Blog: WhizFolders, Articles and tips

How can I change the “default font” in all of the actual text stored in WF - not just the topic - but the whole document?

Select all those topics and click on the menu “Tools–Change Font in Selected Topics.” Note that this will only change the “default font.” That means, the text that you entered originally without changing its font is in default font and only that would change. That is the way it works in Microsoft RichEdit that WhzFolders uses.

If you also want the future topics to get this default font, you can set that up in “Tools–File Options–New Topics.”

Please also see the demo on fonts in the demos section of whizfolders.com.

When I open a topic in the editor, I’d like to automatically go to the end of the editor so that I can add more information. Is there a way to do this?

We don’t have exactly this feature but there is something very close. WhizFolders can actually remember your last position in the editor and can open the same position next time. It may not even be the last position. To set this up, please click on the menu “Tools — File Options”. Then on the “Desktop” page, select the option “Remember everything, including the topics open for editing.” This not only remembers the editor position but the viewing position of the topics too as you go through the topic list.

Also, for going to the very end in the editor, you can always use the standard “Ctrl+End” key combination.

There are many features in WhizFolders for editing in separate windows. I assume that you already tried the advanced editor that opens topics in a tabbed editor window. Now here are some more tricks that show how flexible WhizFolders is.

Please try all these neat tricks that show different aspects of starting an editor:

• When the two topics are open in the advanced tabbed editor, right-click on the menu “New Editor Window.” This will transfer that topic to a new editor window. You can then arrange the two editor windows the way you want, side by side.
• If you want these two topics to remember their position, right-click on “Pin this topic” on both of them so that the menu is ticked (switched on). Now whenever you open these topics, they will open in their remembered positions.
• Click on the menu “Tools–File Options–Desktop” and switch on the option “Open each topic in a separate editor.” Once you do that, each click on advanced editor opens that topic in a separate editor window.
• You can even have all such open topic editors automatically restored on the next open of the document by “remember everything” option on the File Options–Desktop.
• You might have noticed that if you double-click on a topic name in the topic list (or hit the Enter key on it), it starts a quick editor in the right pane. What if you always want to open an advanced editor on a double-click? To do that, you can switch off an option in “Tools–General Options–Editor.” The option is “Start Quick Edit on Enter key.”

WhizFolders must be using RichEdit 4.1 in order to allow unicode. You can make sure whether WhizFolders  is using RichEdit 4.1 by clicking on the menu Help–About and then see the report on the button Status. It shows the RichEdit version in use. It should be 4.1. If it isn’t, you need to follow these steps to switch it on:

• Click on the menu Tools–General Options–Editor.
• Switch on the last option that enables use of RichEdit 4.1 (msftedit.dll).
• Click OK to finish the options dialog.
• Exit WhizFolders by the menu File–Exit.
• Restart it and again check on the Help–About–Status whether RichEdit 4.1 was really switched on.

Smart quotes is a feature of Microsoft RichEdit control that WhizFolders uses for its editor. You can turn smart quotes on or off by keys Ctrl-Shift-’.

For other such key combinations, please see the following table that we borrowed from the Microsoft documentation. IMPORTANT NOTE: All of them may not work as some may have been assigned to the menus to trigger menu actions in WhizFolders.

Question: When I double-click a topic name in the list or press Enter key after selecting it, it starts the Quick Editor. I want to start the Advanced Editor instead. What option can I change?

Please click on the menu “Tools–General Options.” Then click on the Editor page of the Options screen. Look for the option, “Start Quick Edit on the Enter Key.” Please switch it off. Once you do that, the advanced editor will open on a double-click or Enter key. The quick editor can still be used when needed but only by clicking its button on the right pane.

In WhizFolders, we avoided using any other RTF or HTML editor control from other companies. We decided to use Microsoft RichEdit control as the note editor in spite of the fact that it is quite complex to use, especially for OLE stuff like displaying pictures. Why did we go to all that trouble? The idea is that we want you to easily exchange RTF text with Microsoft Word, Wordpad and other RTF editors. Unless you can exchange text easily, it is difficult to work with many software tools. And, using Windows effectively means being able to use many tools together, isn’t it?

There’s more. WhizFolders now uses the latest unicode-enabled RichEdit. This means even more RTF compatibility. For example, the tables copied from Microsoft Word now display very well in your WhizFolders Deluxe notes.

Using the RichEdit also means being able to insert OLE objects. Try inserting a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet by Insert Object in a WhizFolders note. You will be delighted. Moreover, we have made our own little innovations in RichEdit–easy hyperlinks that can be typed, nested lists and so on. We will continue to use newer RichEdit controls as they are released by Microsoft.

We think no one uses RichEdit as well as we do:) Please also see “Other strong points of using RTF” later in this article.

You can never please everyone: Some trial users complain that WhizFolders doesn’t preserve the format when they copy information from the web. First, I would like to point out that keeping web pages exactly is not the primary use of WhizFolders. As to why WhizFolders can’t preserve the format of the text copied form the web, this is a side effect of using an RTF control as the editor. Here is a little explanation:

It is the Browser that converts to RTF: When you copy text in the browser, it is the browser that is responsible for converting from the HTML format of the web pages to the RTF format. So the RTF that you paste in WhizFolders will be as good as the browser making it up. If you use FireFox, it doesn’t even put an RTF copy on the clipboard. As a result when you paste from FireFox, you get only plain text.

Internet Explorer does a better job of making up RTF of your copied text. But still, it can never be perfect. Many things in HTML, especially tables, do not convert well to RTF.

At least, WhizFolders preserves links: Also, Internet Explorer does not put the links properly in the RTF copy. You can prove this by pasting a text full of links in Wordpad. Wordpad also uses the same RTF control that WhizFolders does but it doesn’t resolve the links and many times, they won’t work. In version 6.1 of WhizFolders, we have spent considerable effort to make sure that the links are resolved properly. Since it is a new feature, it might encounter cases where it can’t do that. If you find a link that doesn’t work, please send us a sample.

Other strong points of using RTF:

Another reason for using an RTF format for WhizFolder documents is based on the different ways that people use WhizFolders:

1. Writing a document: developing a document in pieces, making an outline, adding more pieces as the research progresses, and finally joining the pieces to make a complete document.
2. Making study notes when learning and then print them out to make comprehensive review material.
3. Other information management uses that utilize the power of hyperlinking features in WhizFolders.
4. Managing random bits of information and then categorizing and making sense of them.

While you may find many other tools in the fourth category, you will find that WhizFolders is unique in other categories of uses mentioned above. You should be able to prepare an outline and do your research in a list form and later be able to join the pieces to make a big document. One of the users even made a 1000-page document by combining the pieces. You can’t think of such feats in other software. It is because of the list-outling in WhizFolders and the RTF format that these features are possible.

Had we used an HTML editor, perhaps, the pastes from the web pages had kept their original format. But, the first two major uses of WhizFolders would have practically vanished. You can’t combine different web sites into one document and yet preserve their look and feel in the document pages. The point I am trying to make is that when doing research or writing documents, you care less about the format but the content of the text. You then format it the way you want. That is the core principle on which WhizFolders is designed. And, it will grow in that direction only.

But keeping in view the “random information” users of WhizFolders, in future, we might proide a secondary document type that is not RTF but HTML. This would be more like a database rather than a document and its primary use would be for saving random pieces of information from the web in their original format. But you can never expect other power features of WhizFolders in these types of documents. For example, you would not be able to join those pieces to make a big document or get a combined printout.

In WhizFolders, after starting the quick editor, you can drag the Editor toolbar out of the viewer area as shown in the following picture.

This clears up more editing area in the quick editor. As always, you can remain in the edit mode while adding or editing more topics. The editor toolbar goes away only when you stop the editor. Also, WhizFolders remembers the position of the moved toolbar so next time, you don’t have to move it. With this feature, we have addressed the needs of those users who wanted to remain in edit mode for longer time without restricting the area available for editing.