Re: Nebulous Notes keyboard macros.

[Esther]

Hi Geoff,

You asked:
> 
> Thanks to Esther's tip I started playing with NN4DB, and it seems to have 
> great potential.
> 
> I wonder though if others have discovered a better technique for using the 
> keyboard utility bar?  After enabling it and substituting "unpronounceable" 
> for more meaningful names (i.e. "undo", "redo", etc), only three or four 
> active items are visible at a time.  I can expose them via the three finger 
> flick gesture and realize that its possible to reorder them so as to place 
> the most commonly used ones on top, but am wondering if there is a way to 
> expose more of them at a time?  Even with the one character names it did not 
> appear that there were more than four keys visible at a time in the keyboard 
> utility bar.
> 

Glad you found the Nebulous Notes (for Dropbox) app of interest, and I'm going 
to abbreviate this as NN4D (your unofficial short form) or NN in my 
description. To recap, this is an iOS text editor app that you can use for note 
taking and/or coding, and which also lets you sync your notes with a Dropbox 
account.  It's possible to use NN4D just to store notes locally on a single iOS 
device, but it's most useful to use in combination with a Dropbox account, and 
sync your notes between multiple devices and your computer.  It's a universal 
app that can be used with iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, and will also work in 
either landscape or portrait mode for each device.  You can also open or save 
Dropbox files from or to any folder in your Dropbox.  This means that syncing 
and saving the file is not automatic, since there isn't a designated Dropbox 
folder that is used as there is in many note-taking apps that work with 
Dropbox, such as Elements.  And this app is also popular with low vi
 sion users, because you can select font size and type, and also text color and 
background color in the settings menu for the app.  

First, let me point out that you can use the Keyboard Utility Bar that can be 
turned on under "Settings" to add any keys that you use frequently on the top 
line of the keyboard.   So, if you didn't want to use macros for undo and redo, 
inserting the current date or time, forward delete, or for selecting or moving 
the insertion point around the document, you could simply customize your 
utilities by substituting any regular key that you use frequently in the "Text 
to insert" text field and also in the "Alias" text field when you edit your 
macro definition by flicking right to the "compose, button" and double tapping. 
 In this usage, you could put a row of number keys or an "@" for email 
addresses into the top row.  

If you want to use the existing macros, the "find" macro that is the third of 
the default keyboard utility bar keys is actually taking up about the space of 
4 keys, so moving this down in the list will give you more keys showing on 
utility bar. There's no text field alias for this macro, so you can only change 
its position or remove it.  You can also abbreviate the aliases for the keys 
for moving your insertion point left and right by a word or character to be 
"lw","rw","lc", and "rc".

However, in the latest versions of NN4D, the "find" macro can be used in 
combination with the "select" macro and the movement keys. The problem with 
trying to use "find" functions in apps for text notes is that, in general, the 
word(s) you try to find are simply highlighted, which doesn't help VoiceOver 
users. In NN4D, using the "find" macro also highlights the result and doesn't 
announce anything, but if you use the movement keys to move by a word or 
character, it will move your insertion point to the new location.  Also, 
because there is a "select" function key in the Keyboard Utility Bar, and 
VoiceOver does announce selected text, as well as text that you move over with 
your insertion point, you can first use the find key on the Keyboard Utility 
Bar (VO will say "search field, is editing") and double tap or double tap and 
hold, then type in your search term.  The "return" key turns into a "search" 
key and highlights your searched item, which still doesn't get announced.  H
 owever, if you move a character to the left and then a word to the right with 
the utility keys, VoiceOver will announce the word as the insertion point moves 
over it. It will also announce text if you double tap the "select" button and 
then double tap keys to move by character or words to the right or left, or the 
keys to move up or down. Experimenting with this requires rearranging your keys 
so that the find, select, and movement keys are all displayed and next to each 
other, and I still find the focus to be a little unstable.  The issue is 
whether my commands work on the keyboard key for "find" or in the main text 
field -- I don't want to type in a search term into the keyboard utility bar 
and find that I've been typing these terms into my note, instead! So I do a 
double tap and hold in the find key's text field. The find searches 

Nebulous Notes keyboard macros.

[Geoff Waaler]

Greetings,

Thanks to Esther's tip I started playing with NN4DB, and it seems to have great 
potential.

I wonder though if others have discovered a better technique for using the 
keyboard utility bar?  After enabling it and substituting "unpronounceable" for 
more meaningful names (i.e. "undo", "redo", etc), only three or four active 
items are visible at a time.  I can expose them via the three finger flick 
gesture and realize that its possible to reorder them so as to place the most 
commonly used ones on top, but am wondering if there is a way to expose more of 
them at a time?  Even with the one character names it did not appear that there 
were more than four keys visible at a time in the keyboard utility bar.

Best regards.
Geoff
<--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --->

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