A new, empty writing app can be a little intimidating or frustrating. Like a blank sheet of paper it does not entertain, you cannot lean back and consume. Instead, it forces you to be creative and feed it with information. – However, as you start adding content, creating documents and organizing them according to your own ideas, Notebooks' value increases, and the more content you add, the more rewarding it becomes.
We leave the joy of writing and creating content up to you and provide you with tools that supports the process so you can concentrate on your work and be productive. The choice between plain text and formatted documents, the fullscreen modes, dark mode, multiple tabbed windows, breadcrumbing navigation, smart books, word count or the option to compile multiple fragments into a single document or eBook are just a few examples.
Despite its rich functionality, Notebooks attempts to remain light weight, and it conceals some of its functions until you need them (or activate them in settings). Notebooks may seem "simple" at first, but it grows with your needs.
So feel free to start creating documents with styles, attachments, tables and checklists, or drop any kind of document into Notebooks. File them in as many nested books as you need to structure your projects and details. Add task lists or simple checklists, divide large projects into nested sub projects, which makes them easier to handle, and cross-reference into your reference library – which may be any book or document in Notebooks.
Notebooks is an app for creators like you.
When you first launch Notebooks it asks you to set a Home folder. This is a regular folder on your Mac where Notebooks stores its documents. You can select any folder on your hard drive, a connected drive or a USB drive, and you are not required to select a new or empty one. It is okay to pick a folder which already contains documents, like the folder you have been using with an earlier version of Notebooks, for example.
You can change that folder at any time from within Notebooks' preferences without compromising your documents and data. This allows you to use multiple sets of documents and switch between them. So you could, for example, keep confidential documents on an encrypted disk image and other documents in your Documents folder; by changing the Notebooks Home you can switch between the sets on demand.
If you use Notebooks on an iPad or iPhone and synchronize its contents to Dropbox, it is easy to pick up and work on the same documents with Notebooks for Mac.
With this setup, Notebooks for Mac displays the books and documents from your Dropbox sync folder and saves all changes and modifications to that folder. The Dropbox client on your Mac then syncs these documents to Dropbox, from where they find their way into Notebooks on your iPad or iPhone. - Currently, this is the most convenient and seamless connection between Notebooks on your iOS device and your Mac.
One of the benefits of Dropbox compared to other services is its history of changes, reaching back at least 30 days. If something ever should go wrong, there is always an easy way to restore the original documents.
If you use a WebDAV service to sync your documents from Notebooks on an iPad or iPhone and want to work on that set of documents from Notebooks on your Mac, you could mount that server in Finder and point Notebooks for Mac to that folder. You should be aware, though, that Notebooks reads and writes directly to and from that server, which may slow down performance.
So it might be better to use an application on your Mac to synchronize the contents of the WebDAV server with a local folder, and select that local folder as Notebooks' home folder. Cyberduck is just one example of an application that can to that.
.enex format.We do not list all options and menu entries in detail here, as we hope that most of them are self explanatory. It is worth taking a look at the menus and context menus of outline, document list and the documents themselves (right click or ctrl-click). It it also worth examining the options and settings in Notebooks' preferences.
You can access Notebooks' in app help from the Help menu (cmd-?); we are continuously updating it.
Notebooks stores all its books and documents as folders and files on your hard drive instead of hiding them in a database. So there are multiple options to add documents and folders to Notebooks:
To rename a book or document in the outline or document list, select (highlight) the document and either type Return or right-click the item and select Rename from the context menu.
Documents you create in Notebooks by default use the first line of text as title; changing the first line also changes the document’s title. (If filename and first line do not match, Notebooks does not change the title when you modify the first line).
plist Files?For each document, Notebooks creates a separate file with details and information about the document (description, selected font or color, creation date etc). These files have the extension .plist. When synchronizing the contents of Notebooks between multiple devices, these plist files make sure that books, documents and task lists appear identical on all devices.
These files are visible in Finder, but if you do not want that, Notebooks can hide them. Just click the option Hide system files in Finder in Notebooks' preferences.
The first source of info is the built in Notebooks Help menu (cmd-?). While it may not be complete, we are constantly updating it through our website. So with an active internet connection, Notebooks Help provides access to the latest help and documentation.
We also provide guidelines and supportive information through our website and keep you up to date via Twitter.
https://notebooksapp.com/mac/help
https://notebooksapp.com/category/nbmac/
https://twitter.com/NotebooksApp