Meteor 1.5 User Guide

What is it?

Creating an item

Deleting an item

Where's the trashcan?

Browsing

Sorting items

Reorganizing the structure (Dragging and dropping)

Support

What is it?

Meteor is a note-taking tool for the Palm OS. It will completely change the way you take notes on your Palm OS device... Meteor is what you've been waiting for !

Meteor is highly visual and instinctive !

Efficiently classify your memos in a more familiar way ! Divide your memos into folders instead of categories. You can create an unlimited number of folders and subfolders !

Changed your mind ? No problem ! Reorganize your memos and folders in a snap. Simply drag and drop !

Seamlessly import or export memos from/to MemoPad (feature available in registered version only).

Assign private memos that won't open until you enter your personal password.

Meteor now in color! It's much easier to look at than bland b&w. It is also optimized for the high-resolution screens of the Sony Clié devices.

Looking for that important memo but can't remember where you put it ? Don't worry, Meteor is searcheable :)

Meteor can print memos. PalmPrint is required. (Feature available in registered version only).

Meteor pushes away the limit of 4,000 characters per memo of MemoPad : Meteor has a limit of up to 32,000 characters per memo.

Creating an item

To create an item tap on the 'New' button at the bottom left of the screen. You will then be asked for a title. You can also choose the type of item you want to create: it can be a memo or a folder. The location where the item is created depends of the item that is selected when you tap the button. The new item will always appear inside the folder that is selected at the time you hit the button. If there is no selection, the new item will appear at the root level (i.e. under 'My Handheld').

Deleting an item

To delete an item from the main screen, you can chose 'Delete item' from the menu. You can also delete a memo directly from the editor window: there is a 'Delete' button there.

Where's the trashcan?

In older screenshots and previous versions of Meteor, there was a trashcan button at the top of the main screen. Pressing this button used to delete the selected item. It has been deliberately removed since version 1.4 to reduce screen clutter (and has been replaced by the sort icon). I guess you're like me and hate those Palm applications that have a bunch of toolbar icons that only get to confuse the user. I think it's contrary to the Palm philosophy. So that's why I decided to remove this button. Of course, you can still delete memos and folders by pressing the 'delete' button in the editor screen or by using the menu on the main screen. If you think there should be a trashcan icon, please send me your thoughts at the address in the support section of this manual.

Browsing

Browsing the structure is fairly easy. Tap on the icon on the left of a folder to open or close it. Once a folder is selected, you can tap on it once again to open or close it. The [+] sign at the top left of the screen opens all folders at once. The entire structure is then exposed. Tapping on the [-] sign next to it closes all folders at once.

Sorting items

It's sometimes desirable that the memos and folders appear sorted in an alphabetical order. Meteor allows alphabetical sorting. To sort the content of a folder, select that folder and press the 'Sort' button at the top of the screen (you can also use the menu).

Reorganizing the structure (Dragging and dropping)

Reorganizing the structure is fairly easy: you can drag and drop items. For example, if you want to move a memo from a folder to another one, click on it, keep the pen pressed, move it over the destination folder then release it. The memo will appear in the target folder. By the way, you can drag folders too.

To reorganize items in a particular order, you can use drag and drop. Drag a memo onto another one to insert it at this location. Since dragging a folder onto another one will put the folder *inside* the other, you can't use this technique to reorganize the order of folders. You will have to use the technique described bellow:

If you drag an item onto its parent folder, it will appear at the bottom of the list. This way you can change the ordering. Repeat this operation until you are satisfied with the ordering.

Importing

Importing consists of taking an already existing note from NotePad and bringing it into Meteor. First, select the folder in which you want the notes to be placed in Meteor. Next, select 'Import memo(s)...' from the menu. You will see a list of all notes in MemoPad. You can display only a category by selecting it at the top of the screen. You can import a single memo (tap on its title) or all of the memos in the selected category (tap the "Import all" button at the bottom).

Exporting

Exporting consists of taking a memo from Meteor and sending it to MemoPad. To accomplish that, open the memo you wish to export. You can also just select it. Next, choose the "Export Item" command from the menu. This memo will be added to the "Unfiled" category of MemoPad.

It is also possible to export a whole branch of Meteor. To do that, select a folder then choose "Export Item" from the menu. You will be asked if you want to export the content of the folder recursively. 'Recursively' means that you will also export the memos that are contained in the subfolders of the selected folder. If the box is left unchecked, only the memos that are in the folder will be exported: the subfolders will be ignored. The exported memos will be placed in the Unfiled category of MemoPad.

Backups

If you are like me, you are probably concerned about keeping a safe copy of your data in case your handheld looses its memory. To protect against these bad lucks, the database of Meteor is automatically backed up everytime you perform a HotSync operation. In case of a hard reset (a complete memory lost), the database should be automatically recovered and reinstalled by HotSync Manager.

With some older versions of HotSync Manager prior to version 3.0, these was a bug that prevented some databases from being recovered successfully following a hard reset. The Meteor database was a victim of this bug and in some circumstances, the recovery can fail. The symptom for this problem is that when you open Meteor, nothing shows up except for the root item. In this case, don't HotSync or the corrupted database will overwrite the good backed up one. You have two choices:

Upgrade to the latest version of HotSync Manager.

Use another program than HotSync Manager to install the database. I suggest Pilot Install from envi.con. It's free and it's very useful.

To make sure this nasty bug doesn't hit you, you might wish to use a backup tool such as BackupBuddy, or to make a manual backup copy of the database. Here is how to locate the Meteor database file:

First you need to open the Palm folder on your computer (on Windows, the path will be something like "c:\program files\palm").

Once there, open your user's folder and look into the folder titled "Backup".

There will be a file called "MeteorDB.pdb". This is the backed up Meteor database.

Tips and Tricks

Changing the name of 'My Handheld'

It is possible to rename the root. To do that, select the root, then use the 'edit item' command in the menus. This trick is pretty handy when you want to customize Meteor. If your handheld is not a Palm, you can call it 'My Visor' or 'My Clie', etc.

Registration

Meteor is shareware. It means that an evaluation version of the software is available freely for everyone to try. This version is not complete, some of the features have been disabled. If you like Meteor and if you use it, you should buy the complete version. This will unlock the features that are blocked in the evaluation version.

By buying Meteor, you support the author who has worked hard to make this product available :)

Support

I hope this quick user guide has answered your questions. If you still have questions, feel free to ask them at meteor.support@sympatico.ca.