Notebooks, pages and canvases

Most of how DunneNote behaves follows from four ideas: notebooks, pages, canvases and groups.

Notebook#

A notebook is a folder whose name ends in .dunnenote. It is what you store, back up and move around. Everything the notebook needs is inside that folder: its database, its pictures and attachments, and a manifest that says which format version it uses.

Notebooks don't depend on each other. You can open one without the others, and a notebook copied to another computer opens there with no setup.

Each notebook has a permanent identity recorded in its manifest. It stays the same when the folder is moved or renamed, which is why links between notebooks keep working after you reorganise your disk.

Groups and pages#

Inside a notebook, pages are organised in the notebook tree. A group holds pages and other groups, so you can nest them as deeply as you like. A page always sits at the end of a branch.

Canvas#

A page is a surface, not a document. It has no single body of text. Instead it holds canvases, each a box of one kind of content with its own position and size on the page. If you want notes, a table, and a drawing on the same page, you put three canvases on it rather than embedding one inside another.

There are six kinds: Rich Text, Data Table, Editable table, Picture, Sketch and Calendar. See The canvas kinds.

Every canvas belongs to the page it was created on. It moves with that page and never appears anywhere else.

Canvases are objects#

DunneNote treats a canvas like a shape in a drawing app. You select it and the toolbar shows what you can do to it. To work inside it, you enter it, and to stop, you leave it. Because every kind works this way, one set of keys moves you around all six. See Keyboard.

Stacking#

Canvases can overlap. Each canvas has a Layer number that decides which one is in front, and text in a Rich Text canvas flows around canvases that sit over it. See Arranging canvases and Reflow and text layout.

Groups of canvases#

Canvases can be grouped so they move together. This is how captions work: a caption is a Rich Text canvas grouped with a picture. Because the caption is a full Rich Text canvas, it has all the text formatting. You can create more than one caption because each is just another Rich Text canvas with their own independent content and formatting. See Pictures.

Active and archived#

You can archive a page or a canvas instead of deleting it. When you archive a canvas you pick a reason, and choosing Other requires a note. Archived items stay in the notebook and can be brought back with Retrieve.

One writer at a time#

Only one copy of DunneNote can have a notebook open for editing at a time. While it is open, a lock file in the notebook folder tells other copies of DunneNote to keep out. See The .dunnenote format.