TextMaker and 2003

[hamishmacdonald]

I know SoftMaker released a service pack for TextMaker that makes it Windows Mobile 2003-compatible, and (as a paying customer), I downloaded it. But I found it was behaving strangely (while wrestling with trying to use my Stowaway XT on an iPAQ 2210). All the keyboard shortcuts were gone, and didn't seem to want to be replaced (since they're configurable). I also couldn't paste text into the 'Smart Text' macro field (a feature I use a lot to compensate for not being able to find a way to type em-dashes).

So I'm back to using Pocket Word. And, you know, it's comfy. It's light and simple, it follows the Pocket PC interface guidelines, and it does some things (like word count) in an easy way, where TextMaker has eight zillion menus, and feels very heavy. Why do I use TextMaker? Two features: 'smart' quotes and em-dashes. I'm a professional writer, and I can't send things to my client with hyphens and inch-marks where these should be.

Torn between two lovers...

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else was having issues with TextMaker. I should really write to the developer, but I don't have the time to get into documenting the issues and trying to reproduce them.

- Hamish MacDonald

[SoftMaker]

I know SoftMaker released a service pack for TextMaker that makes it Windows Mobile 2003-compatible, and (as a paying customer), I downloaded it. But I found it was behaving strangely (while wrestling with trying to use my Stowaway XT on an iPAQ 2210). All the keyboard shortcuts were gone, and didn't seem to want to be replaced (since they're configurable). I also couldn't paste text into the 'Smart Text' macro field (a feature I use a lot to compensate for not being able to find a way to type em-dashes).

So I'm back to using Pocket Word. And, you know, it's comfy. It's light and simple, it follows the Pocket PC interface guidelines, and it does some things (like word count) in an easy way, where TextMaker has eight zillion menus, and feels very heavy. Why do I use TextMaker? Two features: 'smart' quotes and em-dashes. I'm a professional writer, and I can't send things to my client with hyphens and inch-marks where these should be.

Torn between two lovers...

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else was having issues with TextMaker. I should really write to the developer, but I don't have the time to get into documenting the issues and trying to reproduce them.

- Hamish MacDonald

Hamish:

1. If keyboard shortcuts go bonkers, delete the *.kyt file in your TextMaker directory (while TextMaker is not running, of course).

2. If your control strips go bad, delete *.csp.

3. If you want to have a simple way to insert emdashes, create a SmartText entry for them (call it "em"). As you cannot enter Alt+nnn keycodes like on a PC, you'd have to proceed as follows: Insert>Symbol, choose the em dash, OK, select the inserted em dash in your document, Edit>Copy, then Insert>SmartText, then Ctrl+V to paste the em dash from the clipboard to the SmartText edit control. Thankfully, you have to that only once...

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[hamishmacdonald]

Thanks for that. The problem before was that I couldn't paste into that text field. I just reinstalled and tried again, and I could. But Smart Text wasn't my only issue.

I just opened a chapter of my book, a .DOC file, in TextMaker, and there's all this scary garbled code at the top of the document. I'm not sure what that is.

Also, when I try to save a file as a 2000/XP .DOC file, I get an error message saying "Unable to create file".

TextMaker has been an excellent product in the past, but for the moment these things make me feel a bit too uneasy to risk using it.

I did find that Windows Mobile 2003 has some Alt and Ctrl-Alt special characters in it that weren't keyboard-accessible before. The em-dash, however, is still missing. Any other readers have advice on this?

Hamish MacDonald
_______________________________
www.hamishmacdonald.com

[SoftMaker]

I just opened a chapter of my book, a .DOC file, in TextMaker, and there's all this scary garbled code at the top of the document. I'm not sure what that is.

Also, when I try to save a file as a 2000/XP .DOC file, I get an error message saying "Unable to create file".
Ah. That's a different issue. *Some* PPC 2003 users have reported that TextMaker does not allow you to read or write .DOC files, but only when using INTERNAL storage. Do the same from/to a storage card, and it works (there's your short-term workaround...)

We are in the process of sending a test build of TextMaker to a few people in which we changed a function (seems like a bug in the PPC 2003 OS, if you ask me) and if that works for everybody, we'll put out a new service pack.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

[hamishmacdonald]

Great. I've no doubt that the solution will be a solid one.

I can imagine it's frustrating to be developing these things only to have everything changed on you, probably in ways that aren't documented anywhere.

We're all the lab rats :|

[hamishmacdonald]

I take it back: Pocket Word is no match for TextMaker.

I spent an hour this weekend reformatting a document for work along with a chapter of my novel, and appreciated anew the awesome force that is TextMaker.

As for the problems I mentioned, the developers came up with a solution that addresses them. Just leave a message here, and I'm sure they'll respond to you.