ScrapBook's Features (in depth)
Nested
Folders
ScrapBook
lets you organize your notes in a hierarchical collection of folders,
in which a folder can contain other folders, with no limit imposed on
the nesting depth. A simple "Folders" screen lets you
navigate
quickly through the hierarchy. You can
restructure the folders and move notes from one folder to another using
Cut and Paste operations.
You can continue to organize notes using "categories" (to carry over
the organization when notes are imported from Memos) even as the notes
are
assigned to
folders (these two methods of organizing your notes can co-exist).
Superior
Search Capabilities
There
are a number of replacements available for the Palm OS Memos and Memo
Pad applications,
offering enhanced capabilities compared to the built-in program,
however, ScrapBook offers exceptional search
capabilities. Taken as a set, several of ScrapBook's features
help
to make its search capability quite easy to use and very
efficient. "Keyword auto-completion" (described below) helps
minimize the time needed to enter the word or words you want to search
for. An internal cross-reference enables the actual search to
be
performed very quickly (without having to scan large amounts of
text). By sorting the search results to list the best matches
first, the note you're looking for will probably be at
or near the top of the list. After a search, you can browse
through multiple "hits" without needing to repeat the search.
Thus, when you know what you're looking for, a search may often be the
easiest way to go straight to the information that you're looking for.
Multiple
Keyword Search
ScrapBook's
primary search feature is
the multiple-keyword search. The word or words used in a
note's
title
are
considered to be searchable keywords. Optionally, you can
list
additional keywords after the note's title (for example, the note's
topic or subject matter,
or synonyms for words used in the title).
A
keyword search can search for one or
more keywords. It is possible that several matching notes
will be
found. The best matches are those notes which matched the
largest
number of keywords, so these appear first in the screens that let you
browse through the results of a search.
An internal cross-reference (which cross-references known keywords with
the notes that use them) provides two kinds of speed improvement:
- Keyword
Autocompletion: when specifying a keyword you want to
search for, you only need to enter enough letters for ScrapBook to
recognize it correctly (ScrapBook fills in a guess for all the
remaining letters so you can see when the recognition is correct).
- Direct
lookup of matching notes - without needing to take the
time to perform a text-based search! Keyword searches are
very
fast, even on older devices with slow processors.
Additional
Search Features
- String
search - similar to a keyword search, except that it also
searches the message text of the notes, and can search for an exact
phrase. Optionally, the message text of encrypted notes can
be
included in this kind of a search. (This
search
mode does not use the internal cross-reference.) This search
mode
can (optionally) be restricted to search just a particular category, or
just
the notes and/or folders selected in the Folders form, or just the
notes found by the previous search.
- Global
Find - ScrapBook supports the Palm OS® Global Find
feature.
- Find
String - perform forward or backward searches to find
occurrences of a string within the text of the current note.
Additional
Features
- You
can use "virtual folders", which associate
notes with a given virtual folder by performing a keyword search for
the words used in the virtual folder's path. A virtual
folder's
contents appear immediately (as soon as the folder is created) -
provided that the pre-existing notes already have the needed keywords
assigned. Also, there can be multiple virtual folders that
'find'
a given note.
- You
can choose which notes to encrypt (using
the DES encryption algorithm), and what password to use for each
encrypted note.
- Remembers
passwords in use during the current session so
that decryption attempts often don't need to prompt for a password
(this memory is cleared as soon as you leave ScrapBook or power down
the handheld).
- Import
/ Export notes from (or to) the built-in "Memos" or "Memo
Pad"
application (which provides a path for exchanging notes with the
PC). Notes can be imported/exported directly to/from folders.
- ScrapBook's
data is automatically backed up to the PC during
HotSync to guard against data loss in case the handheld device is lost
or damaged or loses data due to low batteries, etc. The PC's
copy
of the data can be used to restore ScrapBook data onto a handheld
device (the original handheld device or a replacement).
- Supports
Palm OS® "categories"
- Supports the 5-Way Navigator control (on Palm
Powered™ devices made by Palm, Inc.)
- Can
list notes, sorting by:
- Creation
date
- Modification
date
- Title
(alphabetical order)
- Number
of folders the note is linked to (0 or 1)
- Message
size
- (default
ordering, by ID number - optimizes lookup speed)