.KEYWORD magic
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Text Magic with MagicText
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Since the use of Graffiti is so integral to everyone’s use of the Palm organizer, any time we can find you a way to save Grafitti entry time, we consider that a big win. Vicki Brown has found such a way in a program called MagicText. MagicText doesn’t make the entering of new text easier, but it makes the manipulation of text already in your Palm device much, much easier. To find out how, read this article today.
.AUTHOR Vicki Brown
When I first bought my Palm III, I was delighted. Its small size, wealth of applications, and easy-to-use interface make it a useful and convenient companion. Unfortunately, it was missing a few things I’ve grown used to having on my Macintosh desktop. In particular, I’d grown used to dragging and dropping text on my Macintosh and wasn’t really able to do that well on my Palm device.
When I went looking for a solution, I found TextEditHack, a HackMaster hack from Synergy Solutions (at http://www.synsolutions.com). TextEditHack provided much of what I was looking for — a drag-and-drop text hack for the Palm computer. Features included double-tap to select a word, triple-tap to select a sentence, and drag to move text to somewhere else. What could be better?
MagicText is better. MagicText is the new, improved, (and renamed) update and successor to TextEditHack.
.H1 The final word in text editing?
Synergy Solutions calls MagicText 1.5 "the final word in text editing on the Palm Organizer". Of course, they may be biased, but I’m inclined to agree. Not only does MagicText allow you to manipulate text by adding tap selection and drag-and-drop capability to your Palm device, it also provides an easily accessible contextual menu, shown in Figure A, for such operations as cut/copy/paste, phone lookup, date and time, and much more.
.FIG A MagicText provides an easily accessible contextual menu.
The secret to the MagicText Contextual Menu is an expandable plug-in architecture that allows functionality to be added (or removed) as you desire. The MagicText application allows configuration of individual plug-in settings, activation or deletion of plug-ins, even beaming if your Palm device is IR-capable. You decide which plug-ins you want to install; the system is fully configurable.
MagicText 1.5 ships with over a dozen plug-ins. New ones will be added to the MagicText Plug-in Repository (on Synergy Solutions Web site) as they become available. Some of the plug-ins are ones you might expect: Copy, Cut, and Paste; UpperCase, LowerCase, and TitleCase. Others are a little more unusual. There’s a plug-in to access (and paste in) the current Date and Time, and one to do a Phone Lookup. There is an encryption plug-in. Three plug-ins are available to assist with email.
Several plug-ins have little to do with editing text. There’s a plug-in for HotSync, and one to reach most of the Palm Controls (e.g., Sound volume, alarm sounds, and auto-off time). Plug-ins provide links to Bozidar Benc’s PopUpCalculator and PopUpTime if you have these installed, eliminating the need for additional launching hacks. There’s even a plug-in to flip an animated coin (in case you’re still having trouble deciding whether or not to buy MagicText!)
If you are a Palm developer, take a look at Synergy Solutions’ Plugin SDK. Check out the Plug-in Development documentation. If you know C and have a Palm OS development kit, creating a plug-in may be easier than you think.
.H1 How it works
MagicText, like its predecessor, is a HackMaster hack. If you haven’t yet discovered HackMaster, you probably haven’t added many extensions to your Palm device yet! HackMaster, by DaggerWare (at http://www.daggerware.com/), has become the standard for adding Palm OS system extensions. Through an arrangement with Synergy Solutions, HackMaster is provided with MagicText and is free of charge solely for use with MagicText. Of course, if you find HackMaster useful for running other extensions, you should register it.
When you install MagicText, you’ll need to install both the application (MagicText.prc) and the HackMaster hack (MagicText Hack.prc), as well as any plug-ins you want to use. If you don’t already have it, you’ll also need to install HackMaster (HackMaster.prc).
The MagicText application is used to configure plug-in settings and get help for the application, as shown in Figure B. The MagicText Hack controls the contextual menu. A HackMaster preferences panel allows you to customize the sensitivity of the MagicText Hack and also choose the MagicText activator button.
.FIG B The MagicText application is used to configure plug-in settings.
After configuring the settings, as shown in Figure C, you can access MagicText’s contextual menu from any application simply by dragging up from the MagicText activator button. The activator button is simply one of the buttons in the Palm’s silkscreen area. Magic-Text doesn’t take over that button entirely, but can share it with another application. For example, I activate MagicText by dragging up from the top half of the Calculator button, into the Palm display area.
.FIG C A preferences panel allows you to customize the hack.
.H1 How to get it
MagicText is a commercial application. A fully-functional 30-day demo version is available. You can download everything you need from the Synergy Solutions Web site. If you decide to keep it, MagicText retails for $17.95. Registered users of TextEdit Hack can upgrade to MagicText for no extra charge.
MagicText requires Palm OS 2.x or higher. Warning: it will crash on a 1.x version of the Palm OS! MagicText requires 26K of RAM.
HackMaster is shareware. If you use it for anything other than MagicText, the shareware fee is $5. Additionally, some of the third party plug-ins distributed with MagicText are also shareware. See the ReadMe files in the MagicText distribution for details.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
MagicText is available from Synergy Solutions at Synergy Solutions at http://www.synsolutions.com.
HackMaster is available from DaggerWare at http://www.daggerware.com.
PopUpCalculator and PopUpTime are available from http://www.benc.hr.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Vicki Brown has done freelance writing for such publications as Handheld PC magazine and MacTech Magazine. She is the co-author of the book "MacPerl: Power and Ease". Pointers to her various published articles are available on her web pages at http://www.cfcl.com/~vlb/CRC/articles.html. She can be reached via email at vlb@cfcl.com.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6ce0a
