|
Quick Start Guide for TreePad PLUS, SAFE and Business Edition Version: May 26, 2011 Contents
Introduction
Introduction
TreePad is not a difficult program to use. In fact, quite a number of people will be able to start off using the program without consulting a manual. For a more comprehensive reference on TreePad's wide range of features, please see the online TreePad documentation section.
Very quick start guide (1) Start the TreePad PLUS, TreePad SAFE or TreePad Business Edition program. (2) In the TreePad Quick Start dialog (which automatically appears at startup), select the option Create a new file and click OK. (3) Consequently, the dialog titled Save new TreePad file as... will be shown. Just select a folder on your harddisk, and enter test1 as the name of the new file. (4) After pressing the Save button, the new file is created and all dialogs are closed. You are now inside the main TreePad window. (5) Inside the main TreePad window, click inside the tree pane (the left-hand pane) to set focus to it, (6) Next, add a tree node using Menu: Tree/Insert/Child node at bottom. (7) Click on the top-most node (called root node) and repeat step (6) (this adds another child node to the root node). Note: each tree node (inside the left-hand pane) corresponds to an article (inside the right-hand pane). An article contains a word processor in which you can edit a 'document' or 'text'. Initially, an article is empty (until you type something in it). (8) Now click inside the article pane (i.e. the right-hand pane) to set focus to it. Type in your text there (like in any regular word processor or text editor). (9) To select another node (and its corresponding article), simply click on that node inside the tree pane. (10) When you select another node (in the tree pane or left-hand pane) the article you just typed in is commited to memory. Changes are not yet written to harddisk though (see step 12 below). (11) Add more tree nodes whenever necessary (see steps 5 and 6). (12) Finally, save the entire file using Menu: File/Save. (13) The next time you start TreePad, you can always open the file (which you created in steps 1 - 12) using Menu: File/Open and most of the times also using Menu: File/Reopen. That's basically all you need to know to start using the program.
TreePad explained a bit more If you already feel confident enough after reading the very quick start section above,
then you might want to skip the remainder of this document or read it later.
The article, child nodes and the root node The right-hand pane or the article can contain texts, links, images, etc. The article is similar to a document inside a Word Processor. The left-hand pane, the tree, can contain a large number of nodes. Nodes are similar to folders and files on your harddisk, or more poetically, leafs of physical trees in the real world. A node corresponds to only one article (and an article corresponds to only one node). An article is a text or a document (that can be empty). When you select a node (in the left-hand pane), the corresponding article-text (if any) is displayed inside the article pane (the right-hand pane). The root node is the most fundamental node of the tree. The root node is the topmost (and leftmost) node from which all other nodes spring. All other nodes are descendant nodes of the root node. A TreePad file can contain only one root node. From here it is assumed that the file which you created (in the "Very quick start guide" section above) contains more than one node. If the root node in your file has a little '-' sign next to it, then you can see its child nodes. To collapse the root node, just click on the little '-' sign. After this, the child nodes are no longer visible. If the root node has a little '+' sign next to it, its child nodes are not visible and you can expand it. Just click on the little "+" and expand the node. If a node is expanded, the subtree of that node is shown. This subtree contains the child nodes of the selected node. So nodes not only can contain texts (i.e. articles), but also other nodes (child nodes)! When you click on a node, you select that node, and the text inside that node will be displayed in the article inside the right-hand pane. If no text is present, then the article is empty. When you click on the '+' sign next to a node, the subtree of that node will be shown (the node becomes expanded). If you click on a '-' sign next to a node, the subtree of that node will be hidden (the node becomes collapsed). Tree nodes can be easily moved around, deleted, inserted, edited, copied and pasted. Articles can be edited in exactly the same way as in a standard word processing program.
The Tree Pane in more detail
How to add a child node * Method 1: click on a node with the left mouse button to select it, then click Menu: Tree/Insert/Child node at bottom. A new node is created, below and slightly to the right of the original node. You can type the node name of the newly created node. After you have finished typing in the node name, press 'enter' on the keyboard. * Method 2: click on a node with the left mouse button, then using the keyboard press the 'insert' or 'ins' key. * Method 3: click the node with your right mouse button, inside the tree context menu (the menu that pops up when you right-click on the tree) select Insert, then Child node at bottom.
How to add a sibling node Note: you cannot add a sibling node to the root node. * Method 1: click on a node (but not the root node!) with the left mouse button to select it, then click Menu: Tree/Insert/Node after. A new node is created, below the original node. * Method 2: click on a node with the left mouse button, then apply the key combination Shift Insert on your keyboard. * Method 3: click the node with your right mouse button, inside the tree context menu (the menu that pops up when you right-click on the tree) and select Insert, then Node after.
How to delete a node * Method 1: click on a node with the left mouse button, then click Menu: Tree/Delete/Node-Subtree * Method 2: click on a node with the left mouse button, then on your keyboard press the 'delete' or 'del' key. * Method 3: click the node which needs to be deleted with your right mouse button, the tree context menu will pop up. Inside the tree context menu, point your mouse to Delete, then click on Node-Subtree. Important: when you use this function, not only the selected node will be deleted, but all of it's child nodes as well.
How to change the node name * Method 1: select a node by clicking on it once with your left mouse button. Then click Menu: Tree/Edit node name. A small edit cursor appears inside the node title. Type in the new node name, then press enter on your keyboard. * Method 2: select a node by clicking on it once with the left mouse button. Wait for one second. Click on it again. A small edit cursor appears in the node title. Type in the new node name, then press 'enter' using your keyboard. * Method 3: select a node by clicking on it once with the left mouse button. Using your keyboard press the 'F2' function key. Type the node name, then press enter on your keyboard.
How to expand a node * Method 1: if the node displays a little "+" sign on its left, click on that "+" sign and the node will expand, displaying all of its child nodes. If the node does not have a little "+" sign on its left, then either the node is already expanded or it does not contain any child nodes. * Method 2: click on the node to select it. Then click Menu: Tree/Expand/Subtree one level. * Method 3: right-click on the node, the tree context menu will pop up. Inside the tree context menu, point to Expand, then click Subtree one level.
How to collapse a node * Method 1 If the node displays a little "-" sign on its left, click on that "-" sign and the node will be collapsed. If the node does not have a little "-" sign, then either the node is already collapsed, or it does not contain any child nodes. * Method 2: click on the node to select it. Then click Menu: Tree/Collapse/Subtree one level. * Method 3: right-click on the node, the tree context menu will pop up. Inside the tree context menu, point to Collapse, then click Subtree one level.
How to move a node (so that it becomes a child of another node) Place your mouse cursor over the node you want to move. Press down the left mouse button down, selecting the node. While keeping the left mouse button pressed down, drag the mouse cursor to the destination node and release the left mouse button. The result is that the dragged node has beomce a 'child node' of the destination node.The above procedure is called 'drag-and-drop'. Important: the node and all of it's child nodes are moved to the new location.
How to move a node (so that it becomes a sibling of another node) Place your mouse cursor over the node you want to move. Press down the 'shift' key on the keyboard and keep it pressed down. Then press down the left mouse button down, selecting the node. While keeping the left mouse button pressed down, drag the mouse cursor to the destination node and release the left mouse button. Finally release the shift key. The result is that the dragged node has beomce a 'sibling node' of the destination node. The above procedure is called 'drag-and-drop'. This command moves the node to the position just below the destination node. The difference with the previous command is, that the node will not become a child of the destination node, but a sibling. Note: as indicated above, in TreePad PLUS, SAFE, Business Edition, you need to press the shift key BEFORE you start the mouse operation.
The Article Pane in more detail. The article pane can be found in the right half of the screen. In the article you can type texts, edit, cut, copy, paste, delete and select blocks of characters just in the same way as in any regular Word Processor or text editor. As explained above, each node contains one article (or document). When selecting a different tree node, a different article or document will appear in the right half of the screen. Any changes you made in the previous article are remembered and shown when you return to that article. You can return to the previous article by clicking on the previous tree node. By clicking on the article with your left mouse button you 'focus' the article. When the article is 'focused' it accepts keyboard input, meaning that you can start typing in your text. Right clicking on the article will make the article popup menu appear. This menu contains menu useful editing functions, like cut, copy and paste. When the article has focus, you can use the menu items inside the Edit, Format and Insert menus to alter the article text. Please note that when the tree has focus, a number of items inside the Format and Insert menus will apply to the currently selected node title (instead of the article).
How to create a new file To create a new file, click on the 'File' entry in the main menu, then click on 'New'. After this, follow the instructions on your screen.
How to open an existing file (1) click Menu: File/Open. (2) In most cases, you can also open the file using Menu: File/Reopen.
When is your data saved? Your data is saved when you click Menu: File/Save. You can also use the Save to file toolbar button, or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl S.
Importing data from other TreePad editions
TreePad Lite
TreePad X Enterprise
This concludes the Quick Start Guide. |