USER MANUAL
CONTENT
| Built-in Browser |
| "My Cyberspace" |
| Drafts |
Getting started
To get a feel of the machinery it was previously necessary to install the 12 fonts (putting them into your computers font folder).
This is now taken care of by the installer
Further, You may have to select ”hide process line automatically” in the dock preferences of your computer, in order to see the lowest part of the main window, i.e. the memo-buttons.
Your normal mode of operation should be to click the Open diary button and find yourself on the day card, i.e. a card in an automatically augmenting stack of daycards, indicating the weekday, day of the month, month, week number and year.
Phenomenalog is a self-saving device (Default is set to every 10 minutes). Thus you should not need to remember saving, except if you will be sure to have the last 10 minutes included. You can quit (with a ctrl Q/Apple Q) and you will re-find the diary with the same content as you left it, when you open it again.
But remember, you don’t have to quit it; as long as the computer is not turned off it can run in the background.
Back-ups
The program is set to save a new backup, on the creation of a new daycard. Backups are saved for the last 4 days, so – when 4 have been assembled, the oldest backup is deleted. They are placed in a folder special folder.
Help Texts
By pressing the ALT-key, most objects in the main window will show an explanation of their purpose. The glyph buttons will show their title
Text entry
On the daycard you can type ordinary keyboard text, which will enter the (scrolling) text field in the center. You can go on typing, and there will be automatic wrapping.
Each time you type a return (new line) a new paragraph, preceded by a time-address, will be opened.
Your choice of full or partial time indexing in "preferences” will apply to both text and glyph entries
But you can prevent all time indexing of text by your choice in "preferences"
Parallel to the option of entering text in this central field you can enter pictograms (= glyphs /icons) by clicking buttons with images of these glyphs.
A very small number of these - just serving as examples - are preinstalled around the central writing field in the primary window.
Wider samples are distributed in some of the auxiliary windows on the day-card.
On the Menu you will find the Glyph menu. Choosing that one, you will find 12 options for categories of pictograms. Choose any one of these, and a list-field will appear, showing, in a scroll field, a long series of pictogram, each with a suggested explanatory key-word. Clicking any of these, a corresponding button is produced, and placed in the "landing field" above, surrounded by a red rectangle. If you move the mouse over such a new icon-button, press ALT-key, and hold down the mouse-button, you can move the icon-button to a location of your choice. (You can always change its position, in the same way).
(A minor awkwardness is, that moving these buttons may enter them in your text-field, as if they were clicked)
Instead of choosing only one pictogram from such a list field, you can click a series, which will then land on top of each other (thus hiding the previous) in the landing field, ready for subsequent distribution.
The key words of the glyphs function as help texts: once the button has been placed you can make it show its title if you tap your touch-pad
The titles associated with the glyphs on the lists can be freely changed by the user. By pressing alt-key and clicking it in the list, a dialogue lets you change its title (e.g. to another language, or to another personal meaning). The new name will - from that time- follow the new buttons you install. But the old name will stay with buttons already installed. So you must delete those, and install new ones, to get the new titles as help-texts.
As the 12 fonts later will be expanded with more glyphs, Phenomenalog contains a function, on the tools menu, to "update from source" these glyph-fields (when you have downloaded the relevant new font version(s) + source files).
The number of glyph-buttons you choose, collecting from the 12 categories, must be chosen from expected personal relevance, and the ways you choose to distribute them in the vaguely colored background-fields surrounding the diary writing-field, will have to be intuitive, designed by yourself to optimize their fast retrieval by whatever mnemonic guidelines, you can invent. E.g. inner rectangles for most personal bodily processes, outer rectangles for extra domestic processes. And/or, following the clock, typicality’s of morning procedures along one side, of day-procedures along a second side, of evening-procedures along a third and of night-procedures along a fourth.
But don’t forget, that removal, re-distribution and new selections of such buttons is always within easy reach.:
Press d while clicking down on an unwanted glyph button: - this lets you delete it
And don’t forget, that you can also color these buttons, from you own idiosyncratic notions, in order to improve their swift recognition, in the window, in the text, or in the diurnal glyph-circle:
Press c key while clicking down on the glyph button. This lets you color it.
You can also alter the size of any glyph button:
Press s key while clicking down on a glyph button. This lets you (re-) size it.
The implication is, that you can have one or more siblings of one glyph, each with its own color and/or size, and attach different personal meaning to them.
P.S.: You are free to move the glyph-items in the list up and down: Press ALT and Ctrl, and click a line. This produces a dialogue, helping you to place the selected item in a new place on the list. This may be of special relevance, if you will design a clone for a specific (kind of) user
In the bottom of the main window you find a long row of buttons, connected to each its memo-field. You can open each of these and write into them: what is entered will follow the field on future daycards. A convenient way of using them is to select words or sentences in your daily text, and -while pressing the CTRL-key click the memo-button you select for destination. In this way what you selected will be copied to the memofield (and added the date) without your having to open and close the field.
What you write directly into a memofield is automatically dated, and the act is reported to the main textfield
(But note, that you can open a memofield and browse back and forth to inspect its content through the previous days without it being reported, - and generally: that you of course are free to delete whatever you wish)
The titles of the memofields are changeable: If you click memofield-buttons, while pressing the option-key (Alt-key), you are offered to rename them
!!! It is important to beware that only entries to the memofields on the last daycard will be copied to future daycards !!!
By clicking the button "REFLECTION" you open a special substack with a scrolling field. This field is a "perpetual" memo-field, in that it can receive, and hold on to, information from any daycard, you may choose to go back to, - in opposition to the series of ordinary memo-fields which are only holding on to what was in them, when the following daycard was produced.
It is hidden, the moment you click anywhere on the daycard.
You can quote to this field without even opening it, - just as is the case for memo-fields - by selecting text in textfield, holding down the CTRL-key, and clicking the REFLECTION button.
The button "Calendar" will open a week-calendar, and select the dayfield corresponding to the date of the daycard. When the week-calendar is open, you can browse back and forth in the weeks. By clicking any (red) date-number, you will be returned to the daycard corresponding to that date, - if a corresponding date card exists. In this way, the week-calendar is the best tool for navigating your diary, if you don’t want to browse card by card with arrow keys in the diary stack. (Or use the go-to menu)
Two supplementary functions are associated with the week-calendar:
* In the use of your diary you can select text in your diary, and pressing the CTRL-key while clicking the calendar-button, the selected text will be copied to the corresponding day in the calendar without its being opened for more than a glimpse. This function corresponds to what can be done, quoting to memo-fields. But while quoting to memo-fields from past daycards is of limited use, as such quotes are not copied to new days, the quotes to calendar will remain easily accessible through browsing the calendar.
But the limited space available in the day-fields of the calendar of course puts a narrow limit to the lengths of the quotes.
* Another function of the week-calendar is its potential remind function: if you have entered text in a weekday-field for a future day, the diary will paste that text into the first line of the new daycard, when that day arrives.
The button "Addresses" will open a stack of address-cards, where you can add, and sort, your addresses, phone-numbers, e-mail etc, + visible and less visible notes and comments. There is a find-button, -which will help you search (and continue search). The searches are automatically quoted to the diary textfield.
We have implemented a few automatic counting mechanisms. Selected icons will - for each day -count up, the number of times they are activated. This is done for the cigarette icon, for two alcohol buttons, and for the medicine-button. Below the textfield in the main window you will see counting-fields, telling how many cigarettes you (have clicked to) have smoked, how many drinks and how many times medicine/drugs have been clicked. Few people will be close to the diary or remember to click for each of such events. But - if you want to use these countings in an honest way-, you can just click the field, and answer what the amount should be updated to, at a given time.
Another counting function is the sleep-count. Of course it cannot count how much you actually slept. It is constructed in such a way, that the diary will remember, when you clicked the (sleep) icon. If and when, on the next day, you click the arise icon, it will put the amount of hours between these to times into the "slept" field.
We have implemented 7 small fields for users optional input of physiological data. The labels are arbitrary, but users can change them, if clicking label, while ALT-key is down, you are offered to change its title. However the Preferences menu lets you hide them/show them as you wish. (You are free to use them for text instead of numbers)
The Counting data and the Physiological data are, when new daycard is produced, entered into a new line in a table, which can be inspected by the Statistics button.
In the daily use of the diary you will probably often want to refer to events earlier in the day. Depending on your aims, needs for precision, time pressure etc you can either
* Just write and/or click glyphs without specifying when event(s) took place
* Refer in writing: earlier..., this morning...., early afternoon..., at 2 PM.... etc
* Use the ‡glyph (from Reflection glyph menu) to give an indication, that what follows refers to an earlier time
* Or you can click the RETRO- button, which will ask you to indicate a time to which you want to refer. You can here refer with a minutes precision, but don’t let yourself tyrannize by that option, - probably selecting an hour and 00 minutes will often be most practical. It is a little awkward, that the precise time-format has to be used, - so be it.
The function will insert the new time-address at the chronologically correct place in the sequence of time-indexed entries in the scrolling textfield, and place the insertion point there, so you can click-in one or more glyphs and/or type text for that time of the day. As long as you don’t type return, text and glyphs will continue to land there. It takes a return to jump down to last line of the textfield again.
You are of course free to add (or delete) text anywhere in your diary, e.g. for completion of a previous entry the same day. But in order to add glyphs to an earlier entry, you can click the "ANNOT" button, and then select where you want to add something (Text and/or glyph(s). In that way you get inserted an extra time-index, indicating when your addition is made, - and simultaneously also a present note, indicating to which day an annotation has been made, (except when you annotate to what you wrote the same day). This gives you a tool in reflective uses of the diary. Reading back and evaluating, seeing earlier events or comments in a new light etc can in this way be truthfully recorded, and more easily be retrieved. (In this connection it is important to remember, that what is written to memo-fields of past days is not carried along to future days, so notes of a reflexive nature may have to be put into the reflection-stack)
With the button "Alert me", you can activate an alarm, - either to a selected number of minutes or to a clock-time
In the Main window you will find a large button called diurnal glyphs. Clicking it will open an auxiliary window, filled with 24 columns of each 6 small fields, each able to contain 4-6 glyphs relating to a 10 minute period of the day.
When you enter pictograms in your textfield in the primary window, they are copied to the corresponding 10-minute field (as long as there is space left) You will see the sequence of hour-columns clockwise distributed, -although some zigzagging takes place in the left and the right panel: This design is chosen to maximize the number of containable glyphs.
The design is awkward, far from being a real circle, so it may take some time to be accustomed to the principle that the six lines of a column represent - from the top- each 10-minute interval of that hour. It is most easily grasped in the upper row and the right part of the window, feels less evident along the bottom of the window, going from right to left, and weird up the left side of the window.
However this was the design to make best use of the screen for a maximum number of glyphs-per-hour.
By the automatic creation of this text free duplicate of diary events, you gain a way of overlooking any 24 hour period of your diary-keeping at a single glance, -and browse back and forth between the days, to observe variations in the day scheme - and search occurrences of special relevance to yourself. By some use of coloring of the icon-buttons in the main window, you may help yourself to observe and reflect on specific types of events.
The usefulness of the glyph-circle compensates to some extent for the difficulties created by the scrolling of the textfield: If you spot a relevant occurrence on a day in the glyph-circle window, you just click the return-to-primary-window-button, and scroll the textfield to find the possible textual context of the occurrence on that day.
Auxiliary windows
On the right side of the main window, you find 7 buttons. Each will open an auxiliary window. All of these can be used to place icon buttons, functioning just as the ones you place in the main window, surrounding the text-field. Clicking a single icon on such a window will move you back to the main window and enter it in the textfield. And with the shift-key pressed you can select a series. Only when you press the ALT-key and re-click the last one you will be returned to main window, and the selected series of icons entered in the textfield. (And - as space permits- copied to the corresponding glyph-circle field.
The OIKOS-Window is a little different from the others, in that here is placed a background picture, representing, quite abstractly, some of the basic typicality’s of the "Oikosphere": the domestic sphere, and its contemporary surrounding ecological contexts.
Although the basic idea is, that the user shall choose and self distribute the icon buttons of personal relevance, in this window a rather large number of buttons are pre-distributed, to give you a feel of the icon resources available through the glyph-menus.
But you can delete them, move them around, color them or add others as you choose, as described above in the Icons-paragraph.
Body-window
The body-window, like the Oikos-window has a fixed background picture, here a male and a female body, front and back. It can be used as a repository of body-related glyphs, facilitating fast re-finding, (and using color coding same glyph may be used as referring to different body-areas) A sample of the - all too few - body-related glyphs are pre-installed (and can of course be deleted or moved.
The remaining auxiliay windows permit you to enter a background image of your choice:
Garden-window
Workplace-window
Environs-window
Home-window
Family -window
These other windows are meant to be used in more ways: Each can be chosen to place a group of glyph-buttons, perhaps more seldomly used - or easier for you to find, - or just to avoid having too many in the primary window.
But another aspect of these windows is, that they are meant for the users' placing their own background picture there: The plan of your garden, your office or workshop, your neighborhood, the floor-plan of your home, etc.
We have put in examples, to give an impression of some ways this can be done. You should erase these as soon as you have understood the function, since they are somewhat slowing down the automatic saving-function
The distribution of glyph-buttons is of a general background-nature. If you change it, it will be changed on all later daycards.
We hope to find a way to let you place graphical notations specific for a day, relative to background pictures in these auxiliary windows: where you sow in your garden, where you painted in your home, where you had pains in your body etc. But this is not implemented in the present version, except for what can be improvised with the graphic tools available in the tools menu.
Text-Search : search appearances of a word
If you want to pursue the search from a first find you can re-click the search button while pressing the Control-key down.
Glyph-Search: search appearances of a glyph og a glyph-sequence. You have to start entering the glyph on the daycard and selecting it, before you click.
Code-search: This opens a table, where you can record and later recover your usernames/id's and passwords
This button opens a dialogue, through which you can search for the appearance of either a word or a glyph (or glyph sequence) in the textfield - or in the memofields - throughout the days.
Glyphs This button lets you search for the appearance(s) of one or a series of glyphs in you diary-texts. You have to have selected an instance of the glyph(s) in your textfield, before you click this button.
If you want to pursue the search from a first find you can re-click the glyph-button while pressing the Control-key down.
To close memofields opened and get your search recorded in the diary, re-click the glyph button while pressing the Alt-key down
Parse This button lets you produce a textfile, where all the appearances of a specific word (or string) – or glyph throughout the accumulated days in the stack are listed, specifying for each occurrence, on which day it was found.
Parsing for one or a series of glyphs You have to have selected an instance of the glyph(s) in your textfield, before you click the Parse-button.
Only the menu items, which are not self-explanatory, will be commented in the following
File
open
save
save as... This will produce a copy of your full diary, but beware that after that operation you are in the copy! You can of course always change the name of the files directly on the computer. But the save as...function is meant as a way to create a safety-back-up.
page set-up
print text of this daycard
print this window
print text of sequence of daycards
save textfield as file You can here select to produce a coherent textfile of a selected sequence of daycards
print text of selected memofield
Preferences
Back-up location Here you have to locate – once-, in which folder/where the automatic daily backup –for the last 4 days – shall be placed
Snapshot.location Here you have to locate – once-, in which folder/where screensnapshots shall be placed
Parsing-location Here you have to locate – once-, in which folder/where parsings shall be placed
New card-making The default mode is that new daycards are automatically produced. The hour on which a new daycard is produced is set to 05.00, but you can change it through dialogue from this menu item. That the shift is not at 00.00 but later is selected in order not to interfere with the coherence of wake day, which for many people more or less often extends past midnight.
If you always sleep before midnight / wake up before 05.00, you can here change the daycard shift to your convenience.
Length of time-indexes You have a choice between full time indexing, including year, month, day + time, - or short: Only the time.
Time-index of text You can have or avoid having time-indexes for each return, i.e. time indexing of each text paragraph. Remember, that you can make this shift off or on at your convenience.
So you can produce e.g. text of a letter, or longer accounts, without being hampered by unwanted time-indexes every time you make a return for a new paragraph.
(Time-indexing of glyphs entered is not interfered with)
Text size It is possible to set the font size of text written to the textfield. 12 is the default, but to accommodate to specific user-needs this can be changed to 16, 18 or 24.
Statistics You can select the physiological data entry fields to be shown or hidden
Detailed preferences: Here you can select and deselect precisely, which functions you want to appear on the daycard.
Beware of the optional links to Inetbrowser and "MyCyberspace"
Go
to day This is one way to jump to a previous day in your diary. Alternatives are
a) to use the left-arrow in the lower right corner of the screen.
b) to go to the calendar, browse to the week, and click at the date
to Parseviewer The result of parsings (se about parsing on previous page) are saved in a “parsefolder, and the contents can be inspected through this menu.”
Tools
Make stack moveable For some purposes it is nice to be able to move the phenomenalog window down your screen, so you can have simultaneous access to other programs and functions on your computer.
The construction of phenomenalog is not compatible with this option as a permanent feature, as the auxiliary windows and the diurnal Glyph-circle prohibits it. The moment you jump to any of these, the moveability is cancelled, -but back in the main window you can reestablish it
New past day Here you can produce a daycard for a former day, if you miss such day. It will be inserted in its chronological place in the stack. But you must remember, that the memofields on such daycards will be empty, and what you might write into them will not be copied to following days. Therefore: Never use it to produce a daycard for the latest day
Link to application Here you can produce permanent buttons permitting you direct access to open any application on your computer. They will report to your diary, when you use them
Link to document Here you can produce permanent buttons permitting you direct access to open any document on your computer.
They will report to your diary, when you use them
An option to create such a button ONLY on the present daycard (e.g. for a textfile, photo, sound- or videoclip has not yet been developed
Delete this card Removes a daycard in a permanent way. No means to retrieve it. .
Phenoupdate Phenomenalog updates and saves –as default - every 10 minutes, but if for some reason this cycle is broken by other operations on your computer, - and f. ex. a new daycard is not produced as it should, - you can kickstart Phenomenalog by clicking this menu item.
Update from source As the 12 fonts later will be expanded with more glyphs, "update from source” will permit you to replace the contents of an opened glyph-field with an expanded version, containing both the present array and additions (when you have downloaded the relevant new font version(s) + sourcefiles from our website).
(The updated list will reproduce our original list sequence and labels - but it means that you can stay with the rest of the design, you have developed and its accumulated diary
Glyphs
This menu permits the opening of lists of the available glyph-buttons, from which you can choose those you want to place on the main window. These can also be opened and used in the auxiliary windows. Further explanations in the "Glyph-buttons" item above.
When you open one list, the previous will be hidden.
If you re-click a list name where a check mark indicates, that it is opened, it will be hidden
For all the lists it applies, that they only contain the glyphs available at the time the present Phenomenalog version was issued. As we expect many new glyphs to be added in the future, we have constructed the abovementioned ”update from source” option.
Body.
Child
Social
Household
Food
Cultivate All glyphs and their labels are shown on the following pages.
Smoke Remember: You can change their labels, you can color them
Info (even have different colored versions of same glyph-button)
Outside and, within some limits, size them differently
Sport
State
Reflection
Text All of the following operates on selected text, but also on the glyph-buttons
Font
Size
Color
Style
Tricks Here you can open a window to remind you of key and mouseclick combinations
Built-in browser: A rather primitive autonomous browser is provided. It has weaknesses, such that it cannot be used e.g. for facebook. But it has the advantage, that it permits you to babtize and create permanent linkbuttons to self-chosen sites-
My Cyberspace. This is the window, where link-buttons to self-chosen sites arrive. Selected they can be moved around (pressing ALT-key) and coloured (pressing c-key)
Drafts. Because the text field on the daycard is programmed to organize entered text chronologically, it is unfit for editing of a text, eg a poem or draft for a planned letter. The draft button provides both a window for free textediting and a window for simple drawing ( e..g. sketching new glyphs) Such sketches cannot be turned to functioning glyphs by the user, but will be received with gratitude for possible inclusion in the next expansion of the glyph-library.Attach in mail to kresten.bjerg@psy.ku.dk
P.S. In the welcome-window you will find a button:
Make a clone This will produce a copy of your present "design" of your diary, where your distribution of glyph buttons and titles of the 20 memofields is preserved, but almost all other information is removed: no diary text, no memo-texts, no calendar text and max 1 address-card. This permits you to design and produce a standalone for other users. (You will have yourself to remove images, which you don’t want to include in the clone)