Blog: WhizFolders, Articles and tips

To make a PDF document from WhizFolders, you just need to install one of those pdf print drivers and print your document to it. The only limitation would be that the links won’t work. Other than that, this method works very well.

One very talented user of WhizFolders, a writer, made a monster 1000-page reference pdf book by this method. I came to know of this pdf export possibility only because of his efforts. Later, when I wanted to write a compact user guide for WhizFolders itself, I used this method to make a pdf file by using the clickbook pdf printer. I added some advanced printing features like print cover while making that compact guide.

I am soon going to look into the possiblity of exporting the links properly to the pdf document. The print driver type pdf exporters do not support this feature.

You can try exporting your notes as Microsoft Word Outline using the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To a Single RTF File as Word Outline” on a document window. Then, Power Point will allow you to import this Word outline.

But you may have to experiment with outline styles a little bit to get the export styles for each level that you like. WhizFolders allows you to export a different font for each level heading so that it is easy to make a global change of style for headings in Word. To check the Export Feature, please check the menu: Tools–Export Selected Topics–To a Single RTF File as Word Outline.

A direct web publishing is not possible. But you can combine multiple topics to create a single web page (html file) with working links between topics and to the other web sites. Then you can transfer this web page to a web site manually by using a publishing or ftp program. Exporting to multiple pages is not possible yet.

To see the details on how to export to HTML, please look up Help Index of WhizFolders on “Exporting to HTML.” Note that there are certain limitations of this export as mentioned later.

Steps to Export the Topics to a web page or HTML File:

1. Select one or more Topics from the Whizfolder document
2. Click on the menu “Tools–Export selected topics–To HTML File.”
3. A screen comes up asking for the Title of the web page.
4. Type a name for the web page and select “Also put jumped topics in the HTML file” check box.
5. Click on OK. A dialog comes up to save to an HTML file.
6. Select a file name and the web page is exported and WhizFolders also gives an option to bring up the browser to test the web page.
7. When you have tested the page, you can use a file transfer (FTP) program to copy it to your web site.

Limitations:

1. Pictures can not be exported to the HTML File. But you can insert html tags to do that. This is explained in the help file and in the article “Inserting custom HTML tags.”
2. Formatting of the text might change as all the RTF options are not possible in HTML.
3. If the check box “Also put jumped topics in the HTML file” is not selected, the links to unexported topics won’t work (i.e. they won’t show the target topic when clicked)
4. To get a hierarchial list of topic name links at the top of the web page, select that option and make sure that you have selected a complete hierarchy of topics in the topic list.

Question: I like the HTML export feature. Obviously, it does not export the pictures in the HTML file. How can I insert my own IMG tags.

You can insert your own HTML with [~HTML …]

Here are the steps to convert your notes for viewing on Palm using iSilo:

1. In WhizFolders, use the Export to HTML feature on the Tools menu to create an HTML file. I’d recommend that you use the option check boxes at the bottom of the HTML export dialog for a better page with all links intact and the table of contents. When possible, export a complete tree so that the table of contents comes out with proper indents. Once you are happy with your HTML file on Windows, you are ready to port it to Palm OS.

   Tip: Note that the HTML output doesn’t contain pictures embedded in RTF. But, you can always insert pictures in the HTML output with custom [~html …] statements as described in WhizFolders help files. However, there is a bug that causes ” to be replaced with " in the output html file. While we fix that, please use a text editor to open and replace " with ” in the html file to make your inserted statements work properly.

2. Get iSilox from http://www.isilox.com and install on your system.
3. In iSiloX, create a new document and add the html file created in step 1 above. With iSilox you will finally be able to create a pdb file.
4. Get the palm component, Isilo reader, from http://isilo.com and install on your Palm. Also install the pdb file created in step 3 above.
5. Then run iSilo reader on the Palm OS and open the pdb.

In fact, this solution will also work for Pocket PC, Windows CE and other handhelds for which an iSilo reader is available.

There are many ways to do this in WhizFolders. Before we describe them, there are two basic operations you need to know.

1. Selecting many notes in the list: You can use the Ctrl-click to select multiple notes. This is similar to Windows Explorer.
2. Deciding whether you need the note names in the copy: Many operations that we describe below copy or omit note names depending on the option “Include Names” that you put ON on the Edit menu. So decide whether you want the names along with text and put this option ON or OFF.

To copy the notes, you first select multiple notes and put on the Include Names option as described above. Then do one of the following:

• Copy then Paste: Click on the Copy toolbar button and then paste in your word processor document.
• Drag and drop: Bring both the list of notes and the word processor windows in view. Start dragging from the icon part of the selected notes to a suitable position in the word processor document.
• Export to an RTF file: Click on the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To single RTF file.” Then you can open that RTF file in your word processor.
• Export to multiple RTF files: Click on the menu “Tools–Export Selected Topics–To multiple RTF files.” It asks you for a folder to create one file for each note.
• Export ALL the topics to an RTF file: This operation is useful to make a complete RTF back up of all your notes from time to time. It is available on the File menu as “Save RTF text of all the topics for backup purposes.” It always exports all the topics and always includes the note names.

Then, there are many other possibilities that you will see on the Edit and Right-click menu on the topic list. For example, you can only copy plain text of notes or the note names only.

Tip: On the Edit menu, you will see an operation “Copy selected topics as they would appear in viewer.” You will understand this only if you know how hyperlinks are coded as Jump statements in WhizFolders. This operation beautifies the links so that the Jump statements are hidden in the copy if possible.