About Autonotes Repositories

You can have as many Autonotes repositories as you like, however you cannot link documents in different repositories. Putting all your notes in the one repository gives you maximum flexibility in organising your notes. Think of Wikipedia - the topics are diverse, but there may be only a few degrees of separation between diverse topics. You can keep things organised by tagging appropriately.

By default, AutoNotes comes setup to have one notes repository in ~/Library/Application Support/Automaton/Notes. You can change this location or add new repositories in Automaton Preferences. You only need to add a repository to your Preferences if you want it to be activated by a hot key.

AutoNotes repositories are simple folders containing a mixture of TXT, RTF and RTFD documents. Each document is a "page" in the AutoNotes system. That means as far as the rest of the system is concerned, there is nothing special. It means Spotlight will index your documents normally. Time Machine will backup your individual pages or files separately. And Mobile Me/iDisk will treat it as a regular folder of documents.

Opening AutoNotes

There are a number of ways to open your AutoNotes repository:

• Select Open from the menu and select a folder or autonotes repository.
• From the menu (or the Status Bar menu if you have it enabled), you can choose Open Config to open repositories you have listed in your Preferences.
• If you've previously setup hotkeys for that repository (accessed from Preferences within the Notes window), and if that repository is listed in your Preferences to "run", then AutoNotes can be activated from anywhere with the hotkey.
• If the repository is listed in your Automaton Preferences, and if the Open checkbox is ticked, then the Notes window will open when Automaton is launched.

Hotkeys

From the AutoNotes window, select Preferences from the toolbar. Here you can setup three possible hotkeys:

• A hotkey to activate AutoNotes at any time. (For the initial repository, F1 is the default).
• A hotkey to activate AutoNotes at any time and copy the selected text from whatever application you are in at the time to a new note. (For the initial repository, Option-F1 is the default).
• A hotkey to activate AutoNotes at any time and copy text from the Pasteboard to a new note. (For the initial repository, Command-F1 is the default).

In order for the hotkeys to be active, the repository must be listed in your Automaton Preferences, and the run checkbox must be ticked.

Creating a new note

When the Automaton window is opened, it is already ready to accept a new note, so that note-taking is fast. But if you are looking at an existing note, and want to create a new note, click on New Note button. Enter a title for the note. Enter some tags to classify the note. Make sure you press Return after typing each tag to finalize the tag. Enter notes into the text area.

You can also add tags by opening the Tags drawer from the toolbar, and dragging an existing tag into the tags field.

Notes are always automatically saved. If you close the AutoNotes window, or navigate to a different note, changes are always saved. (This will become optional in a future release).

Linking Notes

Anytime the title of a note appears in the text of another note, that text becomes a link to that document.

The easiest way to create such a link is to highlight a word or words in a document and press Link in the AutoNotes toolbar. This creates a new document with a title of the highlighted words. Press Back in the toolbar, and you will see that these words are now highlighted as a link. Try just typing the same word somewhere else in your document, and you will see that it automatically becomes a link.

Back and Forward

Just like a web browser, you can go back and forward between notes using the Back and Forward toolbar buttons.

Home Page

One of your notes can be designated the "Home" page, by ticking the Is Home checkbox at the bottom of the page.

You can navigate quickly to the home page with the Home button on the Toolbar, and the Home page is the first one displayed when the AutoNotes window is shown.

File Types

You can choose from plain text, RTF or RTFD file types. RTF allows you to store rich text and fonts, but no graphics. RTFD allows graphics too. You can cut and paste photos and graphics from other applications, or you can drag and drop, depending on the source application.

You can set a default file type in the Notes Preferences for that repository.

Printing

In addition to the regular Print menu item, you can print multiple notes at once from OS-X. Open your Notes reporitory/folder in Finder. (You can use the Reveal in Finder toolbar button if it helps). Multiple select all the files you want to print by holding down the Command key and selecting them all in Finder. Then select File -> Print from the Finder menu.

See also

Searching and Tags
Importing and File Types