TealPoint Software's TealNotes (By Dave Ruske)
Review By Dave Ruske | March 25, 2002
Category: not categorized
With TealPoint Software's TealNotes, your Palm OS applications are no longer limited to just dealing with text. Open almost any program that uses multi-line text fields and you can pop up TealNotes to scribble free-hand notes, draw maps, or sketch diagrams. If you're a born doodlebug, TealNotes will appeal to you at once.
For more pics see TealPoint Software's web site (link below)
PRODUCT
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TealNotes
VERSION
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1.20
DEVELOPER'S WEBSITE
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http://www.tealpoint.com
AVAILABILITY
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Developer's store, PalmGear, Handango
PRICE
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$13.95
FEATURES
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Memory: 43K
Requires: hack manager software
Color support: Yes
INTRODUCTION
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With TealPoint Software's TealNotes, your Palm OS applications are no longer limited to just dealing with text. Open almost any program that uses multi-line text fields and you can pop up TealNotes to scribble free-hand notes, draw maps, or sketch diagrams. If you're a born doodlebug, TealNotes will appeal to you at once.
BODY TEXT
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If you've tricked out your Palm at all, you're probably familiar with programs called "hacks." Hacks are little programs that crouch quietly in the background, tiny claws hooked into the system, watching and waiting for you to activate them. Programs like Hackmaster, X-Master, or TealMaster install and oversee these hacks, to keep them from fighting one another. Since TealNotes is a hack, you'll need one of these hack managers to make use of it.
In general, TealNotes works wherever you can enter a variable amount of text. You can write cursive notes in Date Book, for example, or trace the route to a friend's house in Memo Pad. Some programs work better with TealNotes than others, though. The basic Palm apps (Date Book, Memo Pad, To Do, and Address Book) all worked fine, as did the notes in LifeBalance and TealPhone. Writing a free-hand entry in LifeBalance's collapsible list worked as well, but (as one might expect) a blank line displays when the item collapses. TealNotes doesn't work at all with WordSmith, though, not even for memo editing. This happens because WordSmith bypasses the Palm text editing calls to work some magic of their own (like FineType). Any program that bypasses these calls also bypasses TealNotes.
By default, you can launch TealNotes within a text field by entering ".tn" using Graffiti. This can be changed by editing the TealNotes properties from your hack manager. TealNotes can also be invoked up using a shortcut or a button on the pop-up keyboard (more on this later).
When activated, TealNotes pops up as a frame around the text area. This frame contains buttons to select drawing tools, pick colors, and perform other functions. One button will activate TealPaint, if installed, to perform more advanced image editing. When the OK button in TealPaint is tapped, you're returned to the document you were working with, changes intact. Other buttons let you delete the TealNote, resize it, copy it to the clipboard or clear it.
The drawing tools aren't nearly as rich as the set provided by TealPaint, but for sketching or doodling text they suffice. Three pen widths can be used for either free-hand or straight lines in any of about 200 colors. Use the straight line tool with snap-to-grid and a text tool for labeling, and tiny maps become easy to draw. An eraser and a lasso tool for moving around parts of an image round out the set.
Once a TealNote is embedded in a document, it can be edited just by tapping it. Nice and simple.
FLIP SIDE
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TealNotes sometimes repaints an image two or three times in the same spot for no apparent reason. This bugged me because the painting is pretty slow. It may be that the apps I used TealNotes with were redrawing their text that often, but quickly enough that the repainting went unnoticed. This could make fixing the problem a challenge for TealPoint's programmers.
Supposedly TealNotes can add a button to the Palm's pop-up keyboard, which can then be used to invoke TealNotes. I say "supposedly" because I couldn't get this feature to work on my m505 (OS 4.0), even after killing my other hacks. The button refused to show up in the keyboard. I admit that I wouldn't have even noticed this if I hadn't went looking for it, because I never use the soft keyboard. Within the keyboard you can still tap out ".tn" to bring up TealNotes.
TealPoint has pulled off a very clever trick with TealNotes, but the image embedding is an illusion in the grand tradition of smoke and mirrors. Put a TealNote in Date Book, for instance, and Date Book does not really store the image. Instead, TealNote stores some special text in the text field. When the hack sees the system call to draw that text, it pounces, substituting an image from a separate image database. You can actually view the separate database in TealPaint.
That's not a flip side, nor the slightest bit negative in itself. In fact, it's very clever. But the drawback is that when you delete, say, a memo with an embedded TealNote, the hack has no idea that you've done so. This leaves the (now unused) image in TealNote's database, wasting memory. The solution is to either delete TealNotes before deleting the records containing them, or periodically run TealNotes from your hack manager to locate and delete unused images.
FINAL WORD
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If you've ever been frustrated by your inability to just draw a simple image in a Palm application, TealNotes might add the functionality you want. While it doesn't work with all applications and requires some care to keep your memory from filling with unused images, its ability to extend your existing apps may make it worth the money.
PROS
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- Compatible with many Palm OS applications.
- Handy for drawing maps or scribbling free-hand notes.
- Capable selection of simple drawing tools.
CONS
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- Won't work with some apps, such as WordSmith.
- Slow repainting of images.
- Requires some management to avoid "widowed" images.
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