of an Address Link, just do a
goto and jump to the Address Book program. When done, jump back to Shadow
Plan and off you go! :)
Managing ToDo and Datebook and Filename links is covered elsewhere -- just
tap on their popmenu and select an option.
Creating a new link to an address book or memo entry
- Bring up the Link Manager for the target item
- Tap on the Add button
- In the Add dialog, tap on "Address" or "Memo" to pick which type
of entry you wish to link to
- Pick a category to scan if you'd like to narrow down the search
- Scroll up and down the listing by pushing the page up/down
button on your Palm's belly
- Scroll up and down the list a little slower by entering a character
into the search field. Just write a letter "g" to search for names
starting with "g".
- Once you have found an entry you wish to link to, select it from
the list, and hit "OK"
Deleting a link to an address or memo entry
- Bring up the Link Manager for the target item
- Select an item to delete from the items link listing; just tap on the
offending link
- Tap the Delete button
- Confirm (or not!) the delete
Setting a program to handle Addresses or Memos
When you tap on an items link arrow and see a list of links, and tap on
"Goto Todo", Shadow exits and loads your preferred ToDo application. You can
do the same for Address and Memos. But since the Link Manager can link to
many different kinds of files (and more to come), setting up preferences
for which program to load is a little difficult.
- Bring up the link manager on an item with the type of link you wish
to set the program for, or add a new link to an item of the
appropriate type
- On the Link Manager's Add screen is a "Set Program" button. Pick the
type of link you'd like to set a program for (Address or Memo currently),
and then push the "Set Program" button. A list of programs will pop up.
- Select a program from the listing
- Hit OK or Cancel on the Add window to dismiss it -- setting the program
has been done, so you don't need to add the link if you don't wish to
NOTE: Pick your programs carefully! In general you should link
Addresses to programs designed for Addresses, but don't link Addresses
to a drawing program -- it simply will not know what to do with the
information. So choose your linking programs carefully!
Linking to Other Applications
There are five types of links in Shadow currently, with more coming soon!
- Links to Shadow Files
Creating a link to a file is quite simple; tap on the pop-up beside this
option and you'll get a listing of all your Shadow files currently
available. Simply pick one and your link is set. Tapping on the link
arrow on the list view screen will list off the file linked to, and
if you tap on it the current list will be saved and the linked to
list loaded right away. This can be very handy for organizing really
"deep" lists -- rather than have a list with 4 or 5 levels of children,
you could have a couple of levels and those children could link to
other files.
- Links to built-in ToDo database
- Links to built-in Datebook database
These are similar but link to different built-in databases. You would
typically link to the Datebook database if you'd like your Shadow items
to show up in the built-in Datebook program or DateBk4 or other application.
These applications can often set alarms, which makes linking *very* useful.
Imagine having a tight deadline for a project you are tracking with Shadow.
Simple set a datebook link to the target date, and set an alarm in the
Palm Datebook application, with a few hours notice. Very handy! You would
also commonly link to the Palm ToDo database if you use a desktop
application like MS Outlook, so that Shadow items could show up on
your desktop.
- Links to built-in Addressbook database
- Links to built-in Memo database
See the section on the Link Manager for details about these links.
Creating a link (or copying item to foreign database)
Creating a link is nearly effortless, but has a couple of "gotchas":
- To create a link, the items target date must be set if it is a
datebook link. ToDo's do not need dates.
- On the Item Options screen (go to Item Details, and hit the
Opt button, or pick Item Options pulldown menu item from list
view mode) simply tap on the link popup beside the database
of your choice. Two important options exist:
- Copy to Database -- this will create a new item in the
target database, but not maintain a link to it. This is a
one-shot deal. Shadow does not know of the copied item
once its been done.
- Link to Database -- this is the good stuff. A new item is
created in the target database, and Shadow remembers it.
If you change that item (via another application or desktop sync)
than Shadow will update its copy of the item. If you update
Shadows item, Shadow will copy the changes out to the other
database.
- To create a link to an existing Address or Memo, see the section
on the link manager!
Link Details/Modifying or Using a Link/Severing a Link
Once a link has been established, tapping on the link popup in the
Item Options screen will give you a different menu of choices. This
menu features the following operations:
- Goto link in DB
This will save the current list and run your preferred application
(see Shadow Preferences) and jump to the database entry linked to.
For instance, if you have linked an item to the Datebook, and have
DateBk4 set as your preferred Datebook program, Shadow will jump
to DateBk4 and tell it to show you the item linked to. This is the same
as using the "link arrow" from the list view screen.
- Sever link (Delete)
This will sever the link; in effect, Shadow forgets that a link ever
existed. The item remains in the other database (unless you deleted
it from somewhere else), but Shadow no longer keeps it in sync. If
you create another link, you'll get a second one.. the first one is
severed and Shadow doesn't know it exists.
- Delete link entirely
This is like severing a link, but the actual entry linked to is also
deleted if it still exists. This is in essence how you would permanently
remove a link you no longer care about.
Synchronizing Links
If you link to another database, Shadow will attempt to keep the exported
item the same as the Shadow item, where possible. For instance, if you
link a Shadow item to the datebook, and then change it in the datebook
or on your desktop after a sync, Shadow will then try and pick up the
changes and bring them into Shadow automatically as soon as the
change is visible. (ie: If you change the item on the desktop, Shadow
won't get the changes until you do a hotsync). When you open the file
in Shadow, Shadow scans for links and for each link it will try and
read the changes into the Shadow item. Likewise, if you change an item
in Shadow that happens to have a link, when you close the Shadow file
the links contents will be copied into the target database, ensuring it
stays the same as it is in Shadow. In this way, you can synchronize
Shadow items with desktop applications.. since Shadow will synchronize
them in the existing Palm databases and Palm Desktop/Hotsync Manager
already know how to sync those!
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Filters and Hilights
Filtering allows you to hide undesired items from view, but keep them in
the list. They are not lost.. just temporarily hidden from view.
You to use the built-in predefined filters we've provided or create
custom filters on any criterion you like. The built-ins cover many
common and complex needs, but when you need something very specific
you can just build them yourself!
If a deep item satisfies a filter, all of its parents should implicitly
satisfy the filter too, so that the deep item is visible.
When a filter is activated, the top-right filter popmenu will be hilighted so as to
show you that data may be hidden and not alarm you. Furthermore, tapping on
the filter popmenu will allow you to activate or deactivate filters and
hilights very quickly. Finally, if any filter has been deactivated this
session, the popmenu allows you to reinvoke it without even having to
go to the filter menu! Very handy indeed!
A hilight is like a filter, but the specific items matching the hilight
criterion will be bolded, plus colourized if you select that option and
have a colour device. You can use one filter and one hilight, so you
can hi-light "upcoming items", and filter "items this week", and thus
see whats going on this week, and hilight the ones in the future.
Example:
I commonly filter this weeks target items in my todo list for work. Thus
all items I need to worry about are visible, and next weeks items are
hidden. This can be handy for short term planning. But to further
illustrate what I need to do right away, I use Hilights on Todays
Target Items, and thus can see very quickly what I must do today.
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Built-in Filters
A wide assortment of filters are built into the application. These are very
easy to use and are usually the first few filters a new user needs, however
if you find yourself needing something different or more comprehensive, you can
generally create it yourself. See below for building your own filters.
The built in filters are these:
Select... |
Description |
All |
All items (Unfiltered) |
Checked items |
Checked (completed) items only |
Unchecked items |
Unchecked (incomplete) items only |
Incomplete and target overdue |
No finish date, target is before today |
Todays target items |
Target set to today |
Current/future targets |
Target is today or future or not set |
Current/past targets |
Target is unset or today or before today |
Items starting today |
Start time is today |
This week's target items |
Target is set to within this week |
This week's starting items |
Start date is set to within this week |
High priority items |
Priority is 1-2 or 4-5 (depending on your preferences) |
Late unstarted targets |
Unfinished, unstarted, target before today |
Items finished late |
Target set and finish later than target, or unfinished and
target before today |
Next Step Only |
Show only the first unchecked item on a sublevel |
Due |
Unfinished and target is today or before today |
Radar (Six days) |
Unfinished and target is before 6 days from now |
Items linked to ToDo or DB |
Has a link to ToDo and/or Datebook |
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Selecting a built-in filter is as simple as bringing up the Filter
Manager, making sure the "Built-in" button is pushed in (the default so
you shouldn't have to push it), pick a filter, and push "Apply". If you push
"Done", then no filter is applied (though any edits you may have done
in the Custom Filter section are saved). The "Describe" button gives
you the filter description since it is often difficult to remember exactly
what a built-in filter does.
The Filter Manager appears below:

Activating a built-in filter
- Bring up the Filter Manager
- Ensure "Built-in" is selected
- Select a filter (or "All" to disable filters!)
- Push "Apply"
To cancel a filter simple select All as your filter and
apply it!
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Building and Using Custom Filters
If the built-in filters are not comprehensive enough for you, or you wish to
filter by things like Addresses or Tags, you'll need to create your own
filters. Now bear with us.. filters are complex things, so building them
takes a little bit of understanding. But after you've done it once or twice
it becomes a snap, and you'll be amazed at how flexible things are. Moments
from now, you'll be saving dozens of filters to cover every one of your
data mining needs!
What criterion can you filter on? Pretty much any attribute of an item
that Shadow Plan knows about. As of Shadow Plan 2.5, you can filter on
these:
Checked, Title Matches, Title Caseless, Title Present, Note Matches
Note Present, Tag Association, Tags Present, Links Broken, ToDo Link Present
Datebook Link Present, Priority, Progress, Target Date Present, Target Date
Start Date Present, Start Date, Finish Date Present, Finish Date
Changed/Edited, Indent level, Bolded, Address Link
The Tag Wizard
The following discussion details building your own comprehensive
custom filters. Do note that there is one other method to create custom
filters.. using the Item Tag Wizard. The Tag Wizard is primarily designed
to let you add tags to an item very quickly. However, it is also good at
generating a simple custom filter for you!. The filters it generates
only select items with regards to tags, but that is a fairly common thing
to build so we wanted to make it easy. You can generate a tag based filter
there, or even start a tag based filter there and then finish it off using
this Filter Manager to add additional rules. See the section on the Tag
Wizard for details.
Using a Custom Filter
This is simple, so lets get it out of the way :) Using a Custom Filter is
the same as using a Built-in filter:
- Bring up the Filter Manager
- Ensure "Custom" is selected
- Select a filter
- Push "Apply"
The buttons have these effects:
Done -- dismisses the Filter Manager
Apply -- assigns the currently selected filter to the list
Describe -- when "Custom" is selected, this pulls up the Filter Detail
window so you can view or edit the rules in a filter. This is the same
as the Details Icon Button described below.
To cancel a filter simple select the built-in All filter
as your filter and apply it!
Building and Editing Custom Filters
Concepts You Need to Know
- A filter is a set of rules with a text name
- A filter rule is a match criterion (like "target date IS today")
- A filter rule may be OR-grouped or ungrouped
- Ungrouped rules must match for the filter to pass an item
- OR-Grouped rules must have one rule in the group pass to pass an item
- A filter can have as many rules as it needs
- A filter rule can be in one of 3 OR-groups
- When a filter is applied, each list item is compared against each
ungrouped rule and each group of rules
- A filter may be reversed, which means that after evaluating
it, a fail is made into a succeed for the rule, and vice versa
What this means is that you can build a filter with as many rules as
you need. When the list is being displayed, each item is matched against the
currently applied filter, and if the item passes (or any of its children pass)
it is displayed. It means you can create simple filters where all rules
must pass ("target date is today, AND item is unchecked") or where
at least one rule from each group must pass ("target date is today, OR
target date is yesterday, AND item is unchecked OR item priority = 0") or
a combination ( "target date is today AND item is unchecked OR item priority
= 5").
How do you know if an item must have an OR-group or not? If you wish
to have "OR" relationships between rules.. which is to say, if one rule must
pass out of a series of questions, then you group those rules together. If
a rule MUST succeed always, then it must be ungrouped. If you have a
set of OR questions in group-A, and another set of OR-questions in group-B
(which is to say, something from A must be true, and something from B must
be true), then just make sure your groups are set correctly :)
Turning your filter from English to a Filter
Think your filter requirements out loud or write them down. It is reasonably
simple to turn your question into a filter by just watching for AND and ORs.
Consider this example:
Show me future dated items that are unchecked.
To turn this into a filter, we break down the meaning of "future" into
something Shadow Plan can understand. Also, when you have separate criterion,
make sure you say "and" as if you're explaining to a child.
Simply rewrite the problem:
Show me items greater than or equal to today and that are unchecked.
We're almost there. Break it up by AND's and you see these separate requirements:
- Target date >= Today (AND)
- Checked = No
Since you said "and" in the middle, these must be arranged into groups
thusly
- (No group) Target date >= Today
- (No group) Checked = No
or
- (Group-A) Target date >= Today
- (Group-B) Checked = No
These are more or less equivalent. What if you wished to have the item
show if it is due in the future, OR if it is Priority 1 or 2? (and
still unchecked). This complicates it a little, but again, just break
the question up from:
Show me items greater than or equal to today, OR high priority, AND that are unchecked.
- (Group-A) Target date >= Today
- (Group-A) Priority <= 2
- (Ungrouped or Group-B) Checked = No
What is meant by that filter definition? Easy! All ungrouped rules
must pass for the filter to pass an item, and one of each rule in a group
must pass. So "Checked = No" must succeed, and one of "Priority <= 2" and
"Target Date >= Today" must pass (or both). If neither of those two rules
match, then the group fails, and the filter fails as a result.
Steps to actually create a custom filter
Creating a filter:
- Hit
"Create Filter" icon button
- Enter a text name for the filter
- Hit
to add a rule to the filter
- You may add as many rules as you want
- If you need to set groups, tap in the left side of each rule to
pop up a group picker ("-", "A", "B", "C"). Pick a group for that rule,
and perform this as many times for each rule as you need to create
your "OR" clauses.
- Hit "OK" to save the filter definition or "Cancel" to abandon it
Creating rules in a filter:
- Hit
to add a rule to the filter
- Tap the "Operation" picker arrow to select a Rule Type. For instance,
"Checked" is the default Rule Operation. It is a "Boolean" operation
requiring a Yes or No match definition, so produces a rule which says
"Checked = Yes" or "Checked = No".
- Tap the match requirement picker arrow, to pick "=" or "<" or other
algebraic matches. Don't let this scare you.. it makes sense. A boolean
type operation is always "=", and a text match is always "contains", but
a number match (like matching against Priority) can be less-than,
greater-than, equal-to, or the other simple math comparisons.
- Write in a match-value or tap the match value picker arrow to select one.
For text matches you must write in a string to match. For boolean matches
(like "Checked") you can either write "yes" or "no", or pick from Yes
or No in the picker arrow. For "Tag Association", you cannot write
anything, but tapping on the Picker lets you select a tag. So in
general, tap the Match Picker -- it saves you time
- Tap "OK" to save the rule, or "Cancel" to abandon it
- Note: Above the OK button may be displayed a hint detailing
what you need to do to complete the rule!
So what does it look like to build a custom filter? Well, lets build the
example above, that reads like this:
- (Group-A) Target date >= Today
- (Group-A) Priority <= 2
- (Ungrouped or Group-B) Checked = No
Simply follow the steps below to produce this filter.
Push to Create New Filter |
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Write in a name for the filter. Push
to create a new rule. |
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The default rule is Checked = No. This happens to be what we want so
just push "OK" to save this rule into the filter |
 |
Here is the filter so far, with the one rule added and ungrouped. It also
so happens we want this rule ungrouped (see above), so we leave it |
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Push to create another new rule. This
time tap the Operation arrow (where it says "Checked" by default), and
you will see this list of options. Pick "Target Date". Notice that
the rule changes to "Target Date = Today" as the match value is
automatically set to a sensible value, on the off chance it is
what you want. |
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Tap the comparison arrow and you'll see this list of possible
comparisons. Since we wish the rule to be "greater than or equal to today"
we pick ">=". |
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Lastly, tap on the match value arrow to see this list of possible
Date Matches. The things shown here differ based on the type of the
Operation (for instance, Boolean operations have only Yes or No answers,
not dates!). Pick "Today" to complete the rule we want. Tap "OK" to
save the rule into the filter. |
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Here is the filter so far. We will want to change the groups, but we
leave that until after we've added all the rules. Makes it easier. So
tap on to create the last rule needed
for this filter. |
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Change the Operation to "Priority", the comparison to "<=", and the
match value.. write in "2". The picker arrow can't help you here, as it
has no idea what sort of value you intend on writing in. Notice the
hint at the bottom where it tells you that "-" priority is value "0" (zero).
Once you've made the rule look like we have it here, hit OK to save it
into the filter. |
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Almost there. We've defined the 3 rules we need for this filter, so we
just need to organize them into ANDs and ORs as we defined above. To do so,
notice the little arrow on the bottom that points to the left edge of
the rule display. To change a group, simply tap on the "-" (or letter) in
the left of the rule, to see the group popup. |
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Here is the group popup for the first rule which happens to be the
Priority rule. Above we decided it should be in group-A, so we set is
so. |
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Set the Target Date rule into OR-group 'A' as well, and we're done!
Hit "OK" to save the custom filter! |
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Here we are, back at the Filter Manager. Hit "Done" to leave without
doing anything else, or pick your new filter and hit "Apply" to
actually enable the filter you just created. Congratulations! |
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Custom Filter Tip -- Greedy Filters
Summary:
A greedy filter is a filter that, when it matches, automatically also
matches all of its children.
You can specify that a custom fitloer is to be greedy. This can be
a big timesaver as you'll see below, but is a little tricky to think about
at first. You needn't worry about it up front, but you'll want to know
about it after your first few custom filters have been created!
When a filter is active, and the display is being refreshed, Shadow Plan
is working away to match the filter constraints against each item in the list.
If an item matches, it is shown, and its parents are also flagged to be
shown, to ensure that the item is in fact visible.
This is a great feature, but there are times when you want a filter to
match withotu the item having the right criteria. What? OKay, an example
then!
Consider a list in which you're assigning chores to your family or
work to employees. You might have a top level item of the date, containing
second level items that are peoples names, containing third level items
that are actual work items to be done:
- November 1st 2003
- John
- Pay the bills
- Do homework
- Fred
- Cut the grass
- Clean the windows
- Mike
- December 1st 2003
- January 1st 2004
What if you would like a filter that shows all of John's work to be
done? You might be tempted to create a custom filter that shows all
work that includes the text 'John', and that is in the future. Perfect! But
wait a minute, that will only match the title item 'John'. You could
perhaps put the word "John" in front of each of his tasks, but that would
be a lot of data entry work, and wouldn't look very good on the display or
in a printout from Shadow Desktop. You could perhaps tag all the tasks with
"John" (see the section on Tags), but you still need to go through and tag
every item. A pain. What to do? Greedy filter!
Above we stated that a greedy filter is a filter that, when it matches,
automatically also matches all of its children. That is to say, if we
make the above filter to match the text 'John', then the John title item
will now match the filter and be displayed, but all of his children items
will also be displayed... and they don't even have to match the filter!
- November 1st 2003
- John
- Pay the bills
- Do homework
This technique can be very useful for tagging items and in many other
cases, to save you from over-defining the filter, or over-doing the data
entry!
Tags and Categorization
The Concept
Tagging is a very useful and powerful tool for categorizing your items,
or speeding up and simplifying routine data entry, or just a plain place to
store attributes ("metadata" to the pros) like place, importance,
hair colour or who is assigned to a task. Because tags are so multi-purpose
and useful they can be
challenging to get a full handle of, but in no time you'll be doing things
other Palm OS users will be drooling over ;)
Note: Some examples are here.
You may have a "To Do" list, or maybe a half dozen of them with one for
each location (Home, Work, Supermarket, etc) or by importance (High, Low) or
any number of criterion. But if you have 5 To Do lists, you can think of them
all together as one big virtual To Do list, with the items differentiated
by context.. or "category".. or "tag". Rather than rate the priority of
items by number (1, 2, 3, 4 for example) you could rate them by tag, where
the tag is an actual word with meaning to you ("High"). Or rather than have a
To Do file called "To Do - Home", you could make the file "To Do" and have
items categorized or tagged as "Home", with others being tagged
with "Work".
So why not categories? OKay, this is where it gets good!
- You can name a tag anything you want
- You can have as many tags as you want (no 15 category limit!)
- The same tags are available across all your lists!
- You can associate as many tags to an item as you want (you can have
1, 5, or 50 tags on an item if you need to!)
- You can filter by tags! (extremely useful)
- You can sort (group) by tag
- Tags are quick to add to an item via Tag Column
- You can see the main/first tag in a column right on screen
- You can list tags below an item, along with contacts!
Where to work with tags?
- To create, edit, and delete TAGS use the Tag Manager
- To associate or un-associate tags to an item, use the Link Manager (to
link to a tag, just like linking to Addresses, etc)
- You can also associate/un-associate tags to items with the
Tag Column (an optional column) -- see below
The Prime Tag
Since an item can have as many tag associations as you like, how do you
chose which tag will be shown in the list view for Worksheet lists, or
lists with the Tag Column activated? The "first" tag is a little special,
in that it gets this display and sorting distinction. If you have 5 tags
associated to
an item, then the first one will be displayed, and subsequent tags will
simply exist for purposes of filtering or be visible in expanded links mode,
or be shown in the Link Manager. If you "Sort by Tag" (which is more Grouping
than sorting) then it is the first tag which is sorted by.
Tag Example:
Case study - The To Do List from Hell:
You might have a big To Do list in Shadow Plan. You could make a top level
item called "@Home" and another top level called "@Work". Then place your
items under those parents depending on where you can do them. The trouble
begins when you can perform a To Do from either location? Make them item
twice? No! That just makes you check it off in one location and forget to
check it in the other, and leads to confusion later...
Solution - Tagging!
Rather than differentiate the location of the item by parent, lets
differentiate by Tag. You simply head over to the Tag Manager and
create tags for "Home" and "Work". While you're at it, create some for
the importance such as "Very important" and "No big deal", and for fun
you also create tags like "Halfway done" and "Waiting on someone". Then you
create your items and add these tags as you see fit, or assign the tags to
existing items. Make some items "Home" and "Important", or "Work" and
"Waiting on someone" and "Halfway done", or even both "Home" and "Work" since
Shadow doesn't care what tags or how many you put on each item.
Now at a glance you can see what
is going on with an item and where to do it... and .. drum roll
do some filtering! It is a simple matter to create yourself a
custom filter that will display only items that contain "Work" or "Home",
or even a filter that shows only items "Work" and "Important". Then you can
quickly filter to see what is at your current location by importance, or
what you are waiting on other people. Since you can save custom filters, you
can create your tags once (they're the same across all lists), create custom
filters for tags once (filters are the same across all lists) and then
re-use these filters and tags (and views) for all your similar lists, thus
having a consistent personalized interface to your very own data!
Tag Manager - Create, Delete and Edit Tags
The Tag Manager lets you create, view/edit, and delete Tags. Since you will
have lots of tags, or at least many "types" of tags, we offer categories for
tags to make them more manageable. (Yes, thats right, categories for tags, which
are in turn like categories :).
Creating Tags
Simply tap the "NEW" button in the Tag Manager to summon the "Tag Details"
window for a fresh new (empty) Tag. Enter a name for the tag, and select
a category and hit "OK" to save it. Thats it -- nice and simple. In the
future we may support all sorts of options for Tags, but for now we wanted
to keep it right to the point -- simple, fast, useful -- the mantra of
Shadow Plan.
Create as many tags as you want. One thing to note is that if you
have hundreds upon hundreds of tags, list display performance could suffer
a little in some cases (if Shadow Plan must jump all around the Tag
database to find tags. Keeping tags properly categorized minimizes the
work Shadow must do.) In general, few people will ever notice any slowdowns.
Remember that tags are used across all lists -- they do not
belong to any one list. This is a very useful property, as it lets you define
a set of tags once, and re-use them and the filters and views that relate
to them, without wasting your time creating them over and over again.
Deleting tags
Deleting a tag is a permanent action. You cannot bring back the tag, nor
can you re-create it with the new tag re-attaching to a previous similarly
named tag. So be careful when deleting tags! You can certainly re-create the
tag all you like, but it will be a new tag, even though it may have the same
name as a tag you just deleted, and you shall have to assign it to items
all over again. Remember that tags are shared across all lists.
What happens if you define a tag, assign it to items in a dozen lists, and
then delete the tag? Then items that link to that tag will start showing
"broken tag" where the tag name would normally be. This is so that
your filters will continue to work and to let you re-create the tag, or at
least know that "something has happened" rather than surprise you when
your views and filters stop working as expected when a tag "magicly vanished".
So we leave it to you to delete references to deleted tags.
Changing Tags or Tag Categories
Feel free! Tags are associated behind the scenes by a magic number and not
by the tags text name. You can change the tag to a different Tag Category, or
rename the tag, or change it any which way.. and all items linked to it will
continue to be linked to it. As long as you do not delete a tag, you'll never
lose the connections to it. For instance, if you change a tag name from
"Someday" to "Future", then all items associated to it will show "Future"
when the name is shown. The changes take effect, in all lists, immediately.
What if you make another tag with the same name, or rename a tag to have
the same name as an existing tag? Thats just the text name, not the magic
behind-the-scenes number, so items will not be switched over to this tag
accidentally. If you wish to have the same name of tag five times, or the
same name of tag in several tag categories, its your business. In the
future we may warn you, but currently you should endeavor to be careful
with your tag naming conventions.
Assigning (or Removing) Tag Associations
This is done in the Link Manager
or with the Tag Column (see below).
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 Tag Manager
 New -> Creating a Tag
 Details -> View and Edit Tags
 Trashcan -> Deleting a Tag
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Tag Column and Popup
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The Tag Column is automatically available in Worksheet Views and is an
optional column you can enable in your Custom Views. The Tag Column is very
handy for simply displaying the prime tag of an item, or letting you assign
or remove tag associations, or re-assign which tag is prime tag for an item.
In general, if you wish to do lots of tag operations, the Tag Column is
probably the fastest and best way to do it.
On the left screenshot (a default Worksheet View), you can see in the
titlebar the column labeled "Tag". The first item has no tags associated
so shows only "--", while the second item shows "@Work" tagged.
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Tag column operations summary:
- Choosing the prime tag out of a group of tags
- Summon the Link Manager
- Summon the Tag Manager
- Summon the Tag Wizard
- Adding a tag
- Removing a tag
- Swapping one tag for another
- "Two Tap Tagging"
Associating a Tag to an Item
To add a tag to an item (just like using the Link Manager's Add button)
just perform the following quick steps:
- Tap in the tag column in the item you wish to add a tag for
- When presented with options, pick "Add Tag"
- Pick a category of Tag to add from
- Pick the tag to add
- That tag is added to the item; it either becomes the prime tag
(default behaviour) or goes to the end of the tags for the item,
depending on a global Link Preferences pref.
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"Two Tap Tagging"
One handy technique if you've got the tag column present is to utilize two
tap tagging. The Tag Wizard is also very useful, but remember this technique
to save a few taps.
If you have just used the "Add Tag" tag column operation to add a tag to
an item, then the tag category of that addition is still fresh in Shadows
mind. The next time you tap on the tag column the available operations will
in addition to the above also include a list of all the tags that were in that
last added Tag Category. Tapping on one of the listed tags will immediately
add it to the item in question. So if you're adding a short series of tags to
a variety of items, this is an extremely fast way to do it.
The Tag Wizard is the best way to quickly add tags to a series of separate
items, or add a lot of tags to any item. But if you're adding just a tag or two
from the same category to a few different items, this is probably the fastest
way to go about it.
Un-Associating a Tag from an Item
This is done in almost the same manner as you Add a Tag, except from the
Tag Column's popup list of operations, you chose "Remove Tag".
Choosing the Prime (Display) Tag
When you tap in the Tag Column to bring up the tag operations menu, you'll
notice that it has 4 options ("Link Manager", "Tag Manager", "Add Tag" and
"Remove Tag", as well as a listing of all tags on the item currently. Tapping
one of these "T:" items will bring it to the top of that items tag listing,
and thus it becomes the "Prime Tag", and is the one displayed in the Tag
Column. This is the fastest way to pick the displaying tag.
Tag Filtering and Categorization
This involves Custom Filters. If you are unfamiliar with this
topic in Shadow Plan, please see that section of this manual first.
To create a filter to select items with one or more tags present, you
simply follow these steps. When filtering and you create a rule to find a
specific tag, that tag need not be the prime tag! -- the prime tag (the
first tag) is only used for display and for sorting. When filtering, if you
ask to find items with a certain tag, that tag can be anywhere in the items
links. This lets you juggle the displayed tag without worry of breaking
your filters!
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(1) Create filter and enter its name |
(2) Add "Tag Association" rule to filter |
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(3) Tap on "match picker" arrow. We're given the Tag Manager in
Picker Mode. Pick a Tag to match against, and tap the "Pick" button. |
(4)Hit OK to save rule. (Notice the chosen match Tag is shown in the rule)
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(5) Notice this filter now includes a rule to look for the desired tag |
Tag Examples
Tags can be used for just assigning names to tasks (or you can use
Address Links for that), or for assigning state to an item ("Finished"), or
to assign location or dependency "Home" or "Bob's Task", or to be used for
fast data entry for frequently used attributes (like "tested"). How you use
them is up to you, and we know you'll invent all sorts of interesting ways
to organize your items. But we're also betting you'll do some of the same
sorts of things as other people, so we provide here a couple of examples
to help stimulate your mind.
Example tag categories |
Example tags you might create in these categories -- you can create
whatever tags you like! |
Categorization |
Math, Physics, Gym, Legal, Printed, URL, Note to Self, Book, Magazine, Newspaper |
Location |
Home, Work, Garage, Backyard, My Car, Living Room, Toronto Office |
State |
Complete, Waiting on Someone, Depends on Something, Changing, Phoning |
When |
Soon, Some day, Book Now!, After talking to William, Before School,
After homework, After chores |
Importance |
High, Low, ASAP, FIFO, Next Month |
Person |
Anna, Bob, Charlie, Donald, Ernie, Frank |
Data entry / Pick Lists |
Untested, tested, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Anna, Bob |
Type |
Animal, Plant, Bicycle, Manual, Automatic, Bungalow, Desktop, Handheld |
Actions |
Test, Do, Wait for, Wash, Clean, Vacuum, Write, Read, Toss out, Call, Code |
How-To Perform |
Bicycle, Saw, Use Tool 'X', Kitchen tool 'X' |
Referrals |
See diagram 'X', Ask Frank, See Book 'X' |
Technique: Integrating (or taking over) your ToDo list
Shadow Plan can be used for a great many types of lists; recording your
CD or book collection, tracking your projects at home or work, assigning
tasks to your children or co-workers, outlining a speech or book you're
writing, or brainstorming. One very popular thing to do is to use Shadow Plan
for a master ToDo list. Shadow Plan has all the muscle you could ever
want for a ToDo list, and much more organizational ability than the
Palm PDA built in tools.
The problem of course is that you already have a ToDo list and Datebook --
they're built into every PDA. You may even have purchased a fine ToDo or
Datebook replacement such as Iambic Agendus or Pimlico's DateBk5. If you've
made heavy use of your ToDo application, you may be loathe or unable to get rid
of it, or all your data.
You can get rid of it; you can do almost all of your ToDo work in
Shadow Plan itself, especially after doing a nice import. But Shadow Plan is
really really good at tieing into the existing
applications on the handheld, and talking to other 3rd party applications. If
you really like your existing solution.. stick with it --
tieing Shadow to it can be a very powerful technique for winning. After
all, your ToDo application already syncs with Microsoft Outlook or Palm Desktop
or Agendus Desktop or other tools. You may have alarms there. Its good at
what it does, after all, or Palm OS wouldn't have become the prevalent PDA
technology, right? Enter Shadow Plan -- the Palm OS ToDo application does not
let you have items within items, or near infinite categorization, or the
ability to tie memos and addresses and tags to items, or do dynamic
sorting, or any of the myriad other features we offer. So how can we best
bring all this together?
So you can get rid of your ToDo application altogether, or you can keep
it around. How far either way you go is entirely up to you... Shadow will be
right there with you to make your life easier and help with the load.
So pick or create a Shadow Plan list to be your new master Inbox. To make
best use of this technique, you'll want to use Shadow as your inbox clearing
house. You can create items in Shadow, or out of Shadow, but its best to
work with them *in* Shadow, since Shadow Plan is the more powerful of the
organization applications.
Automatic import of ToDo and Datebook items
Pick or create a list to be your "Inbox". Pull up the List Preferences
screen from the List pulldown menu if an existing list, otherwise just hit
"New" to create a new list. In the "Auto panel" you'll find an option to
"Import ToDo's into Shadow", as well as for Datebook items. Check this option,
and be sure to read about it in the manual here, as there are some handy
other options you may wish to set too.
Once this option is checked, any new ToDo (or Datebook) items created
in DateBk5 or Agendus or ToDoPlus or Palm ToDo or other applications will
get automatically brought into Shadow Plan when you open your new "Inbox"
list. This means you can feel free to create new items in Shadow, in Shadow
Desktop, in Palm Desktop, or wherever you like, and they'll end up in this
list if they're a ToDo item.
Tip: You can pick which ctegory of ToDo items to auto import if you
wish; by default, all ToDo categories are examined. The Auto panel also
lets you specify a category to import from, in case you do not wish to
import all categories.
When you open this list, you can then see all the items in it, and all
the automaticly imported ToDos. You can apply the full muscle of Shadow
to them and organize them in the Shadow list, independently of the ToDo
database. This means you can put items within items or do complex filtering
and sorting.. whatever you like. And any changes made will get sent to the
corresponding ToDo item if you've kept the links up!
Automatic ToDo linking
If you're using a Shadow list as your Inbox, but doing your daily or hourly
reviews of things to do in Palm ToDo, or Palm Desktop, or DateBk5 or the like,
then you may want new Shadow items to show up in ToDo. Certainly you can
send the items from Shadow to ToDo yourself, but if you want every
new item to get sent to ToDo, this can be a drag. Or you can have Shadow
Plan do it for you!
Pull down the List Preferences screen, and head over to the "Auto
panel". You'll notice the option to "Auto link new items to ToDo". With this
option set, any new item made in Shadow Plan will get linked over to the Palm
ToDo right away.
You can also specify the default ToDo category in the "Option panel" of
List Preferences. Handy in case you're using some advanced ToDo application
that does filtering or icons or colouring based on category.
NOTE: Items created in Shadow Desktop are not automatically linked to ToDo.
That may come in a later version of the software (if it is not already in).
The handy ToDo link column
One common thing to do is to keep Shadow Plan as your master ToDo entry
location, and keep only "active" ToDo's in your Palm ToDo list where they
show up in DateBk5 for example. A lot of people do not want to clutter up
the ToDo database. Again, Shadow Plan can help you out here.
One of the Custom View optional columns is the "ToDo link column". By
turning it on in either a Custom List or a Custom View, you can see a column
of checkboxes on the right side of the screen. Tapping the checkbox will either
add or remove a ToDo link. Thats it -- a single tap to push an item into the
ToDo system, or take it away again. This is extremely useful for using
Shadow Plan as a ToDo list.
With this technique, you can have whatever filtering and sorting and
organization you like for your master ToDo list in Shadow, and then as items
become interesting, just push them over into your ToDo list where they
become visible in Palm Desktop or Agendus.
You can also do this using the Link Manager of course.
Sending items to other lists
Another common tactic is to use a Shadow Plan list as an inbox and clearing
house. Open up Shadow, and all your unprocessed ToDos are there. You could
then keep separate lists for each project or location or person or whatever
you like. To send an item over to the other list you could use Cut, change
lists, and then Paste, and return to the Inbox list. Even using the
Recent Lists popup it could be tedious for a number of ToDos.
Instead, a better approach is to use the clipboard again, and "Cut"
items you wish to ship off to another list. If you've got a number of ToDos
to ship off, make sure to Cut them all and be in "Multiple Clip" or C+ mode,
so that the clipboard can hold multiple "Cuts" at once.
Once you've got the clipboard full of items to ship off to another list,
just use the "Send To ..." menu item (or option under the [C] popmenu) to
send the clipboard to the target list. Remember to clear the clipboard after
so you can redo this over and over again. If you do not clear the clipboard,
you can ship the clipboard items off to another list if you'd like to.
Filtering by location/context
This is a very powerful technique, for the more advanced Shadow Plan users.
If you've got a large ToDo list set up, you may already have assigned Tags
to items to identify When, or Where, or to Whom the tasks apply. If not,
look into the Tag Wizard and Tagging sections of the manual for some
good tips on how to set this up.
It is common to have ToDo tasks that are only actionable in some location
or when some series of events are true. For example, it is common to only
be able to take out the garbage at home and not while you're at work. So
why should you look at the action item "Take out the trash" if it doesn't
belong to you, or if you're on the bus or at work?
A smart way of dealing with this is to create a Custom Filter that
has rules something like this:
A Tag Present is FALSE
A Tag _Work_ is PRESENT
This custom filter says that a match is made if there is no tag, or if
there is a tag and it is "Work".
The first rule is very convenient; it means you can enable this filter and
any new items (from auto import or created yourself) will be visible until
you tag them. This is handy, since if you create an item and it vanishes
right away before you tag it.. how will you tag it?!
The second rule lets you specify that you wish only to see items that
are tagged "Work". This means that if you've tagged all your ToDo items in
Shadow, you can see only your Work items while at work.
Go ahead and create a custom filter for "Work" and "Home".
You might be wondering how this differs from Palm ToDo's categories. The
trick is that Shadow Plan lets you have many tags (Palm ToDo lets you have only
14 or 15 categories), and Shadow Plan lets you have multiple tags per
item.
Consider the implication now -- you can create a filter to show you
items doable at Work, or at Home. Or you can create a filter like this:
A Tag Present is FALSE
A Tag _Work_ is PRESENT
A Tag _Mike_ is PRESENT
B Tag _Important_ is PRESENT
Now you have a filter to show you all items that are for Work, or
items doable by Mike, or even items that are doable by Mike at work... that
are also Important. Now we're really cooking.
One last thing to note is that you can create Custom Views as well. A
custom view lets you see the same items differently. You can have a Work View
that shows the deadline of items, along with a ToDo checkbox, and a progress
bar. You can have a Home View that shows you only the ToDo checkbox and
a priority. Its up to you.
Note that you can attach filters to custom views, and that you can
change custom views using the [V] popmenu with 2 taps. If you attach a Work
Filter to a Work View, and a Home Filter to a Home View, it means that with
two taps you can see all the items that make sense where and when
you are, for the right people.
Admittedly, this takes a bit of setup and some thought, but it can be
really worth it. One larger list, with all your ToDos in it, organized
how you want. See the items you want when and where you are, for the
persons you want. Incredible!
Alarms and Repeats
Due to how tightly Shadow Plan can tie to other applications, we have
so far avoided building Alarms into Shadow itself. Since every PDA includes
a Datebook with alarms, we can tie into that system. Furthermore, the
built in Datebook will sync its alarm to the desktop, so that MSOutlook can
see the alarm, for example. People also buy 3rd party replacement Datebook
and Alarm applications with all sorts of fancy alarm technology.. so it
just seems redundant for us to do it.
We may build alarms into Shadow in the future, as the public demands!
For now, you can above how easy it is to link to ToDo. You can do almost
all of the above to link to the Datebook as well (though you'll have to use
the Link Manager to do it. Automatic linking cannot occur, since you may
not have assigned a date, and Datebook requires items to have dates.)
So if you're using (for example) the ToDo link column, then it takes one
tap to create a ToDo item. Make sure you've checked the global preference
"Return to Shadow after a goto" in the "Link Preferences" panel.
Tap on the link arrow to the right of the item; tap on "ToDo" and you'll
be transported to your favourite ToDo application. (You can change which
application in the Global Preferences). Set up the alarm to your desires
here. When you're done, just hit the "Home" icon to be transported straight
back to Shadow Plan where you left off (if you'd enabled the "Return"
global preference just mentioned.
Using this technique, you can use the dedicated applications for
alarms and repeats, without having bloated Shadow Plan with the extra code
to handle alarms itself.
Tag Wizard
The Tag Wizard is a tool created out of the demand to speed up Tag usage.
The Shadow Plan "Tag" feature is one of the most powerful features of the
application and provides almost unlimited filtering and sorting and task
management potential. Due to the flexibility of the tag concept they can
be tricky or slow to set up and use. The Wiz attempts to take away some of
these issues and streamline your application usage.
Before the Tag Wizard can be useful, you'll need to have some Tags
created. Use the Tag Manager to create and categorize your tags. See that
section of the manual for details.
You can summon the Tag Wizard in these main ways:
- Tap on the "Item Fast Tag" menu item under the "Item" menu
- Use Cmd-Y on your keyboard, or shortcut-Y in grafitti
- Tap on "Tag Wizard" from the "link arrow" popmenu on the right
side of an item in the list view
- Tap on "Tags" from the Link Manager
- Tap on "Tag Wizard" in the optional Tag Column popmenu
Fast Tagging
The Tag Manager is used to maintain tags themself, and the Link Manager is
used to assign tags to an item one by one. You can also use the Tag Column
to quickly assign tags one by one, even by using the two-tap-tagging. But
none of these tools lets you quickly add a half dozen tags or take a quick
inventory of the tags on an item. Enter the Tag Wizard.
The tag wizard is broken up into two lists; on the left are your Tag
Categories, and on the right are your Tags. The tag listing shows all the tags
in the current tag category.
Tap on a tag category to change the list of tags shown on the right.
Tap on a tag to either add or remove it from the current item. If the tag
is present on the item it will be checked in the tag listing; tapping on it
will thus remove it from the item. If the tag is unchecked (and not on the
current item), then tapping will add it to the item and check the tag.
In essence, this lets you add or remove tags with a single tap if they're
in the same category; changing categories is one tap. Nice and fast!
Fast filtering
Note the button in the bottom right of the Tag Wizard, "Create quick
filter*". Tapping this button will let you create a custom filter from the
current selection of tags in the Tag Wizard.
Normally you would create a custom filter using the Filter Manager. This
can be faster or slower depending on the number of rules that make up the
filter. Normally there aren't too many rules to worry about so it is not
too bad. But if you have to create a number of filters, or a filter with a
lot of Tag rules, this can be time consuming.
Using the Tag Wizard, just pick an item that has all the tags you wish
to filter for, or add the tags to the item. See above for Fast Tagging.
Once you've got all the tags you wish to filter for, simple hit the
"Create Filter" button. It will ask you if you wish to include a rule to
Show or Hide current completed items, or skip adding such a rule (Ignore).
It will then ask you if you'd like to Cancel, Save, or Save & Apply.
"Save" will generate the new filter and save it. Your current filter (or
lack thereof) is unchanged. The filter will be saved with a filter name that
is "Quick filter" and the date and time, so you know what it is.
"Save & Apply" will do the Save as above, and will immediately apply the
filter so you can see its effects right away.
The filter rules it adds are quite simple:
- First, if you said "Show completed", then it includes a rule
"Checked IS true".
- If you had said "Hide completed", then it would add "Checked IS false."
- If you said "Ignore", then it doesn't put in a rule at all.
- Secondly, rules for each active tag are added. For every tag currently
checked, a rule is added like this: "Tag _______ IS PRESENT"
For example, if you had three tags checked: "Fred", "Office", "Delayed",
and then asked the Tag Wizard to create a filter, you might end up with
the following custom filter created:
- Checked is true
A Tag Fred is present
A Tag Office is present
A Tag Delayed is present
Notice that the tags are all in the "A" OR-group, which means that the
filter will match any item that has any of the tags you had checked. If you
like, you can open up the filter in the Filter Manager and change the
OR-group, add new rules, or use a new more meaningful filter name.
Easy and useful!
Alarms
Setting up Alarms
Setting up a Shadow Plan alarm is similar to doing it in other Palm OS
applications. Theres a few simple steps and you're well on your way to
a wake up call!
- If you haven't already, pick a date for the item; an alarm must have
a full date and time before it can be useful. Remember, setting only a
date leaves the 'time' component of the date set to right now... the time it
was when you set the date!
- If you haven't already, pick a time; youcan tap on the little clock icon
beside the Target Date to set up the time there. (See right, where an
example time is being set)
- Tap on the "alarm icon" at the top of the screen; this will turn on the
alarm for the date and time that you have currently set in the Target
Date field. If the alarm is already set, tapping on the clock will remove
the alarm.
- Should you wish to adjust the alarm paramatres, tap on the dotted
text beside the alarm icon; it shows the time the alarm is expected to go
off. Tapping on it brings up the Alarm Details window (See right for an
example)
- In Alarm Details you may alter the "lead time"; you can specify the alarm
to go off so many minutes, hours, or days prior to the actual alarm
date and time. So you could specify a target date of Today, 4pm, but then
set the alarm to go off at 3pm (1 hour lead time), so you don't miss the
event!
- You can also specify in Alarm Details to make the alarm relative to the
Start Date of the event; this way you can use Start Date to record when
you wish to begin an event and have the alarm remind you of that, instead
of using Start Date to record (say) when the event actually did occur.
Its all up to you!
- Make sure you hit "OK" to store your changes; setting up an alarm but
never exiting the Details window will not register it with the system!
As you can see, setting up an alarm could be as little as 1 tap to enable
it, or multiple taps to configure it with some fancy options.
Once created, there are some very handy things you can do still; see the
section below about the Alarm Manager, which lets you delete alarms from
an alarm listing without having to visit all your files, review upcoming
alarms, etc.
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Receiving Alarms
When an item's alarm becomes due, Shadow Plan will pop up a little
information window and try to get your attention; your alarm sound will
trigger, your unit may vibrate, etc. This notification will retry a few
times to ensure delivery of the alarm!
The alarm window is quite simple and shows two main components:
The filename: This is the name of the Shadow Plan file that
contained the item (at the time the alarm was created; if you've moved the
item to a different list, the filename component may nolonger be accurate.)
The item title: This is the title text of the item at the time the
alarm was last updated.
Given these two pieces of information, you should have a good idea of what
the alarm is all about. You can of course hit the Goto button, which
will load Shadow Plan (if its in device RAM) and tell it to open the file
and zoom to the interesting item.
Note: If multiple alarms go off at the same time, you may not have the
Goto option, since "going to" multiple items isn't possible!
Hitting OK simply dismisses the alarm.
Shadow Plan deletes the alarm after it has been received or dismissed.
The Alarm Manager
This manager function is available from the pulldown menus along with
the other Managers.
The Alarm Manager lets you review all your currently pending Shadow Plan
alarms, regardless of which list you set them in. This can be a very useful
window to see what is going on and what is coming up, soon, without
visiting your various lists or To Do applications, etc.
You can do a few things here:
- See a listing of all set Shadow Plan alarms
- Delete an alarm (not the item, just the alarm on it)
- Jump to an item that has an alarm (switch lists and zoom to that item)
Trick: You can set up an alarm on an item that is in the distant future,
for example. Since you never get to that date, it will not be removed from the
item. You can thus use the Alarm Manager as a form of bookmark, opening it
up and finding the item in question, and then using the Jump facility to
visit that item. We will likely implement a bookmark system in the future
anyway, but this is an amusing and useful trick on its own!
Sorts
Sorting is a powerful and convenient way of reorganizing your data in a more
meaningful way. You can sort by a variety of things, and in the near future
ever more things. You can set up a primary or primary+secondary sort. The
secondary is only used if it is set and if the primary is having a tie
between two items. Once you specify the sort criterion and order (ascending
or descending), you tap "Apply" to begin the sort. The sort will sort on each
level in the list, but will only sort items around on the same sublevel. If
two items are a tie for the primary sort, then the secondary criterion is
considered. If still a tie, the two nodes are left where they are relative
to each other. If the two nodes can be sorted (by primary, or by
primary + secondary), than the nodes are ordered as desired.
Sorting Example
Set the primary sort to sort by target date, ascending. This means to
sort the items in terms of their target date relative to the beginning
of time, ascending from the earliest item to the latest item. Turn off
the secondary criterion.
By tapping "Apply", you'll have all the items in a given sublevel ordered
in increasing date. Well, what if a bunch of them are targeting the same
day?
You could turn on the secondary sort by say Priority, ascending. Then
tap "Apply" to re-apply the sort. Now you've got items sorted primarily
by their target date in ascending order, but where a tie exists, they
also sort by ascending priority. So now you can tell which items need
to be done right away on which days.
You can also sort by checked (where checked on is higher than checked
off), creation date, and other things.
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Find
Find is a very simple operation to allow you to quickly and easily
jump to an item containing the match for some text you enter. Once you
have done one Find, you can use a simple shortcut to find again. You can
even start the find at the selected item, or at the top of the list.
- Enter some text for Shadow to look for in your list
- Select the starting point -- either the Top of the list, or the
Selection. Once a match has happened, the matching item becomes
selected so that another find will begin at the selected item.
- Specify whether to include attached Notes in the search or
not. If you have a lot of notes, or large notes, this can greatly
slow down the find and may require a lot of memory (ie: Lots of
hacks could cause problems).
- Hit "OK" to begin the search, or "Cancel" to skip it.
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Clipboard
The clipboard is a very powerful system for duplicating and moving
list data. Shadow's clipboard is particularly powerful, and thus a little
complex.
Note: Many of the clipboard operations are available in the pulldown menus,
though some operations are available only in the [C] popmenu in the
top-right.
The clipboard can be in one of two modes: Contains One Mode, and Contains
Many Mode. You can think of this as the clipboard being in "replace" or
"append" mode if it helps.
Contains One Mode
In this mode, any Copy or Cut operation will replace the contents of the
clipboard. If you do two Copies in a row, the second one will be in the
clipboard, and the first clipboard contents lost. This is handy for
quick copy-pastes around in a list, or moving a single item from one
location in a list to another one maybe far away, or even in another
list.
Contains Many Mode
In this mode, any Copy or Cut operations will ADD to the clipboard.
So if you copy three items in a row, all three will be in the clipboard.
When you then paste, all three will be pasted. If you copy some more items,
they'll be appended to the clipboard, too. To clear the clipboard, you
must tap on the "Clear" operation in the [C] popmenu or under the Edit
pulldown menu. This mode can be EXTREMELY useful for moving or
copying a large number of items. Just copy one, go to another list, copy a
few more, and when you've picked all the items you like, just go to the
destination list and hit Move or Paste to insert the works into their
new location. Very very convenient. Otherwise, you'd have to copy/paste
each item which, if the source and destination are far away, can be
a major time killer.
Send clip to file
Sometimes you wish to move items between files; it is often easiest to
just enable multi-clip mode, Copy, Copy, Copy a few items into the clipboard,
switch to another file somehow, and then hit Move or Paste. However, if you
need to be breaking up a large file and sending pieces to many target files,
it can become quite tedious to copy/switch/move/switch-back all day long.
For this reason, we have added a very handy little operation.
"Send clip" allows you to send the current clipboard contents to a specified
file on the fly. You can repeat this, as the clipboard is not emptied after
the send operation, making cloning of items very easy. This is probably
the most efficient way currently to merge two files.
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Preferences
Preferences are behavioral settings that let you customize the way the
application works. You can change how items look, set what happens when you
trigger certain events, and make the program work the way you want it to -
which can be very different than the way other people may want it to!
There are three main types of settings - Global Preferences which
apply to all lists all of the time, List Specific Preferences which
apply only against the list they are set for, and
Item Specific Preferences which work only against the item that
they are set for.
Example: There is a preference to allow you to use a graphical button bar
or the normal Palm text buttons. Which you chose is entirely up to you. Maybe
the button colour or sizes don't agree with you, or perhaps you really like
the graphical buttons and dislike the straight text. Generally you like one
way or the other PERIOD. You don't want to set this list by list.. you want
is set ALWAYS. So this sort of preference is a global preference.
However, some lists are Checklists while others as simply Notes while
still others are Tasklists or even Custom designed lists. Obviously this
setting is list specific and does not effect other lists.
The Panel System
Note that most of the preference screens in Shadow Plan use a "tab and
panel" system much like an old Rolodex or recipe book. Only 3 tabs are
visible on the screen at once, though you can scroll the tabs left and
right by pushing the tab scroll arrows to the right of the tabs.
When you tab on a tab, the associated panel is revealed. This lets you
get at all the global preferences from within one window. Keeps things from
getting cluttered.
You can page through the tabs using the hardware Page Up and Page
Down buttons, as well!
Bringing up the Global Preferences
1. |
Start Shadow Plan on your handheld. It doesn't matter which screen it opens
up into, as global preference are available from anywhere in the
application. |
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2. |
Push the silk-screened pulldown-menu button to reveal the menus. |
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3. |
Tap on the Preferences item in the help menu. |
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General Preferences
- Use graphical button bar
Shadow Plan 2.0 can operate with a graphical button bar or with
text buttons. I would suggest experimenting with both so you get
a feal for which you prefer. For example screenshots, see this
part of the Quick Start Guide
Default: Off; text buttons are universal and easy to read and
understand. The graphical buttons may be difficult for some to see.
- Sort After Changes
If you activate this preference, Shadow will try to automatically
resort your list (using the current "Sort Preferences") when you've
made a relevant change. Since almost any change can be relevant to
your sort criterion, this can slow shadow down quite a bit as it
sorts after every action. The slowdown should not be noticeable
except for very large lists, though.
Default: Off; it isn't needed by a lot of people, and many
like to sort at their call rather than at every change.
- Ascending Priority is 5-4-3-2-1
Many people want priority "1" to be the most important and "5"
to be the least important. Others prefer the reverse. This
preference item allows you to override the default of "1"
being least important and "5" being most important in terms of
sort order. (However, you may want to keep the default order
even if you think of "1" as being the highest priority so that
a default "Ascending" sort will put the low-numbered-priority
items nearer to the top of the list.)
Default: Off; Ordering things from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest)
seems natural to many, though to others its more natural to have
5 (lowest) to 1 (highest). I defaulted to "intuitive" rather than
common..
- Note icon goes to note editor
Normally Shadow will expand or collapse a view of an item's attached
Note right on-screen so you can see it as part of your list. Many
people however prefer the Palm's normal behaviour of jumping to a
note editor when tapping on the note icon. Activating this
preference causes this more standard behaviour.
Default: Off; one of Shadows invention is the on-screen
in-line display of Notes, and many people love this feature
- Double tap goes to mini editor
In earlier versions of Shadow Plan editing items was done away
the list view. This was handy since all of your item data was
available in one place, making lots of changes very quick. There
is a problem though -- sometimes you want to be entering lots of
items and wish to see how they fit into the list structure
while you're entering them. The mini editor lets you do this
by allowing you to enter title text right on the main screen! You
cannot however enter dates or other details in the mini editor.
This preference, when set, means that a double-tap to an item will
take you to the mini editor to edit its title text. From within the
mini editor you can push the [D] button to bring up the full screen
Details editor if you need to.
Default: Off; For historical behaviour so as to not surprise
anyone.
- Default Priority
When an item is created, the default priority is assigned to it
(whether you display priorities in your list or not). By default,
the lowest priority (-) is used, though you may prefer to assign
an item a high or low priority by default depending on your
situation or style. Just tap on the popmenu beside this pref
to bring up a list of available priorities, and select one. It
will be used for all lists.
Default: -; always the lowest priority
- Default List Type
Normally, Shadow will default to Checklist. If you usually
make Tasklists (formerly called "Outlines") instead, or Memos
(formerly called "Notes"), or Flat Views, then you may wish to
change this preference. You can even choose "Custom" as a default
type, although you cannot assign the customized properties
until the list is actually created. This will be improved in a later
version. All new lists will assume the default list type until
overridden. Existing lists maintain their type, of course.
Default: Checklist; Seems a logical first and common use of
Shadow -- to replace or augment the built-in ToDo application.
If you are a project manager, you may wish to change this
over-ride to "Tasklist" or a "Custom" list and design your
own layouts.
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Display Preferences
These preferences are another panel in the Global Preferences. Just hit
Next until you cycle around to this panel. These settings all modify
how Shadow Plan presents information to you and again applies to all lists
all of the time.
- Checkbox instead of Checkcircle
If this pref is active, the circles in the List View will be
replaced with standard Palm Checkboxes. Many people prefer
the standard checkbox over my little circles due to their
larger size for both visibility and tap-detection. The
choice is yours!
Default: Off -- checkcircles. They look neat :)
- Strike-thru of completed items
When activated, this pref causes a line to be drawn horizontally
through text of completed (checked) items. Some consider this to
look messy, though in turn others prefer the visual queue
this provides. Also note that when you do an HTML export,
this option causes strike-thru of completed items there too.
Default: Off -- some people hate this
- Suppress progress on children
By default, when this pref is off, all items have a progress bar.
The bar is editable for children so you can set their progress
(which is displayed). For parents, it is not editable (As it is
the average of children items), but is displayed for informational
sake. But some find the line of progress bars distracting, so this
pref allows you to disable the progress bars of children items,
leaving only top level items with bars. To set a child's progress
you need to enter the details window, which can be inconvenient
but keeps the display nice and simple.
Default: Off -- progress bars on every task list item
Suppress title word wrap
MOVED TO LIST-LEVEL PREF!
Title text, like attached note text, now word wraps and can
spread across many lines of the display. Some find this takes
up too much space even when the title has a lot to say. This
pref keeps the title text to a minimum of one line on the
display and draws an ellipses ("...") after title text that
would normally take more lines on the screen. With this
optional enabled, you maximize the number of items you can
squish onto the display (after collapsing all memos, of course)
Default: Off -- Hiding of data can look like something was
lost. Only each user can pick whether they like this or not.
- Numbered priority; not bubbles.
Some people like my "rounded priority bubbles". Others prefer
the built-in ToDo application's style of just drawing the
priority as a bolded number.
Default: Off -- Shadow bubbles, because they are cute
- Always bold title; not memo
Causes the title text of list items to always be drawn in bold
face. The memo is not affected. This is handy for those always
on the move, or who need larger text to aid reading or who work
with a lot of attached notes and need the titles to stand out.
Default: Off -- Less "muddying".. bold tends to be harsh
to many people.
Big icons for expand arrows
REMOVED in Shadow Plan 1.5! Always activated now!
- Indent expand and collapse arrows
Shadow will normally always display the expand and collapse arrows
in the far left margin of the screen, so as to separate them from
the content of the list. However, many people prefer keeping the
arrows near the indented item text to better display the list
structure and this pref will do that.
Default: Off; Again, this is how Shadow has always been and
I need your opinions before tampering with an existing interface.
- Indent Priority Bubble
Another personal display choice is where you wish the Priority
of an item to be displayed. Normally it is in the left margin
of the screen, but many will prefer it indented along with the
item text. Change it with this pref.
Default: Off; historical reasons. Send me your thoughts!
- Place scrollbar on the left
By default, scrollbars will be placed on the right hand side
of the screen (unless you have disabled them in that list, or
if the list is not large enough to warrant a scrollbar!). If you
are left handed or otherwise prefer scrollbars on the left,
you can just check this preference.
Default: Off; traditionally, scrollbars are on the right.
- Pick Fonts!
See the section on fonts!
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Display Preferences
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Theme Preferences
Since different devices have different display characteristics, you may
find our default colour scheme to be hard on your eyes. Or perhaps you're in
a festive mood for Christmas and would like a nice green-and-red motif.
Or perhaps you're finding it easier to see white on blue, or yellow on gray.
We like to let you decide how you want to work, and so Shadow Plan lets you
set up your own "theme" and chose the colours for darned near everything!
Remember that Shadow Plan displays in terms of two rows.. the even rows
and the odd rows. Normally we have one as a white background and the other as
a light blue background. You can set these up however you want of course!
To change the background colour, simply tap on the Back
button for the even, odd, or selected row settings and pick a colour from the
chooser.
To change the text colour, simply tap on the Text
button for the even, odd, or selected row settings and pick a colour from the
chooser.
To change the icon colour, simply tap on the Gadget
button for the even, odd, or selected row settings and pick a colour from the
chooser.
A sample of the row will be drawn so you have some idea what you're looking
at. Note that on some older Sony devices, the sample may not draw the sample
icon, due to bugs in the Sony OS. Nothing we can do about it. This is fixed
in later Sony units.
Once you have completed your theme, just hit "OK" to exit the preferences
subsystem and you'll be able to see your theme in action right away. You can
of course edit it to your hearts content at any time!
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Link Preferences
These preferences are another panel in the Global Preferences. Just hit
Next until you cycle around to this panel. These settings all modify
how Shadow Plan presents information to you and again applies to all lists
all of the time.
- Return to Shadow after goto
Shadow Plan is a great organizer of other applications data! Many
people use Shadow as their main organization tool and have lists
containing most of their data. Once an item becomes very timely
though (say, is due this week) it can become handy to push it off
into ToDo or Datebook for syncing into your Outlook, or setting
alarms or the like.
A Shadow item linked to an external database will usually have a
link arrow on it, allowing you to jump to the object in the other
program. You can also do this from the Link Manager. But how do
you get back?. Since you're in another program, Shadow
can't do much for you... but it can sure try!
With this preference set, Shadow will become your launcher after
a goto (jump to linked object in another program). When you push the
Home button instead of going to your launcher you will return
to Shadow just this once. This way you can visit another
program to check its linked data details, and then quickly return
to Shadow right where you left off! (You needn't bother with this
pref if you have Shadow set to one of your hard buttons)
Default: Off; this preference can fight with some launchers
and Hacks. If you enable it and have problems, please disable
the pref!
NOTE: Some people have problems due to naughty Hacks or
replacement launchers not liking what is going on. If you have a
problem, just deactivate this preference and hit OK and you'll be
given the choice of resetting your launcher. This will fix up
any oddities going on!
- Hide broken link warning
A "broken link" is a conceptual link from a Shadow item to an
item in another database, or to another Shadow file. For instance,
you might have a item with a target date, like a hard completion
date for a project. If you "link" that item to the Palm Datebook
database, you can set alarms on it or sync it to your desktop
PIM (like MSOutlook).. very useful indeed! But what if you then
delete this item from the desktop or in the other database? Shadow
will still try and find it when your Shadow file is opened. Rather
than silently ignore the error, you will receive an error. This
option, when activated, will suppress this warning, and a few other
minor link warnings. A broken link will also show up visually on
screen, so the error isn't strictly needed.
Default: Off; At first anyway, I want people to experience this
error rather than miss it. If you so wish, turn it off and a few
annoying alerts go away.
- Delete Item Deletes Links
Prior to 1.5.0, deleting an item would delete it from Shadow Plan.
If it had a link into the ToDo database, the ToDo item would be
left there, severed from its now vanished Shadow item. This is
often desirable, for archival sake, or because you wish to keep
the item in your ToDo even though the hierarchical context has
gone away. Many people prefer to just keep it simple and clean
however -- deleting a Shadow item should delete its link in the ToDo
and Datebook databases -- if you cancel and delete a project, why
not delete the meeting or task items from your calendar? It
makes sense. So, it should please the two different camps of people
to have a preference allowing you to set the behaviour. If this
pref is inactive, then deleting an item leaves it in the ToDo
and/or DateBook databases. If this pref is activated, deleting
a Shadow item will also delete it from the ToDo and Datebook
databases.
Default: Off; deleting an item leaves linked ToDos and Datebooks
alone.
- Append origin to ToDo/Datebook note
If you're doing a lot of linking, chances are good you've
come across the problem where you've got two entirely separate
items with the same text content. For example, you may have two
items "Buy Equipment" in two separate lists, or even in the
same list but different project in the list. If you link them
to ToDo, how can you tell them apart? This preference, when
enabled, adds to the end of a linked ToDo's note the filename
and hierarchy summary above the item. For example, where you to
link "Buy Equipment" to ToDo, with this pref enabled you would
see "Buy Equipment" with a note attached; viewing the note in
your favourite ToDo program would show: [Shadow: My file ->
Project 1]. This allows you to know almost exactly where the
ToDo link came from, without having to visit Shadow.
Default: Off; it slows things down for Shadow to always be
updating todos all over the place.
NOTE: These note additions are added to the END of the
existing ToDo note (if there is one). When Shadow opens the
item, the Shadow origin info is removed. If you add any note
info after the Shadow info, it will be lost. If you play with
the Shadow origin info, Shadow may have to leave it there and
add a new origin to the end, not knowing what you meant to do!
In general, when in a ToDo program, modify the ToDo note before
the Shadow origin info!
- Support ShadowLinkHack
This requires the "Append origin" pref above to be also enabled.
See the Contributed Tools section for some details about
ShadowLinkHack, and see the files in the contrib directory
of the Shadow Plan distribution. This is a tool not written by
Codejedi.
- Added tags go to end of tag list
By default, tags added to an item become the first link, and
thus are the prime tag (the tag displayed in the Tag Column and
the tag that is sorted by if you perform Tag based sorting). If
this preference is checked, however, added tags will go to the
end of the tags linked, and thus will not take over the prime
tag position. Some people wish added tags to show in the tag
column immediately, others think it terms of "most important first"
and thus wish to add tags in decreasing order of importance, and
thus do not wish to displace their prime tags.
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Link Preferences
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App Preferences
These preferences control what applications you want Shadow Plan to talk
to or refer to. For instance, if you have an item linked to ToDo, and tell
Shadow to "goto" the linked object ... which application would you prefer
to use? By default of course Shadow Plan will use the handhelds built in
ToDo application. But if you prefer, you can tell Shadow Plan to use
Agendus or DateBk4 or ToDoPlus, and you do so here.
- ToDo app
Now that you can set links to various other applications and
databases, it is useful to jump to those applications directly
from the linking item, rather than hit the "Applications" palm
button and find the program you want and tap on it. So if you
have a link to a ToDo item, you can now enter the link and
magicly appear at the right item in ToDo! But what if you've
decided to use a different ToDo application (like DateBk4)?
Shadow by default will launch the built-in ToDo application when
entering a ToDo link. With this preference, you can over-ride
this behaviour and tell Shadow to instead run your preferred
ToDo application (like DateBk4).
Default: Built-in ToDo application, since most people have
not replaced many built-ins.
- Datebook app
Like the setting above for ToDo preferred application, you can
choose which program to run for Datebook links. Many people use
DateBk4 or Datebk3 or Action Names or other applications, so
simply choose your favourite here, and then when you jump to
a link from Shadow, your favourite program will be the one to
display it! (Works only with programs supporting this option,
which is most)
Default: Built-in Datebook application, since most people have
not replaced many built-ins. If you use DateBk4 for instance, simply
chose that from the list of applications when you tap on this
popup.
- Address Book
Just like the others -- you can specify your preferred Addressbook.
The default is the built in application.
- Memo Book
Just like the others -- you can specify your preferred Memopad.
The default is the built in application.
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High Resolution Preferences
High Resolution mode is covered in the High Resolution Display section
of the manual.
Shadow Plan is very flexible and supports high resolution, low
resolution, Sony "high res assist", Palm high density, and Handera high
resolution QVGA, and others as of Shadow Plan 2.8. Other forms of high
resolution may be supported if not listed here.
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View Customization - Fonts
Shadow Plan will by default use the good old reliable built in fonts for
its display; on low resolution units, that means a 9 point normal font and
a 9 point bold font. However, if you so desire you have some options:
- Use other system fonts
- Use Font Bucket font packs
- Use Font Hack
These options are described below. If you have a high resolution device,
be sure to read that section for even more Font options.
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One Note - Row Spacing with Fonts
You may wonder how rows will be spaced, when you can change the fonts to
virtually any size you can image. If (for example) you select a
large font for bold, and a small font for normal (or the reverse), you may
expect that each row displayed could be a different height. However, to keep
Shadow operating quickly for large lists and to make tapping quick (since you
can predict where rows will show up), we've built it so that even with
different sized fonts the rows will be spaced to the height of the tallest
utilized font, or 7 pixels, whichever is greater. (So if you select a 5
point font, it'll still be displayed as if it was 7 pixels, since otherwise
the little icons would be cut down too small.)
Example: If you use a 14 point bold font and a 5 point normal font,
your lines will be spaced at 14 pixels, which may look odd. Shadow will also
warn you of this case, so you know what is going on.
Suggestion: We advise picking fonts of similar height so that the
display looks clean and consistent; many people enjoy using a thin 5 or 6 point
font for normal text, and a wide or bold 5-7 point font for bold. This looks
fantastic and gets you twice as much information on the screen at once than
the normal fonts. Still other people choose large fonts, to make the screen
easier to read at a distance.
Changing your Normal or Bold font
- Pull down the menu bar
- Go to the Help menu
- Select Preferences
- Hit "Next" to cycle over to "Display Preferences"
- Tap on "Reset" to revert to built in sane fonts if you need to.
- Tap on "Normal" or "Bold" to pick a font to use for that text display
- Hit OK when you are done!
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System Fonts
If Font Bucket is not installed, you can use the normal system
fonts only. If Font Bucket is installed, you can use system fonts or FB
font packs (see below). Assuming FB is not installed, when you tap on either
"Normal" or "Bold", you will be presented with a screen similar to this one.
Just pick the font you wish to use for "Normal" or "Bold" and hit "OK" and
when you go back to list view, the font will be used.
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Font Bucket Font Packs
To use Font Bucket font packs, you will need to install Font Bucket itself
(see below). Once Font Bucket is installed, along with a few font packs, you
can select fonts from the packs just as you might select system fonts. If
you wish to cut down on memory waste, you can use Font Bucket itself to
manage fonts -- deleting those you don't like or need, for example. Font
Bucket will not be discussed here.. see its manual instead.
Selecting a font is simple; as above, just hit Normal or Bold in Display
Preferences, and pick a font from the listing. An example will be shown in
that font and if you like it, just hit OK and Shadow will use that font for
the selected text (normal or bold). The selection screen for when only Cool
Fonts Pack is installed appears to the right.
Obtaining Font Bucket and Font Packs
Font Bucket and various font packs are available on the Codejedi website in
the download section. Links to this website are here for your convenience:
Codejedi Downloads Page
Font Bucket (font manager and extension)
We nolonger carry fonts on our site, due to legal considerations. You
can find Font Bucket fonts on the
Hands High website
, however.
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Font Hack
Font Hack is a product offered by someone other than Codejedi. It is
mentioned here so that you know it exists and that we endeaver to be
compatible with it. FontHack lets you install 3rd party font files, and
trick the OS into using them in place of system fonts. This allows you
to use alternate fonts in virtually every Palm application, provided it
is smart enough to follow the proper Font rules and guidelines provided
by Palm. FontHack has some gorgeous fonts, especially for those with
high res devices.
View Customization - High Resolution
There are a variety of high resolution technologies available now.
Palm has entered into the market with its High Density system for
high resolution.
Other vendors (namely Sony and Handera) have
already produced units with high resolution, and as such they've provided
their own proprietary operating system extensions to support high res,
though the latest Sony units now follow Palm's standard High Density
system.
Due to this evolution of the operating system, Shadow Plan supports
all of them, and tries to make them work more or less the same. As of
Shadow Plan 2.8, we support low resolution 160x160 mode, low resolution
with Sony high resolution assist (320x320 with apps thinking in terms of
160x160), Old Sony high resolution (320x320 on Sony original N and T series),
OS 5 High Density (Palm Tungsten T and C, Sony NX and NZ), Handera
high resolution. We support virtual grafitti on Sony and Handera
units. More to come!
In general, Shadow works in one of two modes.. "normal resolution" and
"high resolution". In "normal resolution", Shadow will run in low res if
you have a low res device, or "high res assist" if your device has that
mode (the older Sony modes), or high resolution "normal amount of info mode"
if you have an OS5 device (the same amount of information as in low res,
but with much sharper clarity due to high density screen). When you tell
Shadow to use its "high resolution" mode (device permitting), then Shadow
enters true 320x320 (or 320x480) mode, with very small text and icons.
This lets you cram a lot more information and columns onscreen, but the
text is small. Of course, please feel free to increase the font size using
the Display Preferences panel!
One thing to note for Sony users is that older Sony devices had something
called "High Resolution Assist" mode, where applications ran in low resolution
but the OS rendered everything in high resolution. This was included in
Sony units OS3.5 through OS4.1, but is not used in Sony OS5 or later.
Shadow will work fine with Sony in low res, high res assist, or Shadow
high res modes. In Sony High Res Assist mode, however, you cannot get
the alternating colour backs behind items on the screen, due to bugs in the
Sony OS that there is nothing we can do about. Sony in Shadow high res mode,
or Sony on OS5 or later, does not have this small limit.
Palm and Sony High Resolution
Shadow can operate in several display modes, depending on your Palm/Sony
Hi-Res preferences and your Shadow global preferences. When we refer to
"High Resolution Assist", we are referring to the "Prefs" application
included with your older Sony handheld, in the "Hi Res" section.
The mode combinations are these:
- Shadow "High Resolution Mode" (Global Preferences) is UNCHECKED.
- Low resolution units (such as the Palm m515) will run in true
160x160 Palm OS low
resolution. Large text, easily readable. Some jaggies visible.
- OS5 High Density units (such as the Palm Tungsten T or Sony NX)
will run in 320x320 (or Sony 320x480 with virtual grafitti minimized)
high density (high resolution) mode, but with the same amount of
information as is visible in a low res screen -- just the detail is
sharper and things are easier to read.
- Sony OS3 and OS4 High Resolution Assist is UNCHECKED.
In this mode, Shadow is
saying it wants to be in low resolution, and high res assist is
disabled, so you will get a true low resolution display that looks
the same as on any other low resolution device. (You can customize
fonts with fonthack or font bucket)
- Sony OS3 and OS4 High Resolution Assist is CHECKED. In this
mode, Shadow is
saying it wants low resolution, yet you've told the operating system
you want high resolution, so you get a true high resolution display,
with high resolution fonts enabled and the works. It maximizes the
ease of reading, but you don't get any extra text on the screen. (You
can customize fonts with fonthack. Try searching the web for "Lubak"
to find some nice high resolution replacement fonts)
- Shadow "High Resolution Mode" (Global Preferences) is CHECKED.
- Low resolution units will not have this available since they only
support low resolution
- OS5 High Density units will run with "small fonts" high
resolution mode, letting you get
much more information on screen. If the font is too small, then you
can of course still use the Display Preferences panel (in global
preferences) to increase your font size, or select a different font.
- Sony OS3 and OS4 High Resolution Assist is ignored (can be set to
anything). In this
"Mixed Resolution Mode" you are running in true high resolution, but are
using low resolution fonts, and is similar to using High Res Mode on an
OS5 device in effect. In practice, what this means is that you are
using the old tiny fonts on a much larger screen.. so they show up
SMALL. If your eyes aren't as good as they were or you need to
read text quickly, this may not be the mode for you. However, if you wish
to cram as much text onto the screen as you can, you're going to love
this :) (You can customize the fonts with font bucket or low res
fonthack)
When running in Shadow high resolution mode, I suggest picking a
larger font that
the default built in small font.. it may just be too small. Remember that when
you tap on the screen gadgets (like the collapse/expand arrow) the size of the
button is relative to the size of the font. So if you pick a larger font, it
will be easier to tap on the screen gadgets. See the screenshot on the right
where I show the Mixed Resolution Mode with the larger font selected -- this
is much more readable and tappable than the default font. But your mileage
may vary, of course :)
Finally, notice how much screen territory you get when in this mixed
resolution mode; you can turn on every gadget Shadow knows about (see the
section on customization of your screen) and still have plenty of space left
over for text. Absolutely wonderful.
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Mixed Resolution Mode Global Preferences panel |
High Resolution Assist checked, Mixed Resolution Mode unchecked
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Mixed Resolution Mode, default fonts |
Mixed Resolution Mode, larger built in font selected using Font Bucket |
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Handera High Resolution
Fully supported, just like the other platforms!
Importing Your Data (from other places)
Importing from ToDo / Replacing ToDo Application with Shadow
Many people just outright replace the built-in ToDo application with
Shadow, since it has almost all of the functionality people use, and
gets them a lot more. If you wish to change the actual Palm button
to launch Shadow instead, simply go to the "Prefs" application on
your palm and change the Buttons pref. See your Palm manual for details.
Whether or not you replace the ToDo application with Shadow, you may
wish to import your existing ToDo database items into a Shadow file
so that you can maintain it with Shadow. Once imported, you can safely
delete the ToDo's and not worry about them. However, if you use a desktop
PIM to track your to do tasks, its often better to not only leave the
ToDo's in the database, but tell Shadow to "link back to them" as well.
When importing from the ToDo database, there is a checkbox to set the
"link back", which means that for every item imported from the ToDo
database, the corresponding Shadow item will bear a link to the
original. This means any changes to the Shadow item will show up in the
actual ToDo database and vice versa. Of course, if you're importing
a huge set of ToDos, the file opening and closing may be slow since
checking up on hundreds or thousands of links for changes can take
awhile...
Currently you can only import whole ToDo database, though
if the demand is there I will make some options to allow importing
category by category.
One note: Since smaller and/or older Palms have limited resources, Shadow
will import ToDo's into groups of about 75 ToDos. So if you ask Shadow
to import to a file called "Import", you may end up with "Import-1" and
"Import-2" and "Import-3" and so-on. If you have a bigger palm, you
can merge the files again using "cut and paste". A beta coming soon
will have a merge-file menu-item as well, to make this easy, and may
break up files on in a smarter way. The newer your PalmOS, the better
off your imports are :)
Imports from the ToDo database should be very comprehensive. All of the
data in the ToDo database should be imported correctly -- due dates,
note attachments, checked and priority status.. all of it.
Import from Memopad
Importing from Memos is actually much easier than you might think. Shadow
takes a minimalist approach to importing, though if people have a need
for something smarter I may build more options in. For this first version
with imports, Shadow has a simple but remarkably useful approach.
Make sure your memos are in the right format for Import!
You enter a base filename for the import. You may also choose an import
format though as of current there is only one choice. Watch for betas
with extra formats, as demand dictates! Once these items have been chosen,
select a memo from the list (which is not sorted or categorized, since
I figure most people do not import too often though I may be wrong).
After the import, you are asked if you wish to add another memo to the
import or finish off. If you answer "Yes" to add another memo, again
just pick a memo from the list and hit "OK". If you hit Cancel after
doing a few imports, fear not -- your file will be saved correctly!
So the basic process is as follows:
- Make sure you have some memos to import and have them in the
right format (see below).
- On the file selection screen, pick the Transfer menu item and
select "Import from Memos".
- Specify a filename base (or keep the default random one)
- Pick a format (or leave it at the default)
- Pick a memo to import from
- Hit OK to import it, or CANCEL to exit the import
- You are asked if you wish to add another memo to the import,
or if you are finished. If finished, pick "NO" and you are done.
- Since you hit "YES", pick another file from the list. If you decide
now that you really were done, simply hit CANCEL and your file
will be saved and you are done. Hit "OK" otherwise.
- Repeat...
You should be able to add a few hundred items via importing without a
problem. But be wary, for smaller palms just cannot handle huge files,
though newer Palms can handle thousands of items.
Required memo format for Shadow to Import
Shadow currently only accepts a single format of memo for importing. You might
think this is very restrictive, but it is remarkably useful. If a lot of
people need a better import, I will build it.. so keep an eye out for betas.
One problem is that Shadow doesn't interpret Checked or Date or
Priority or other hints that might be in the file, since every outliner
encodes them differently. A beta will surely address this shortcoming.
The format is as follows:
- The first line of the memo is discarded entirely. It is normally
used for the "filename", instead of outline content.
- Each line is either a "Item Line" or a "Note Line". An Item line
is a line of text, prepended with spaces or tabs to suggest its
"level". For instance, a line of text with no spaces is a top-level
item in the hierarchy. An item with 1 space is the second level.
An item with 2 spaces is a child of that one, and so on. You can use
either spaces or tabs to indicate this level of indentation. The
title line must be one line, with no returns in the middle. If you
need a return, you must embed a special character (the "Paragraph
marker", that looks like a "P" with a double back, or like |P sort
of. This is done since several other outliner applications do this,
and we're importing from them.
- A Note line may be several lines long. It MUST begin with
these exact characters (minus the quotes), at the beginning
of the line (notes are not indented ever!): "<Note: ". There is a
space after the colon. The note can end on the same line, or on
another line later on. It MUST end with ">" and the end
of a line. It can exist in the middle of a line, or on a line all
by itself, but it must be the last thing on the line.
- You can have several Note lines in a row. The notes will all
join together.
- You can have a Note line as the first line of a memo, and it will
attach to the last item imported. This means the first memo must
start with its filename and an Item Line. The second memo imported
can start with a filename and then either a Item Line or a Note
Line.
- If a Note Line is split across several lines, each end of line inside
of the Note Line will turn into a Return in the Note.
- Inside of a note, ">" characters at the end of line must really be
"> ", since ">end-of-line" represents the end of a note. During
exports, ">end-of-line" will be replaced with "> end-of-line" to
make corresponding imports work. This does add a few spaces at
times, but it shouldn't cause any problems with your content.
Since Shadow considers spaces and tabs to both be indents, most programs
exports are easily imported into Shadow. This format is actually quite
flexible.. it allows multi-memo imports, and can handle deep nesting
of many items, with or without note attachments. The notes can easily
be written by hand, or by another programs export.
Some examples of what this format looks like:
Example One (Basic indenting to get levels):
Some title (ignored by Shadow)
First level one item
First level two item (by tab)
Second level two item
Second level one item
Third level two item (by space)
Fourth level two item
First level three item (by spaces)
First level four item
Third level one item
Example Two (to add some notes):
Some title (ignored by Shadow)
First level one item
<Note: attachment for the first item>
First level two item (by tab)
Second level two item
<Note: attachment for the second level two item. Notice how
it starts without any indenting! Also notice how I split it
into many lines, ending with a return
>
Second level one item
Third level two item (by space)
Fourth level two item
First level three item (by spaces)
First level four item
<Note: A note for the first level four item;
several lines long, again, but this time ending
in the middle of a line>
<Note: This note continues the note for first level four
item. Since this note follows the other one, it is appended
by Shadow to the first one.>
Third level one item
Example: Import from BrainForest
OKay, I cheated. The required format to import into Shadow is a cross
between what I wanted to support, and whatever other programs actually
export. Some programs export in such a way as to be too ambiguous to
actually import back into themselves, let alone another application.
Other programs actually export in a useful manner. Every program is
different, so I made Shadow's importer take a reasonably general common
format.. one that is used by some of the top applications -
like BrainForest. So if you are (were :) a BrainForest user, exporting and
importing into Shadow should be really quite easy, as BF's format is
a subset of Shadows import format. A later Shadow version will actually
import the item attributes like date and priority and such as well. For
now, you can effortlessly import the outline data, and you'll have to
check off the checked items. This is pretty easy, since the hint for
these attributes will show up in the Shadow import.
In BrainForest, in the file selection screen, simply pick the outline
you'd like to export. Tap the Export menu item under the "Tree" menu,
and check off whichever items you'd like to include in the export. Hit
export and BF will create a number of memos containing the outlines
data.
Flip over to Shadow, and pick "Import from Memos" from the "Transfer"
menu on the File Selection screen. Enter a filename, and pick the
first memo of the BF export. It will be the BF filename. The second
and third (etc) memos will have "(Cont.)" after the filename and ought to
show up in Shadows list in the right order (unless you messed around in
the memopad for awhile).Hit "OK", and if more memos make up the import,
hit "YES" and pick the next memo, repeating until complete. Hit "NO" or
"CANCEL" to finish, and your outline should appear in the Shadow file
listing! Thats it!
If you have any troubles importing your files, please let me know in
email to support@codejedi.com. I'll try and help you, since of course
my goal is help you get your data into Shadow!>br>
Example: Import from something else
This could be easy, or could be painful, depending on how the other
application does its exports. For example, "Hi-Note" makes some exports
that aren't very easy to import -- they can be ambiguous or malformed.
Certainly, HiNote exports use "-" to imply level of indent, which is
pretty unique. For these other applications that dont' happen to
easily fit into Shadows importer, you have two ways of import:
- Work with the data yourself, to make it fit.
You know Shadows simple format above. If the program you wish to
export from simply uses "*" or "-" instead of spaces
for instance, to show
indenting, then export its outlines to memos, sync to the
desktop, edit the memos on the desktop, and then sync them back
to the palm and try importing into Shadow. You could do a
"search and replace" in some word processor to turn the "-"'s
into " " spaces, and then Shadow can import without much
problem. Its usually not too hard to massage the data into
a form Shadow will import.
- Export the data from the original program
- Examine the memos it generates; do they have a format
Shadow can import? (make sure you have a recent version, as
new formats will be added each version!)
- If the format is compatible, simply import it and you're done.
- If the format is incompatible, you will have to...
- Synchronize the memos over to your desktop
- Export from Palm Desktop (or whatever you use; pilot-link
users can extract them directly)
- Edit the files on your desktop with some word processor
or text editor and format them to a format shadow likes
- Import them into memos using Palm Desktop (or whatever)
- Synchronize them to the palm
- Import them into Shadow
- Email support@codejedi.com and ask Jeff to build a formatter for
the program you are importing From. If the program is pretty
popular and Jeff receives lots of requests, he made include
an import-module in a beta, to make imports as painless as they
are for BrainForest.
Exporting Your Data
Exporting is quite easy; on the file selection screen, select a file
to export, and pick the "Export to Memos" menu item or the "Export to DOC"
menu item from the pulldown menu "Transfer". From the window that appears,
choose the format you'd like to export in. Most other programs can
support one or more of importing by "spaces" or "tabs", so pick the best
one for the program you wish to import into, or for the best results in
your destination.
A newer export format is the "Pretty Format", which tries to
use your Shadow items levels as "heading levels" in a word processor
friendly style. Exporting the following list as Pretty to a memo could
result in a memo looking something like this:
For example, if you are exporting for the purposes of including an
outline in email, exporting with spaces for indents may be best, since
it keeps the "width" of the lines down, so they might fit into the
email better. Or if you wish to import into Excel for fiddling with,
exporting by tabs may be best, since Excel can automatically determine
most of the format when tabs are used. Again, it all depends on what
the ultimate destination is. Tabs or spaces are otherwise identical.
Exporting as HTML has some interesting applications: It can be
viewed on a browser, or editing using HTML editors, or loaded
onto a webpage. You can share your outlines quite easily with your
time be simply exporting, syncing, and copying to the right place
on your webserver. MSWord and other word processors can often load
from HTML and maintain the formatting.
Printing
I find exporting to HTML and printing from a browser works quite well. You
simply do it as follows:
- Go to Shadow's file selection screen
- Select a file to export by tapping on it
- Choose the "Export to Memos" menu item
- Select "HTML"
- Tap on OK to export it to as many memo entries as needed
- Synchronize to your desktop PC
- Export to drag and drop the memos to your desktop, to your
word processor, or whatever.
- If the file turned into multiple memos, you will need to
stitch them together with a word pro or text editor
- View the HTML file with a browser
- Push print
Though this is a lot of steps, its pretty quick and not too painful
once you've been through it a time or two. Once I add a desktop conduit,
it will be easier, of course.
Contributed from the Public
Shadow Plan is a shareware Codejedi product. Despite this commercial
side of the software (without which the application could not exist, nor
could you get the very fast support and frequent updates you have now) we
try very hard to be an open, moral, socially responsible company. We publish
our database formats for the handheld, use public protocols like XML for the
desktop, and publish the XML layouts for all to use. We assist outside
developers (commercial or hobbyist) to interact with our products, for
really in the end.. we're all in this big mess together, and why not help
each other out?
Some of these efforts work out to mutual advantage -- third parties create
tools to work with their copy of Shadow to make their lives easier. Some
third parties even produce public applications that can work with Shadow
files. Already there are a number of people working on alternative desktop
Shadow Plan file editors to compete with our own product.. and why not?
Perhaps they will serve a subset of our users better than we can, and thats
a good thing.
When the authors of public tools that can work with Shadow Plan contact
us, we can offer them a little space at the end of the documentation here,
so people know they exist. We do not wish to usurp control nor take any
credit from these fine developers, so we can't take up too much room.. it
just wouldn't be right. But we do wish to acknowledge these efforts, and in
the grain of helping out everyone, we list some of those applications here.
NOTE: These tools are not supported or endorsed by Codejedi.
If anything terrible happens as a result of their use, please contact the
author of the tool in question. We wash our hands of the matter, though
we endeaver to list only tools by reputable individuals!
ShadowLinkHack
This is a handy little tool; in Global Preferences, Link Prefs panel,
enable the "Append origin stamp" and "ShadowLinkHack" options. After
installing ShadowLinkHack and enabling these prefs, you'll be able to jump
from To Do items right into Shadow, centered on the item that originated
the To Do. If you're using To Do linking, then this Hack is for you!
For more information, see the contrib directory in the
Shadow Plan distribution that you installed from.
Send email to Jeff Mitchell at
support@codejedi.com