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Charles Moore Reviews Boswell: A Comprehensive Environment To Store And Retrieve Your Data
Appendix 1 Boswell Glossary Archive The largest component of the library; a chronological collection of all archived entries which you can treat as a single entity. An entry whose text, comments, and title can no longer be changed. Archiving places the entry into the archive where it will reside forever. All entries in the notebooks are archived, but not all archived entries are in notebooks. Archived entries can exist in the archive without being in any notebook. Archived entries cannot exist in the journal. Although unchangeable, Archived entries can be cloned and their text can be copied and pasted. The tag of an archived entry in a notebook (called a notebook entry) can still be changed, however. Archived entries do not need to be permanently put into any notebook to be accessed: the hub can always be used to search the archive for them and put them into a notebook for display when needed. An entry may be removed from a notebook using zap, but it is never destroyed. It remains in the archive and can be put back into any notebook at any time. Archiving Making journal entries unchangeable and adding them to the archive. They will now be called archived entries. Automatically preserve the state of the library on disk without bothering you with a dialog. This happens in the background at intervals you specify in the preferences dialog box. These can be expressed as amounts of time, or entries, or both. This not a menu choice anywhere, but an automatic action by Boswell to zip-zap journal entries which have remained there beyond a time limit of between one and thirty days. It keeps the number of journal entries small and manageable. You specify the time limit in the preferences dialog box. Clone Create a new Journal Entry whose contents starts off as a copy of the of the “parent” Notebook Entry. Not to be confused with Versionize. Clues Character strings associated with specific Notebooks. When a clue is encountered in an Entry’s header or content text during Sifting, the Notebooks associated with that Clue are added to the suggested Put list. A Notebook’s name is always considered a Clue for that Notebook. All the Clues are displayed in a list in the Journal window. You can Drag selected items from it and Drop them into a Journal Entry’s comments where they will appear as if you typed them out. Comments A text field in an entry’s header that can hold 255 characters of whatever information about an entry you wish to archive with it. A perfect place for clues. Entry An item in the Journal and later in the Archive and possibly some Notebooks as well; comparable to a page in a paper notebook. An Entry is not of fixed length, although it is assumed to be short. It has an informational Header as well as a larger content area for text. It is modifiable while it is in the journal but becomes non-modifiable when it is moved into the Archive and Notebooks. Entry Header The top part of an Entry is called the Header. It contains information about the contents as well as some popup menus. The “meta-information” consists of various “fields”, or pieces of information about an Entry, including its Title and time of creation among others. These fields are very useful when sorting or searching through Entries in the Archive or Notebooks. Exporting Make a copy of an Entry or a Notebook as a Mac text file for use by other applications. Hub A dialog window where you perform actions on groups of Entries in the Archive, Journal, or Notebooks. Entries which meet the selection criteria can be Zapped or Put into other Notebooks. The Entries can also have their Tag changed. Import Make Journal Entries out of the content of ordinary Mac text files; one Entry is created for each file. As well as Importing individual text files, you can Import all the text files in a folder at one time using a single menu choice. Info Strip A small area at the top of the Journal and Notebooks windows where the number of Entries in both the Notebook and the entire library and the current sort order are displayed. There is also a tools pop-up for operating on all the Entries in the Notebook at once. Journal A specialized Notebook into which new modifiable Entries can be created or imported. There is only one Journal in a library, but it should not grow infinitely -- you are expected to Zap or Zip-Zap frequently. Unlike a normal Notebook, the Journal cannot be deleted nor can its window cannot be closed. Neither can it contain Archived Entries: the Journal is the only place Journal Entries can exist and it contains nothing else. Journal Entry An Entry in the Journal. Its text can still be changed. There should be few of these. They can be Versionized. They cannot exist in Notebooks. All Entries, including imported ones, start out as Journal Entries. There are four ways to create a Journal Entry: Library The whole magilla. All the pieces (Notebooks, the Archive, and the Journal) that comprise a your Boswell system. Because of the Mac’s document paradigm, you can have more than one Library, but why would you want to? Only one Library can be open at one time. Notebook Notebook Entry An archived entry that has been put into one or more notebooks. Not all archived entries are notebook entries. Notebooks A generic term for Boswell Notebooks that usually means the Journal as well. How notebooks get displayed. A window that shows one entry in one notebook at a time, but can show any entry in any notebook. Preferences A dialog box where you can set default values and customize Boswell. Add an Entry to one or more Notebooks. Put can be done on a single Entry by using a pop-up menu, or on many Entries using the Hub. Entries can also be Put using Drag & Drop. Although the same Entry can be Put in a Notebook many times, there will be only one instance of it there: Boswell checks for duplicates and filters them out. Results Notebook A notebook devoted to having the entries that satisfy a hub search put into it. You can create a new, empty notebook for each search, empty and re-use a permanent results notebook, or do both. Sifting Search the text in an Entry’s content and header fields for Clues and Notebook names to create a list of Notebooks suggested as Put destinations. You can accept or modify this list when Putting manually. Zip-Zapping assumes it is complete and correct. Sifting is not an action which you explicitly trigger, but happens automatically when Putting or Zip-Zapping. Also known as “Sifting for Clues.” Source Where an Entry came from. The possibilities are that you keyed it, Cloned it from an existing Entry, or Imported it from a file. If Imported from a text file, the folder and file names are used as the source; if Cloned, the original Entry Title is used. When you key the Entry, the Source is a user-specified signature that you set in the Preferences dialog. Stationery Entries Born to be Cloned, these Entries serve as reusable “forms.” Comparable to printed pads for phone messages and such. Great for making mini-databases like a personal address book. A few for phone messages, addresses, and people can be found in the starter documentation library that comes with Boswell. You will probably have a notebook that contains nothing but stationery entries to have them handy for easy Cloning Tag These are labels on Entries; simply user-specified strings displayed on the first line of the Entry Header. There is one per Entry per Notebook; the same Entry can have a different Tag in each Notebook that contains it. They are the only alterable value in a Notebook Entry. Tags are very useful as sort keys. Time Stamp The current time in whatever format the Finder is using or in a sortable “YYMM-DD-HHMM” format. You can choose which one to use in the Preferences dialog box. It can be used as a suffix on default Entry titles so that you need not worry about (and may actually take advantage of) duplicate names. All Entries have the Time Stamp of their creation in their Entry Header; Notebook Entries have the Time Stamp of their Archiving as well. You can insert a Time stamp into text by using a menu choice or keying command-T. Versionize Preserve the state of a Journal Entry by making a copy of it in the Archive. It is an easy way to do what is essentially a Zip-Zap followed by a Clone. Zap Remove an Entry from a Notebook. If a Journal Entry is zapped, it will be archived as well. Zapping can be done in a single Entry by using a popup menu, or on many Entries using the Hub. It does not destroy the Entry because the original still exists in the Archive. Zip-Zap Put a journal entry without displaying a dialog box by simply using the choices made by sifting and then zap the original entry. Notebook entries cannot be zip-zapped; only journal entries can. Charles Moore Reviews Boswell: A Comprehensive Environment To Store And Retrieve Your Data Appendix 2: Boswell Use Suggestions Appendix 3: Worried about filling up your hard drive with Boswellized stuff?
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