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:

Portable fonts

As you know, Atlantis ranks as one of the most portable word processors available: you can easily install Atlantis with your favorite settings to a memory flash drive and Atlantis will travel with you wherever you go.

Atlantis will work just as smoothly whether it is run from a hard drive or a flash drive.

However, you might experience minor inconveniences related to fonts when you run Atlantis from a plugged-in flash drive. The host system might miss some of the fonts that you commonly use to format your documents, and Atlantis will not be able to format, display or print correctly any document using those "missing fonts".

No need to worry though: the next release of Atlantis will introduce a solution for such font-related problems in portable copies of Atlantis.

All you will have to do is to place the files of your favorite fonts in the home folder of Atlantis on the flash drive: no matter how "un-common" these fonts will be, Atlantis will be able to use them even if they are missing from the host system.

Here is exactly how things will work.

First, you will have to copy the desired TrueType font files from your hard disk to the home folder of Atlantis on the flash drive. Font files are normally stored on your hard disk under the "C:\Windows\Fonts" folder, and TrueType font files have either the .ttf, .otf, or .ttc file extension. The home folder of Atlantis is where the main executable file of Atlantis (Atlantis.exe) is stored. The font files can be placed directly in the root of the Atlantis home folder on the flash drive, or in a dedicated "Fonts" subfolder.

Then, when you launch Atlantis from the flash drive, it will automatically scan for font files under its home folder (including subfolders), and will temporarily load the fonts into the memory of the host system. All the loaded fonts will immediately be available in Atlantis, and in any other application that you run on the host system. Note that these fonts are loaded only temporarily into the memory of the host system: they are unloaded from it as soon as you close the portable instance of Atlantis.

The U3-smart portable version of Atlantis will also support font loading from a flash drive. But since the home folder of Atlantis on U3-smart drives is normally hidden, you will have to place the fonts files in the "Documents" folder of the U3-smart drive.

So Atlantis will not only travel with your favorite settings, it will also travel with your favorite fonts. As usual with Atlantis, you will have the best of all possible worlds! :)

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.

The feel of paper

All the time, through thousands of years of existence, humans have tried to record their knowledge, thoughts, impressions – in other words, the information that was important to them – to make it available to other humans. As human civilization evolved, different ways to store information were used. Our prehistoric ancestors painted on cave walls. Later, people carved texts on wax, clay or stone. Egyptians wrote on papyrus, others on parchment scrolls. Then for centuries, and especially since Gutenberg invented the printing press in mid-fifteenth century, paper books have been our main storage medium.

But following this we have seen the advent of fast personal computers and digital screens, and we might think that the age-old dominance of printed books is coming to an end. Just as floppy disks are no longer used to store or transfer information between computers, will the same happen to printed books? Will they be replaced by their electronic counterparts, the eBooks?

To many of us, eBooks are incommensurably superior to traditional paper books. eBooks are browsed or searched much more easily. eBooks are also easier to publish: they don't require printing, binding, they don't waste paper and ink, they will always be more compact than printed books. Any modern eBook reader with a size not larger than an average paper book can already store an amount of eBooks equivalent to a small library of printed books. eBooks have plenty of advantages over printed books. Some people believe that in a not too distant future printed books will only be kept in museums and private collections of bibliophiles. Who knows, maybe paper books are like dinosaurs whose time of extinction is nearing?

However, we know that there are still people who will always prefer the smell of ink and the feel of paper of the printed books they knew in "the good old days".

Where do you stand on this?

Below are various links to topical articles. We hope they'll help you form an unbiased educated opinion.

Some Thoughts About E-Reading

Ebooks vs. Paper Books

E-book vs. Paper Book

Publishing: ebooks vs. Paper Books

Environmental Impact Of E-Books vs. Paper Books

Ebooks Versus Paper Books: The Pros and Cons

How Green Is My iPad?

Testing the iPad's Trip-Worthiness

Automatic text wrapping

There is one thing which all word processors do, and which is as natural for word processors to do as it is natural for rivers to flow. It is automatic text wrapping. What does this mean? "Automatic" means that you don't have to worry about it, word processors do it automatically for you. "Text wrapping" means that all newly typed text is carried over to the next paragraph line as soon as that text becomes too long to fit the screen. As a general rule, the maximal width allowed for a paragraph line is limited by the width and margins of the current page. When new text cannot be added to a line because it would exceed the boundary set for the lines of the current paragraph, word processors automatically wrap the text around. It isn't actually the case, but things then look as if line breaks had been inserted to wrap text around:


In the above picture, these virtual line breaks have been marked with red arrows. We say "virtual" because word processors do not automatically insert hard-coded line breaks in documents. "Virtual" or automatic line breaks terminating paragraph lines are dynamic: they are used only temporarily to lay the text out in the document window, or on the pages sent to the printer. When you edit a paragraph and add or remove words, word processors automatically create new automatic line breaks allowing the paragraph text to nicely reflow from one paragraph line over to the next line. Note that these ad hoc automatic line breaks are never saved to the document files. The paragraphs of saved documents only contain a continuous flow of text. But line breaks are automatically created again when you open a document.

Even though most of us do not even notice it, this is how all word processors work, including Atlantis.

Now there are cases when you might want such automatic line breaks to be saved to the document files. The most typical case is when you save a document as a plain text file. When plain text files are viewed in plain text editors, their paragraphs are either displayed as one continuous unbroken line, or wrapped around at window edge or after a set column value. But in any case the resulting layout would most likely be different from the one found in Atlantis: the line breaks would be inserted in different places.

If it is important to you to have the same line breaks in plain text editors as you get in Atlantis, you need to place actual hard-coded breaks at the end of each line in the original document in Atlantis. Here is how this can be done:

1. Open the target document in Atlantis, and select the fragment of document (one or multiple paragraphs) whose automatic line breaks you want to replace with hard-coded breaks.

2. Click the "Split paragraphs" toolbar button, or press the Ctrl+Shift+K,U hot key. Atlantis will automatically place paragraph end marks at the end of each paragraph line within the document selection. Note that paragraph end marks are visible only when the "View | Special Symbols" mode is on:


If you then save your document as a plain text file, and open it in a plain text editor like Notepad, you will get the same text wrapping (line breaks) as you had in the original source document in Atlantis:


Note that the "Split paragraphs" toolbar button is by default available through the Alternative toolbars in Atlantis. You might need to press Ctrl key twice to access this toolbar button.

Also a note regarding the Ctrl+Shift+K,U hot key. It is a so called compound hot key in Atlantis. Compound hot keys are 4-steps hot keys. You must:

1. Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys pressed,
2. Press and release the K key,
3. Press and release the U key,
4. Finally release the Ctrl and Shift keys.

You will find more information on compound hot keys in the corresponding topic of the Atlantis Word Processor Help.

Automatic Q&A patterns

There are plenty of situations in real life, —hence in documents—, where questions alternate with answers in a regular manner: dialogs in movies, television and radio plays, court depositions, celebrity interviews, school tests, etc.

If you write this kind of documents or scripts yourself, you probably often wished there was a way to automate the task of entering the Q&A tags or the names of the characters in your dialogs. This is actually possible. You can use styles in such a way that a pattern of question and answer tags following each other is created whenever you press the Enter key. You won't have to type the Q&A tags or character names yourself. They will be inserted automatically.

We have composed a sample document demonstrating the use of styles to create automatic Q&A patterns. You can download this document from the Sample documents page of the Atlantis site, or by clicking the following direct link:

Questions and answers.rtf

Then open the document in Atlantis. The styles in this sample document have been designed in such way that you can create new "question" or "answer" paragraphs simply by clicking the Enter key. This sample document also contains detailed explanations and instructions.

Break gracefully (2)

In the previous blog post, we suggested using the "page break before" paragraph formatting attribute as a safe way to add manual page breaks to documents. But there is still one more way to insert manual page breaks "safely" into documents.

In Atlantis, a document can be divided into multiple sections, and each document section can have its own headers/footers, page size and margins, footnote/endnote settings, etc. Two neighboring sections are always separated with a special nonprinting symbol called Section Break. When the "View | Special Symbols" mode is on, the Section Break symbols are visible. They look very much like Page Break symbols:


When you insert a section break into a document, the corresponding section is automatically divided up into two sections at the current cursor location. Section breaks can be inserted through the "Insert | Break | Section Break" menu, with a choice of four different types:


When you choose the "Next Page" section break type, the newly inserted Section Break works in many ways like any ordinary manual Page Break: any text following the Next Page section break will automatically be carried over to the next page. But there is still one important difference. Section breaks never create the kind of formatting problems that we have seen are inherent in the use of manual Page breaks (see previous blog entry). This is because the Section Break symbols always terminate the paragraphs they belong to: they actually always function as paragraph end marks. In other words, the paragraph end marks (pilcrow symbols) terminating ordinary paragraphs:


are absent from the paragraphs containing section breaks. These are terminated by Section Break symbols instead.

As you might recall (see previous blog entry), a manual "Page Break" symbol not only signals the end of the page it sits on, but it is also the first part of a paragraph whose rest is automatically carried over to the next page. Such "Page Break symbol paragraphs" always straddle two pages. On the contrary, Section breaks never break paragraphs across page boundaries. This is why section breaks could never create the kind of problems we have seen are possible with ordinary manual page breaks.

So section breaks can create "safe" page breaks in a document. However, section breaks should not be used as a substitute for ordinary page breaks. This is because section breaks normally play a much more important role in a document than just creating breaks in the text flow. Each document section bears a lot of specific formatting properties. So new sections (and consequently new section breaks) should be created only when they are actually needed: for example, when you want to have a different set of headers/footers for a particular fragment of document.

Break gracefully

What happens when you try to add text to the last page of a document and there isn't enough space left to accommodate that new text? A new page is automatically created, and the text is carried over into the next page.

Now what if you do not want to wait until the current page gets filled up? What if you want to start afresh on a new page at once? The solution that comes to mind straightaway to most people is: "I only need to press Ctrl+Enter". That's right: Ctrl+Enter inserts a so-called manual page break symbol (or simply page break) into documents at the current location. When the "View | Special Symbols" mode is enabled, a page break symbol looks in this way:


Whenever Atlantis encounters this symbol within the flow of a document text, it creates a new page in the document, and carries all further text over to that new page.

To many, this is the most obvious method to forcefully create new pages in a document. But in spite of its simplicity, this method should be avoided whenever possible, especially by inexperienced users.

This is because the page break symbol in reality belongs to the paragraph carried forward to the next page. The page break symbol and the paragraph body that follows on the next page are actually one single paragraph ending with a common "paragraph end mark" (the so-called "pilcrow" symbol). When you insert a page break into a document, you create a new paragraph which is automatically broken into two parts:


The beginning of the paragraph (highlighted in green above) is essentially the page break symbol itself and remains on the page it was inserted into. The rest of the paragraph (highlighted in blue above) is carried over to the next page even though it comes right after the page break symbol. In the above picture, the whole of the paragraph straddling two pages is marked with a red border.

So a "Page Break" symbol not only signals the end of the page it sits on, but it is also part and parcel of the paragraph carried forward to the next page.

When the "View | Special Symbols" mode is on, the paragraph end marks terminating all paragraphs are easily seen:


But when this same "View | Special Symbols" mode is off, the paragraph end marks are not showing. It is then often very difficult to detect that a paragraph beginning with a "Page Break" symbol actually straddles two pages:


This is why paragraphs containing "Page Break" symbols are often a source of problems in documents.

Let's take up the same example.

If we place the cursor right before the first character of our "Page Break paragraph" on page #2:


and apply the "Heading 1" style to this paragraph, it might look as if only the second part of the paragraph was affected by this change:


This is simply because the change in the formatting applied to the "Page Break" symbol does not show: as a symbol, its display is unchangeable. But even then, any paragraph formatting applied to a "Page Break paragraph" will affect both parts of it on either side of the interpage divide.

So the "Heading 1" style was actually applied to the part of our paragraph on page #2, but also to the part remaining on page #1. This is easily demonstrated if we click at the end of page #1 right before the "Page Break" symbol, then type new text. It will automatically be formatted with a larger font size and bold attribute, i.e. with the formatting associated with the corresponding paragraph, that of the "Heading 1" style:


So "Page Break symbol paragraphs" can be a source of various formatting problems.

But this is not all. When they are referenced in a table of contents, both parts of these "Page Break symbol paragraphs" automatically get included in the corresponding table items. Sometimes with unexpected and undesirable results.

These are only a few examples of the many problems that can be created by "Page Break symbol paragraphs". This is why it is preferable to avoid inserting these "Page Break" symbols in documents.

Now you might ask "how do I create page breaks safely then?"

Here is how:

1) Click within the paragraph to be placed on the new page after the page break.

2) Run the "Format | Paragraph..." menu command, or press the associated hot key Ctrl+Shift+G.

3) In the "Paragraph Format" dialog, click to show the "Line & Page Breaks" tab, check the "Page break before" box, and OK out of the dialog:


The target paragraph will automatically be carried forward to the top of a new page. If the "View | Special Symbols" mode is on, you will notice a special mark on the left of the first line of that paragraph:


This kind of mark indicates that the corresponding paragraph will always be placed at the top of the page it is located in.

Note that toggling the "Page break before" attribute for a paragraph can also be done with the corresponding toolbar button:

This button is present by default on the Alternative set of toolbar commands of Atlantis.

A hot key can also be associated with the "Page break before" command through the "Tools | Hot Keys..." dialog:


Assigning a hot key to the "Page break before" attribute will allow you to toggle it for the current paragraph with a single key press.

As you probably know, the "Heading 1" style is traditionally applied to the paragraphs heading all new chapters. Also each new chapter usually starts on a new page. So it would be nice if applying the "Heading 1" style to a paragraph automatically placed that paragraph at the top of a new page, making it the heading of the new chapter. This is done by associating the "Page break before" attribute with the "Heading 1" style. Here is how to:

1) Run the "Format | Style..." menu command.

2) Select the "Heading 1" style, then press the "Modify..." button:


3) Click the "Paragraph..." button in the "Edit Style" dialog:


4) On the "Line & Page Breaks" tab of the "Paragraph Format" dialog, check the "Page break before" box, and OK out of all open dialogs.

Any paragraph associated with the "Heading 1" style will then automatically be formatted as set, and placed at the top of a new page.