Examples of regular expressions: searching for parentheses

Read about regular expressions that you can use in Atlantis Word Processor to search for parentheses.

Examples of regular expressions: searching for email addresses

Read about regular expressions that you can use in Atlantis Word Processor to search for email addresses.

Adding phrases to the spellchecker dictionary

Most spellcheckers do a reasonably good job of detecting individual misspellings. But when it comes to checking full phrases, spellcheckers do not perform so well, including those found in top-end word processors.

Let's take a real life example.

Let's suppose that you regularly use popular Latin proverbs like "corruptio optimi pessima" (this is a Latin phrase meaning "the corruption of the best is the worst"). If you type this phrase in Atlantis, the spellchecker will red-underline all three words separately:


This is because none of them is present in the Atlantis spellchecker dictionary.

Now if you regularly insert this proverb in your texts, you won't like to see it systematically flagged as a misspelling. You have two ways to go about this.

The first solution will work with any spellchecker (including that of Atlantis). You simply add all the individual words from the phrase to the spellchecker dictionary ("corruptio", "optimi", and "pessima" in our example). In Atlantis, this is done by right-clicking the red-underlined words one after the other, and choosing "Add to Dictionary" from the context menu:


When all three words have been added, Atlantis will not report "corruptio optimi pessima" as a misspelling.

But there are drawbacks to this method. All the words that you add to the dictionary ("corruptio", "optimi", and "pessima" in our example) are treated by the Atlantis spellchecker as proper single words. They are not reported as misspelt if you use them separately. This can have undesirable consequences: if you mistype "corruption" as "corruptio", it might very well be a typo, but the Atlantis spellchecker will not notice because both "corruption" and "corruptio" are now in the spellchecker dictionary. And there is even worse. Atlantis might very well suggest any of these Latin words as possible replacements for misspellings that you make. These suggestions will probably be inappropriate most of the time.

So Atlantis offers you a much better solution with none of the above drawbacks. Instead of adding each word making up a phrase, —one after the other—, you can add the entire phrase to the Atlantis spellchecker dictionary at one go: simply right-click the first of the red-underlined words, and choose "Edit Dictionary..." from the context menu:


Then type or paste the phrase in the "Words" edit box:


Click "Add". "OK" out of the dialog.

From then on, Atlantis will not report the phrase "corruptio optimi pessima" as a misspelling. However, if you type any of these components separately (either "corruptio", or "optimi", or "pessima"), each will be reported as a possible misspelling (they will be red-underlined).

Getting rid of section breaks, but not section formatting

Sections are a powerful mechanism to compose documents with complex page layouts. Formatting options like page margins, page orientation, note numbering, etc, which are normally document-wide, can be particularized for individual document fragments if you include these within specific sections.

Now at times you might want to do just the reverse operation, i.e. merge several sections into one. Most of the time, it will be because you want these sections to share a common format.

The simplest, and to many, the most obvious way to merge two neighbouring sections is by deleting the section break separating them:


Note that section breaks are special symbols displaying in Atlantis only when the "View | Special Symbols" mode is on.

Section breaks can be deleted like any other character in a document. You only need to click before the section break symbol, then press the Del key. This will merge the section above the section break with the section following it.

But then you might have some issues with the formatting properties found in the resulting section. This is because in such cases Atlantis automatically decides which of the two original sets of formatting properties is assigned to the merged section.

So now and again you will want to change this default behavior and tell Atlantis which of the two original sets of formatting properties you want to be used for the resulting section. This is done through the Sections panel of the Atlantis Control Board. Here is how to proceed:

First, click anywhere in the section whose formatting you no longer care to preserve. It will automatically become the "current" section for Atlantis.

Then make sure that the Atlantis Control Board is displaying (check the "View | Control Board" menu command or press F6 if necessary). Then click the "Sections" button at the top of the Control Board to display the Sections panel:


Two scenarios are possible here.

A. If you want the current section to be merged into the preceding section, click "Merge highlighted and previous section" at the bottom of the Sections panel:


The current and the preceding section will become one, using the formatting properties of the section that was originally placed before the section break.

B. If you want the current section to be merged into the next section, click "Merge highlighted and next section" at the bottom of the Sections panel:


The current and the next section will become one, using the formatting properties of the section that was originally placed after the section break.

Note that, in both cases, merging the two sections of course entails automatic removal of the section break that separates them.

Snap to

Any Windows software may display child windows called modal dialogs. A modal dialog requires users to interact with it before they can return to other windows of the parent application.

Most modal dialogs can be closed by clicking either the "OK" or "Cancel" button:


Other modal dialogs have different buttons. A click on these buttons also closes the associated modal dialog. The most common captions for such buttons are "Yes" and "No":


But other captions may be also used, like "Retry", "Ignore", "Open", "Save", etc.

Most of these modal dialogs traditionally have a default button invoking the most common action of the dialog. Default buttons are automatically highlighted with a special border. Its look depends on your Windows version and theme:



The default button in a modal dialog (the button highlighted with a special border) can be "clicked" by pressing the Enter key. Since the default button in a modal dialog is normally a button that is most often clicked in that dialog, "clicking" the default button with a press to the Enter key is a fast and convenient way to close the dialog.

Now if you use the mouse preferentially to deal with the modal dialogs, you might wish to enable a special option available on the "Pointer Options" tab of the "Mouse" applet of the Windows Control Panel:


This option is off by default in Windows. But if you enable it, you will notice a change in the behavior of the mouse pointer in modal dialogs, including the standard dialogs of Windows itself: as you open modal dialogs, you'll see your mouse pointer jump to the default button as if by magic! In this way, you only need to give a click to close the dialog and validate your choices:


Note that not all applications support this "Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box" option of Windows. Atlantis Word Processor supports this option starting from version 1.6.5.2.

Tweaking ePubs (5): Make it quick with a right-click

Making minor changes to existing EPUB files is easy with our free tweak_epub utility. You just launch the utility, direct it to an EPUB file of interest, and make desired changes.

If you need to modify EPUB files only occasionally, launching the utility manually, then browsing your disks for the EPUB file of interest could not be a problem. But if you need to edit many EPUB files, getting through this procedure for each EPUB file might be tiring.

So we have slightly modified the tweak_epub utility to make it more practical. You can now use the Windows Explorer "Open With" right-click command to open any EPUB file straightaway in the tweak_epub utility. This will be particularly useful if you often tweak EPUB files.

So how do you go about this?

1) First, click the following link to re-download the utility:

http://www.AtlantisWordProcessor.com/download/tweak_epub.exe

As before, you can download to any folder on your hard disk, and the utility still does not require installation. To run the utility, simply run the downloaded "tweak_epub.exe" file.

2) Right-click an EPUB file of interest in Windows Explorer.

3) Choose the "Open With..." command from the menu if it is available:


Otherwise, click the "Choose Program..." command:


4) Press the "Browse..." button in the "Open With" dialog:


5) Direct the "Open With..." dialog to the disk folder where you downloaded the tweak_epub utility, and double-click the "tweak_epub.exe" file:


6) Press the OK button in the "Open With" dialog:



From then on, Windows will show the "tweak_epub" command in the "Open With" menu whenever you right-click an EPUB file for editing:


Choosing the "tweak_epub" command will immediately open the selected EPUB file in "Tweak EPUB":

Heading-less chapters (2)

When Atlantis saves a document as eBook, it divides it into chapters according to the Heading paragraphs found in that document. Each paragraph formatted as a Heading paragraph in the source document is interpreted as signaling a new chapter in the book.

Now quite often the first Heading paragraph of a source document is preceded by the book title, a cover picture, and at times by some other text. These are not actually part of any chapter of the book. For example, in the following screen capture, first a cover picture, then the book title ("Rembrandt Biography") and the author’s name ("by John Johnson") precede the first heading ("Childhood"):


When you save this document as eBook in Atlantis, any text preceding the "Childhood" heading is normally saved as a separate first chapter of the eBook. Accordingly, Atlantis will automatically include a corresponding item in the eBook Table Of Contents. This extra item is always named by Atlantis as the eBook "Title page":


Clicking this "Title page" item in the Table Of Contents of an eBook always brings the reader to the first page of the eBook.

Until now there was no way to have a different name for that automatic eBook chapter. Atlantis always used "Title page" as an automatic hard-coded name. But you might prefer a different name. Or if you are writing a book in a language other than English, you might need that automatic item in the table of contents to be named according to that other language. This is easily done using the latest beta version of Atlantis Word Processor and its support for heading-less chapters. Through this new feature of the Save as eBook command of Atlantis, you can now easily instruct Atlantis to use a different name for the initial heading-less chapter of your eBook.

Here are step-by-step instructions:

1) In Atlantis, press Ctrl+Home to place the caret at the beginning of the source document, then press Enter to create a new blank paragraph at the beginning of the document.

2) Choose the "Heading 1" style from the "Style" toolbar box of Atlantis to associate the first paragraph in the document with the "Heading 1" style:


3) Type the desired title for the initial chapter of your book within that first paragraph (for example, type "Cover Page"):


4) Select the first paragraph of the document with the keyboard or mouse (the fastest way to select a paragraph is by triple-clicking it):


5) Choose the "Format | Font..." menu command of Atlantis. Then check the "Strikeout" box:


and OK out of the dialog. The first paragraph in the document will display with strikeout:


This is how you can tell Atlantis that the "Cover Page" heading text from the source document should not be included in the eBook text when you save this document as eBook. On the other hand, the eBook Table Of Contents will automatically include a first item with a "Cover Page" caption (actually the text struck out at the beginning of the source document):

Sticking with JPEG

In Atlantis, documents can include both text and pictures. Pictures can be inserted in two ways:

• You can use the Atlantis "Insert | Picture..." menu command and direct Atlantis to graphic files (GIF, PNG, JPEG, etc) located on your hard drive.
   
  
• You can also first copy a picture onto the Windows clipboard from some other application or from another document open in Atlantis itself, then paste the clipboard picture into the target document.
  

Now you might be curious as to how Atlantis stores pictures in documents, and rightly so, because it has practical implications.

When you save a document containing pictures in Atlantis, these are stored in the document file in either the PNG or JPEG format. It is very much like embedding PNG or JPEG graphic files directly into the document file. And when you close a document, then reopen it, the graphic format of each picture is retained within the document file as previously saved. If a document contains a picture in the JPEG format, Atlantis sticks with the JPEG format for that picture when you resave the document. Same thing for pictures found in the PNG format.

Even so, in practice Atlantis stores most pictures in documents in the PNG format. Pictures are stored as JPEG only when JPEG was their original format.

Atlantis offers no way to find out if the pictures included in a document are actually PNG or JPEG. This is because in most cases it is irrelevant which of the graphic formats is actually used by Atlantis to store a given picture within a document file.

But it is still possible to say which of the two graphic formats will be used by Atlantis to store a picture within a document:

• If you paste a picture from the Windows clipboard, most probably it will be stored by Atlantis in the PNG format.
   
  
• If you insert a picture through the "Insert | Picture..." menu command, it will be stored by Atlantis in the JPEG format if the graphic file that you insert is originally of the JPEG format.
   
  
• For graphic files of any other supported format than JPEG that you insert through the "Insert | Picture..." menu command, Atlantis will systematically use the PNG format.
  

Again, most chances are that an inserted picture will be stored by Atlantis in the PNG format.

But at times you might want to force Atlantis to store a given picture in the JPEG format instead. There is only one way to do this: have this picture in the JPEG format on your hard drive and use the Atlantis "Insert | Picture..." menu command to insert it.

You might ask, why would I want to force Atlantis to store pictures in the JPEG format?

If your picture is a "color-rich" painting or photo, it normally takes much less disk space if stored as JPEG. Converting a JPEG photo to the PNG format, nearly always leads to a much bigger PNG file. So if you have graphic files in the JPEG format on your disk, it is preferable to insert them AS IS through the Atlantis "Insert | Picture..." menu command. Most likely, this will create a more compact document file.

This remark holds for eBooks too. If you save a document as eBook in Atlantis, pictures stored as JPEGs within the source document file will be saved as JPEGs too in the eBook file. This might also significantly reduce the global size of the eBook file.

So if you designed a rich-color cover picture for an eBook in a graphic software, we recommend that you do not copy/paste the picture from the graphic software into an Atlantis document. It is because your cover picture will most probably be inserted into the document in the PNG format.

Instead, save the cover picture to your disk in the JPEG format from your graphic software. Then use the Atlantis "Insert | Picture..." menu command to insert the saved JPEG file into a document in Atlantis. If you then save the document as eBook in Atlantis, the cover picture will be stored within the eBook file as JPEG. Your EPUB file will only be lighter.

Look-alikes

We quite often feel the need to emphasize specific fragments of documents in order to draw the reader's attention to them. To achieve this, we format them in a special way so that they stand out from the rest of the text:




In this particular example, the "extra formatting" of the word "immediately" includes bold, red font color, and underline. Applying such a formatting to a selection of text is as easy as ABC. There are multiple ways to do so in Atlantis: you can use the "Format | Font..." menu command, various font formatting toolbar buttons, keyboard shortcuts, the Format Palette of Atlantis, etc. No doubt you are familiar with these methods.

Now let's suppose that we want to emphasize a different text fragment in the same way. Let's suppose that we have the following text and want to format "Your site will be banned" in the same way as "immediately":




Of course, we can repeat all the actions that we performed to format the word "immediately".

But things can be a lot easier in Atlantis: we can use special copy/paste commands.

As you know, Windows includes a temporary storage place for clips of data, namely the Windows Clipboard. All applications, including Atlantis, can place fragments of document onto this clipboard, so that they can be retrieved at a later time and pasted into a different location. This is the standard copy/paste operation.

On top of that, Atlantis has a special proprietary clipboard called the Font Format Clipboard. It works just like the standard Windows Clipboard, except that it stores font formatting properties instead of text fragments.

Here is how it works.

First, let's click within the word whose formatting we want to clone (the word "immediately" in our example):




Then we can press the "Copy font format" toolbar button, or hit the associated hot key (Ctrl+Shift+C). Atlantis will automatically place the font formatting properties found at the current cursor location (i.e. the font formatting of the word "immediately") onto its Font Format Clipboard.

Of course, as you would expect, there is a corresponding "Paste font format" command.

We must first select the target text fragment:




Then we can press the "Paste font format" toolbar button, or hit the associated hot key (Ctrl+Shift+V). Atlantis will automatically apply all the font formatting found on its special font format clipboard to the selected text:




Deselecting text by clicking anywhere in the document let's us see that both text fragments ("immediately" and "Your site will be banned") are now formatted identically:




The font formatting stored on this special clipboard remains available until you change it. In this way, you can apply identical font format to as many text fragments as you wish. Simply select a target fragment, and use the "Paste font format" command of Atlantis.

You can even apply formatting to multiple text fragments at one go. First, select them as a multiple selection:




Then press the "Paste font format" toolbar button, or hit Ctrl+Shift+V. They will all be reformatted in the same way:

Fonts, fonts, fonts

Unlike plain text editors, word processors allow you to format text with different font faces (or simply fonts). This is such a basic procedure that even complete newbies very quickly learn what "Arial" or "Times New Roman" are and how to apply them to text.

But to a lot of users, managing "fonts" is still an unclear business.

First, how do you know which fonts are currently available in Atlantis?

You can either press Ctrl+Shift+F or use the mouse to open the "Font" toolbar drop-down. Or you can open the "Format | Font…" dialog (Ctrl+D). You then get a complete listing of the fonts that you can use to format text in Atlantis.

Now Atlantis users periodically ask "How do I add fonts to Atlantis?”

This is an easy one: you don't!

You add fonts to your Windows system, not to Atlantis.

Atlantis does not have its own collection of fonts. Atlantis simply supports all the "TrueType" fonts available on your Windows system.

If you want to add fonts to your system, you first need to go to the Windows Control Panel and display the "Fonts" applet (click here if you do not know how to access the Windows Control Panel). This will give you a complete list of the fonts installed on your system. For word processing purposes, you are only interested in the fonts that are tagged with the "(TrueType)" caption. These will either have a "TT" or "O" icon ("TT" stands for "TrueType", and "O" for "OpenType" but they all actually belong to the "TrueType" category):


The TrueType fonts available on your system are actually special files with the ".ttf" extension (for example, the file for "Times New Roman" is named "TIMES.TTF").

Of course, to add (install) new fonts to your system, you need to have the corresponding files on your computer hard drive. ".ttf" files are often stored within ".zip" files. You need to uncompress them to one of your disks. Font files, both free and paying, can be found on the Web (you'll find links to sites with free downloadable fonts on the Useful Links page of the Atlantis site).

The procedure is then straightforward.

Choose the "File | Install New Font..." menu command in the "Fonts" applet of the Windows Control Panel:


Use the "Folders" and "Drives" boxes of the "Add fonts" dialog to navigate to the folder where you have stored the ".ttf" files that you want to install. Windows will give you a listing of the fonts it found:


Click the "Select All" button:


and OK out of the "Add fonts" dialog.

The newly installed fonts will immediately appear among the available fonts in Atlantis. You do not even need to close and restart a running instance of Atlantis. Atlantis is automatically informed by Windows about any newly available fonts, and Atlantis picks them up just as automatically. The new fonts are visible in the various font lists of Atlantis:




So after installing new fonts on your Windows system, you can immediately start using them to format your documents in Atlantis.

Now you might never add fonts to your system and stick with the standard set of fonts shipped with your version of Windows. But even then, the likelihood is that you will use only a fraction of all the available fonts to format your texts in Atlantis. Albeit unwittingly, you will have "favorite" fonts. There is just one small snag here. Your "favorite fonts" will be scattered throughout the alphabetically-sorted complete list of all available fonts. That list will often be overlong, and selecting the desired font from that list will inevitably be awkward and time-consuming.

But don't despair! Atlantis offers a most practical solution to this problem: you can tell Atlantis which of the available fonts are your favorites. They will then be included in a shortlist of your favorite fonts.

Here is how to proceed:

1) Choose the "Tools | Options..." menu command of Atlantis, and click the "My Favorite Fonts..." button on the "General" tab:


This will display the "Favorite Fonts" dialog. By default, it includes three "favorite" fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana:


2) To remove a font from that list of Favorite Fonts, click to select it, then press the "Delete" button:


To remove all fonts from the list of Favorite Fonts, press the "Delete All" button instead:


3) To add a new font to your Favorite Fonts, pull down the list of all installed fonts (click the down arrow to the right of the topmost box in the "Favorite Fonts" window):


Click to select a font of interest:


Then press the "Add" button:


The new font will appear among the Favorite Fonts:


Of course, to register your changes to the Favorite Fonts you need to OK out of the "Favorite Fonts" dialog:



Now you might ask "how will my Favorite Fonts be displayed in Atlantis?"

By default, your Favorite Fonts will be systematically displayed at the top of the Atlantis font lists:




This obviously makes it easier for you to select any of your Favorite Fonts from what would otherwise be an overlong font list.

But Atlantis offers you a lot more practicality in this respect!

The "General" tab of the "Tools | Options..." dialog includes a "Use My Favourite Fonts only" option:


If you activate this option, the font lists in Atlantis will offer nothing but your Favorite Fonts:




If you don't intend to use any other font in your documents, this will make font selection a breeze. Note that this isn't so restrictive as it might sound: as we explained above, you can always add new fonts to the list of your favorite fonts.

Also note that activating the "Use My Favorite Fonts only" option does not affect existing documents previously formatted with other fonts than your Favorite Fonts. These documents will still be displayed as intended originally. The "Use My Favorite Fonts only" option only changes the number of fonts that Atlantis will offer to format or reformat text.

Favorite fonts can be applied directly from the keyboard. For this, you first need to associate each (or some) of your favorite fonts with a hot key. Here is how to proceed:

1) Choose the "Tools | Hot Keys..." menu command.

2) Select the "Fonts" category:


3) Click to select the font of interest:


4) Click in the "New hot key" box:


5) Press the desired hot key on your keyboard.

Alternatively click the "..." (three dots) button next to the "New hot key" box:


and choose any unused hot key from the list:


6) Press the Assign button:


7) OK out of the "Hot Keys" dialog.

After this you'll be able to apply your favorite fonts to selections of text with a simple press of the associated hot keys (in the above example, pressing the Ctrl+Shift+A hot key will format text with the "Achilles" font).

Finally a note regarding "uncommon" (rare) fonts.

If you are planning to send your documents to people, be careful to avoid formatting them with fonts unavailable on their systems. Documents formatted with "fonts missing on the destination system" will often display incorrectly, and in any case, not as intended. This is because font files are not embedded in RTF or DOC files. When documents are formatted with a missing font, word processors display them with substitute fonts chosen from the ones available on the current computer. So it is always preferable to avoid using "exotic fonts" in documents meant to be read on other systems. It is advisable to stick with a set of common fonts.

However, if you save your Atlantis documents as PDF, they will display correctly on any system since fonts automatically get embedded into PDF files.

And if you use Atlantis to save your documents as eBook, you'll have an option to embed the required fonts in the eBook file. In this case, your EPUB files will automatically be displayed with the original fonts.