Save position in TXT documents

[Nicholas Kersov]

Why oh why doesn't Atlantis save the position of a cursor within a plain TXT document?

Nic

[Robert]

Do you know any pure text editor or word processor that saves cursor position in pure text documents? You probably don’t, because saving cursor position is not possible in plain (pure) text documents.

Now if you meant to talk about formatted documents of the RTF, DOC, DOCX, COD type, saving cursor position is possible. In such documents, Atlantis will save the cursor position if “Save cursor position” is checked on the “Load/Save” tab in the Atlantis main options (“Tools | Options…”)

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[Nicholas Kersov]

But, why is it impossible for Atlantis to save a position in plain text? I have a plain text editor on my iPad that does just that.

Thanks,

Nic

[Robert]

What is the name of this “plain text editor”? Is there a Windows version of this editor? Can you post a “*.txt” file that this editor created with a saved cursor position?

[Nicholas Kersov]

What is the name of this “plain text editor”? Is there a Windows version of this editor? Can you post a “*.txt” file that this editor created with a saved cursor position?

The app is Nebulous Notes, available from the Apple App store. Alas, there is no Windows version. I have just found a Windows text editor that saves the cursor position. It is called FoxEditor, and can be found on CNET downloads at -

http://download.cnet.com/FoxEditor/3000 ... ag=mncol;1

Perhaps in a future version of Atlantis, this feature could be added? BTW, I'm finding that working on plain txt file sin Atlantis introduced some kind of coding issue, producing undesired characters when swapped to other apps. So I'm having to pass it through Notepad and save again as UTF8.

Hope this helps.

[Robert]

Atlantis is a word processor. As such, it is meant to create formatted documents. If you want to create pure text documents, you’ll always be better off with the Windows Notepad, or some more advanced free alternatives like Notepad++ (Notepad++ Home).

From the page at Faster Markdown Editing with Nebulous Notes Macros, it seems that Nebulous Notes stores bookmarks for its files through macros and a dedicated feature. Atlantis does not support macros yet, and if it did, most likely its macros would be incompatible with those of Nebulous Notes.

Note that Notepad++ has support for macro recording and playback, and can save cursor position. In Notepad++, you’d also be able to choose which character set (Western European, Chinese, etc.) and which encoding (ANSI, UTF-8 with or without BOM, etc.) are used to save the current text file. But you should never expect such features from a word processor that is meant for quite different tasks.

[BobC]

WriteMonkey is also an interesting text editor for writers, freeware, good companion to Atlantis. I supports Markdown, can export to rtf, and saves caret position.

www.writemonkey.com

[Nicholas Kersov]

Atlantis is a word processor. As such, it is meant to create formatted documents. EDIT But you should never expect such features from a word processor that is meant for quite different tasks.

I must say that is a rather disappointing view. Surely, you are well aware of the fundamental incompatibility between Apple and PC word processors. Whatever manufactures claim, formatting almost always goes wonky when trying to work on two platforms with .doc or RTF, etc.

Those of us wanting - needing - to work this way are therefore pushed back to what is compatible. Just because this is the case does not mean we aren't interested in word processing. It seems to me that you're saying 'too bad' rather than addressing a gap in the market. I'm not expecting sophisticated formatting features, just basic compatibility when using TXT files, and a way to mark the cursor position.

[Nicholas Kersov]

WriteMonkey is also an interesting text editor for writers, freeware, good companion to Atlantis. I supports Markdown, can export to rtf, and saves caret position.

According the the site I have to get a key to even try this, and that requires me to donate. I'm all for supporting small developers, but not before I know it fulfils requirements.

[Robert]

As you pointed out yourself, there is a huge incompatibility between Apple and Windows products. Atlantis is not responsible for this, only Apple and MS are. It is just a fact of everybody’s computer life.

This said, any RTF document created in Atlantis should be perfectly readable in whatever word processor you’re using in the iPad. If they are not, it means that the iPad word processor is buggy. Atlantis completely adheres to the RTF official specifications as set by MS.

WriteMonkey is free to download, install and use (WRITEMONKEY 2.4 FOR WINDOWS). You won’t have to donate unless you want to unleash some unspecified “hidden features”. The install is very easy: simply extract the downloaded zip file contents into the installation folder of your choice. Note that WriteMonkey is supposed to be fully “portable”, but it also creates a folder outside its main install folder: “C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Studio_pomaran&#269;a_d.o.o__O”.

Also note that WriteMonkey is designed after the concept of “the writer’s blank screen”. It has a very minimalistic GUI. Notepad++ takes a completely different approach: it is closer to a full-featured programmer’s editor.

Now, if you still want to create text files in Atlantis, you have a very simple workaround to “save the current cursor position”. Simply choose any symbol or text that you know won’t normally be found in your text file, and insert it into the text file at the appropriate location (cursor position). When you reopen that text file in Atlantis, press “Ctrl+F” and enter the chosen symbol or text in the Find box. Press the Find button. Atlantis will take you to the saved cursor position.

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[BobC]

Nicholas, there should be no incompatibility at all in Atlantis rtf files with Mac. I've been using Atlantis for years, and before Ocean Mind I used Atlantis Nova. The publishing house I work with used only Mac for a long time. I always sent my work in rtf files done with Atlantis, and they never had any problems at all with them. I just took care of NOT to save them as SUPERCOMPACT rtf files. In fact, rtf is the real universal formatted text file, so you should have no problems with it.

Another workaround if you want txt is, write in rtf, and, just before moving it to Mac, right then save it as (F12) into txt.

Notepad++ is a great text editor. Writemonkey, like Atlantis, is writers oriented. Minimalistic. And if you try Atlantis' great full screen mode... you'll also have the "you and an empty screen," the closest thing to being before a sheet of paper

[Nicholas Kersov]

As you pointed out yourself, there is a huge incompatibility between Apple and Windows products. Atlantis is not responsible for this, only Apple and MS are. It is just a fact of everybody’s computer life.

Oh yes, I agree. Don't get me wrong, Robert, I'm a fan of Atlantis, and it still does useful stuff that MS can't seem to manage. Its' just that there is a gap for something that works - in whatever version - across platforms.

Now, if you still want to create text files in Atlantis, you have a very simple workaround to “save the current cursor position”.

Yes, I've been doing just that.

One more thing I wonder if you could shed some light on? Whenever I do try to work in Atlantis using plain text, the result when passed on to the other apps I've mentioned shows unwanted characters introduced. Most often when I've used an apostrophe. This does not happen the other way around. Anything I can do to fix this?

Nicholas

[Nicholas Kersov]

Nicholas, there should be no incompatibility at all in Atlantis rtf files with Mac.

Okay, BobC, thanks for your helpful advice. Will give this a go and see what happens.

BTW, this adventure began when I was trying to use RTF files, for exactly the reason you say, from my PC to my iPad. I must've tried a dozen supposedly compatible apps, all of which messed things up. CloudOn was the nearest, but that was so incredibly slow even with a fast connection, relied on that Net connection to work at all, and was not ready for Retina display. Others, were so bad they synced the wrong files to Dropbox and in two cases overwrote work with a zero byte file! Apple gave me a refund on all of those, and I was left wishing Atlantis worked on an iPad. Since then I've been trying to go as basic as I could, hence my interest in plain text working.

Nicholas

[Robert]

Whenever I do try to work in Atlantis using plain text, the result when passed on to the other apps I've mentioned shows unwanted characters introduced. Most often when I've used an apostrophe.

Most of the “unwanted” characters are likely to have been introduced by the Atlantis AutoCorrect-As-You-Type feature. Please, uncheck “AutoCorrect as you type” in the “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…” dialog whenever you create a pure text file in Atlantis.

Note that people creating/managing picture collections on a Windows system often have trouble transferring them to their iPad. The Apple developers are very keen to keep people boxed in within their highly selective world. Portability is not something they value. The same seems to be true of RTF documents.

[Nicholas Kersov]

Most of the “unwanted” characters are likely to have been introduced by the Atlantis AutoCorrect-As-You-Type feature. Please, uncheck “AutoCorrect as you type” in the “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…” dialog whenever you create a pure text file in Atlantis.

Okay, will do. BTW, for anyone else trying this, also turn off the option to change straight quotation marks to curly versions.

Note that people creating/managing picture collections on a Windows system often have trouble transferring them to their iPad. The Apple developers are very keen to keep people boxed in within their highly selective world. Portability is not something they value. The same seems to be true of RTF documents.

Well, I've had no problem at all transferring images, providing of course they're of a type that Apple apps like. Same with most of my moving image files. Mostly, though, I'm trying to stream from a NAS drive, thus saving acres of space on the iPad. Much of the time, this works very well indeed using some of the ingenious apps out there, made by individual developers.

In the case of Atlantis, is it not worthwhile developing an IOS version? Or possibly working with someone such as the developer of Nebulous Notes to achieve this Holy Grail?

Nicholas

[Robert]

BTW, for anyone else trying this, also turn off the option to change straight quotation marks to curly versions.

You don’t need to turn off any AutoCorrect option if

1. “AutoCorrect as you type” is unchecked in the “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…” dialog.

2. You don’t launch AutoCorrect after you have typed (through “Tools | AutoCorrect…”)

In the case of Atlantis, is it not worthwhile developing an IOS version? Or possibly working with someone such as the developer of Nebulous Notes to achieve this Holy Grail?

More simply, you could get into contact with the Nebulous Notes developers, and ask them what it is that Nebulous Notes does not like in the RTF code produced by Atlantis…

[Nicholas Kersov]

More simply, you could get into contact with the Nebulous Notes developers, and ask them what it is that Nebulous Notes does not like in the RTF code produced by Atlantis…

Nebulous Notes can export to RTF, but importing just produces a document with all the coding showing, and therefore useless. Alas, the developer has the same idea as you - keep developing the product for the chosen platform, but never the twain shall meet. Such a pity, as the first developer to get this right is going to be VERY popular.

FWIW, I have found another iPad app called Textilus, which does import and export RTF format. Initial testing was promising, but then a few serious mess ups have me worried. Mostly to do with syncing to Dropbox. The developer doesn't seem too interested, unfortunately. But, maybe in the future..

BTW, Atlantis gaining the ability to sync with Dropbox would be a boon.

Nicholas

[Nicholas Kersov]

PS - Something quirky that has come from this thread, is a problem with Atlantis search that I don't understand.

During my various manoeuvres between text editors and world processors, a number of instances of a characters I cannot even paste into this box have occurred. I can paste into a text editor, and the characters in question appear in my Atlantis based RTF document. The character is an A with some kind of accent above it, and a - (dash) to its right. Somehow, this combination has replaced what should be there, in every instance where there should be an apostrophe. Bizarrely, if I try to copy and paste the character here, it turns into a B.

Now, the problem is in Atlantis, search cannot even find these characters, so there seems to be no way to replace them other than manually.

Nicholas

[Csiga]

Do you know any pure text editor or word processor that saves cursor position in pure text documents? You probably don’t, because saving cursor position is not possible in plain (pure) text documents.

Far manager's internal editor does that. It saves the filename and the cursor position somewhere into its database and jumps to it when you open the file for editing.

[Robert]

Word processors are not supposed to keep a database of all files opened or created in them, if only for reasons of confidentiality, privacy, or security.

In any case, the cursor position cannot be saved within the pure text files themselves. But as I said, if you still want to create text files in Atlantis, you have a very simple workaround to “save the current cursor position”:

Simply choose any symbol or text that you know won’t normally be found in your text file, and insert it into the text file at the appropriate location (cursor position). When you reopen that text file in Atlantis, press “Ctrl+F” and enter the chosen symbol or text in the Find box. Press the Find button. Atlantis will take you to the saved cursor position.