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Tutorial Introduction

Before we explore VoodooPad's details, let's take a brief top level view of what VoodooPad is about.

When you install VoodooPad and open it up for the first time, you should see a page with a clipboard pictured at the top and a heading underneath that says, "VoodooPad. You put your brain in it." like this:

Let's use that page to get a brief overview of VoodooPad. If that page isn't currently showing, then go to the File menu and choose New Document. We'll call the window holding this page our Work Area. One way to get a good overview of VoodooPad is to read that page. It provides an excellent overview of VoodooPad's capabilities.

Don't worry about losing that description. It will appear just like you see it on the first page of any new VoodooPad document you create. We're going to ask you to modify it's text, but remember, you can always get a new version of it with a new document. So let's continue by reviewing some of that description here in a tutorial format.

Although it's much more, VoodooPad is a text editor at its foundation. For instance, click on the new window you've opened and click at the end of the first sentence before the period. That should put the blinking text insertion bar between the word "explanation" and the sentence's period.

Now, type a space followed by the words, "and it's all some people need". Notice that as you typed, your words were inserted into the sentence at the insertion bar pushing the rest of the words of the paragraph to the right and rewrapping the text appropriately. Nothing particularly surprising here if you're familiar with most any text editor on the Mac.

Now, double click the word "some" that you've just typed, hold the Command key down and press the "i" key on your keyboard. Notice that you've just italicized the word "some" in the sentence.

For convenience in this tutorial, from now on we'll abbreviate such key combinations in the following ways:

Command - Cmd
Control - Cntrl
Option - Opt
Shift - Shft

so that holding the Command and the Option keys simultaneously while pressing the "k" key will be abbreviated Cmd-Opt-k.

Of course, we could also have italicized the word "some" by selecting it, as before, and then clicking the Font menu item in the Format menu and dragging to the right in the hierarchical menu to choose the Italic menu item. Again, for convenience, we will abbreviate such menu choices as follows: "Format->Font->Italic"

In short, on the surface, VoodooPad behaves very much like the Apple TextEdit program when TextEdit is in Rich Text mode. Like TextEdit, we can display the Text Ruler and format our paragraphs.

To do this, click just before the first word of the first paragraph in the Work Area and drag all the way to the bottom of the last paragraph. That is, select all the text of the page except the graphic at the top and the heading. Now choose the menu item Format->Text->Show Ruler.

A text ruler should appear at the top of the page, like this

which will allow you to format the paragraphs. Notice a triangle pointing downward with a short bar over it at the left edge of the ruler.

If you click on the bar (not the triangle) and drag it one quarter inch to the right, it separates from the triangle and forms a "T".

This is used to set the indentation for any selected paragraphs. Notice that you've just indented all the paragraphs on this page.

There's much more to text editing, but VoodooPad generally uses the text editing capabilities built into MacOS X. If you're not familiar with the richness associated with such text editing capabilities, you can open TextEdit and choose Help->TextEdit Help for help with most of those text editing capabilities. We've also included a couple topics at the end of this tutorial if you would like to explore the text editing facilities in greater depth.

Our purpose here, however, is to help you learn how VoodooPad can help you organize your mind, so let's do a couple more fun things.

Notice in your document that the word, VoodooPad is highlighted and underlined just like a link in a web browser. That's because it is a link. Just click on it and you will be taken to a new page within VoodooPad.

The first interesting thing about clicking on that word is that the page you are taken to didn't exist until you clicked. When you did so, VoodooPad looked for a page for that alias, and when unable to find it, created a new page with the sentence "Write about VoodooPad here." at the top.

In general, when a new page is created for a link, the default format is to put a similar sentence at the top of an empty page that mentions the word (or phrase) you clicked, as follows:

"Write about here."

In order to see this in action, click at the end of the sentence on the new page and press the Return key twice to enter an empty line. Now type (or copy from this page) the words, "VoodooPad has shown that it clearly differs from TextEdit." As you do this, notice that the word "TextEdit" displays as a link as well.

Now click on the new TextEdit link and another new page will be created as we described. Add your name to this new page to make it unique.

Now, click the Back button at the very top of the new page twice and you will be taken back to the first page that was opened. We will refer to this first page as the Home page from now on. Once again, click on the word VoodooPad anywhere else in the Home page and you will be taken back to the VoodooPad page to see the additional text you added. This demonstrates that you're going to the same VoodooPad page from any VoodooPad link.

Once again, click on the Home page of VoodooPad and click to put the insertion bar at the very bottom of the page. Press the Return key twice and add the words, "TextEdit and more." Notice that the word, "TextEdit" has again been highlighted. Click on it and confirm that VoodooPad takes you to the same TextEdit page that was created by linking from your second page where you added your name.

Of course, not all links in VoodooPad are links to pages within the VoodooPad document. VoodooPad can distinguish real web links and will act appropriately.

To see this, go back to the Home page and scroll to the bottom where you will see a link to the VoodooPad web site ( http://www.flyingmeat.com/ ) in the second to last paragraph. When you click on that link, your browser will open and take you to the Flying Meat home page, the makers of this and other useful desktop tools for your Mac.

VoodooPad can be very intelligent about links and recognize them as they are typed in. As a final exercise in this topic, again go to the bottom of the text in the Home page and click on the TextEdit link. Add a space and the following after your name on the page: "http://www.apple.com". Notice that as soon as you type it in, it becomes a link. Click on the link and your browser will once again open and take you to the Apple home page.

We won't be using the document you just modified, so you're welcome to close it either by clicking the red Close button in the top left corner of the window or by choosing the File->Close or its keyboard equivalent, Cmd-w.

Doing so should display a sheet indicating that you've made changes to the document and asking what you would like to do. We would suggest clicking the Don't Save button.

Go to Links and New Pages.