Notably Manual

Notes are the basic focus of Notably. These Notes can be grouped into Books, and they can be marked with Tags. You can enter text into Notes by typing, or by copy/paste. You can paste images into Notes. You can link Notes to other Notes, and to web pages and email addresses.

You can start a new Note just by typing in the Note display of the main window. If you save the Note without giving it a title, a title will be made automatically. The title is made up of the data and time when you save the Note. You can change the Note title any time you want.

You can also create a new Note by selecting Note…→New Note. This will make a Note title, and insert the words "New Note" as the Note text.

You can type in the editor window part of the main window. You can copy test in other application, and paste into the editor.

To paste, select Edit→Paste from the main window. Or use the shortcut keys of your platform (often this is Ctrl-V, but this may be different on your computer or device, or in your locale).

You can insert an image by copying the image in another application, and selecting Edit→Paste in the Notably main window. Your normal shortcut keys should also work, depending on your platform.

You can insert screen shot images into a Note by selecting Special→Part Screen Shot or Special→Whole Screen Shot. A pop-up message informs you that the screen (or the part you select) will be copied a few seconds (normally 5) after you click on the OK button. You can use this delay time to make sure the screen looks the way you can it captured. For example, if you had to minimize another application to run Notably, you can maximize that other application to capture its image.

Notes can contain hyper text links, like most web documents. Clicking on these links causes different actions, depending on the type of link. Links can be:

It can be useful to refer to a Note from another Note. You can insert clickable links using the Special… menu from the main window.

Special…→Copy Inter-Note Link makes Notably remember the current Note identifier. Special…→Paste Inter-Note Link will insert a link to that Note in a second Note later. The title of the first Note will be inserted as the link text. Be aware that if you change the title of the first Note later on, this change will not be reflected in the second Note. The link will still work, but the link text will be the old one.

Notes can be collected into Books in the database. All of the Notes marked as part of a Book can then be selected. A Book can be exported, meaning that all Notes in the Book are converted to HTML files, and linked together with an index. The index is written as an HTML file (web page) to wherever you want. All Notes are written to the same directory as the index, and all images are copied to the same area.

To export all Notes in a Book to HTML format, select Manage… from the main window. Then select Export Book as HTML.

This will bring up a dialog asking where you want to save the index file. Be careful to remember which directory (folder) you put this in. You can export the book wherever you can write files.

Books can be exported as a Notably database. This new database is complete, and can be used by itself. Like any other Notably database, it can also be used as an import source. This means you can use the Export as Sql feature to share some of your note with other users.

To export a book, select Manage→Export Book as Sql. You will be asked for a file name - this is where Notably will write the exported database.

You can import Notes from another Notably database into your database. This is useful when, for example, synchronizing Notes between a desktop computer and a mobile computer (smart phone, laptop etc.). It is also useful for synchronizing Notes with other users. You can export from one database and import into another.

To import Notes, select Manage→Import Notes…. You will be asked for a file name to import from. This file must be a Notably database.

Along with the Notes, Notably will also import any tags and books from the import database that are used by the imported Notes. Tag references and book references will also be copied. The tags and books from the imported database that are not used by Notes chosen to be copied will not be imported.

Tags are useful to show the status of a Note. For example, a Note may be marked as important, or done, or as anyting you want. You can add tags to Notes, or remove tags from Notes. You can also add and remove your own tags to your databse.

To change the tags on a particular Note, select and view the Note. Then go to the Note… menu, and select Note Tags…. This will give you a pop-up dialog showing the tags already on the Note, and all available Tags.

Click on an available Tag to add it to the Note. Click on a Tag already on a Note to remove it.

From the main Notably window, select Manage…. Then select the Tag Editor. You will get a popup dialog that lets you add, remove of change Tags. The Tag name cannot be changed.

You can change the Tag description, and the Tag icon. Clicking on the icon brings up a dialog to load a new icon file.

If you delete a Tag, and re-create a new Tag with the same name, all references to the old Tag will be lost. The tagged Notes will still be there, but Notably will forget about the deleted Tag references.

Notably provides several ways to find Notes of interest to you. You can

To build and run Notably, the current version uses:

For all features of Notably to work properly, you need Qt4.6.1 or better, although most features work with Qt4.4 or better. This only affects you when you build the program from source code. If you downloaded a Windows installer package, you don’t have to worry about this.

It’s pretty straightforward. Please read the INSTALL file that comes with the source code.

This is free open source software, hence the usual licensing. And the usual warranty, or lack thereof: