Vitamin A

copyright 1996-97, Stand Alone, Inc.

1. Introduction
2. Installing Vitamin A
3. Using Vitamin A

1. Introduction
	Vitamin A is an application that lets you create and edit popup 
menus. You can create up to 11 different menus:
	% One in each corner of the Newton's screen (4)
	% One under the text of each silk screened button (6)
	% The Caret popup menu ( )

Each of these can consist of many different items and actions, 
giving you a great deal of control over the way your Newton 
operates.

	You will only need to use the main Vitamin A application 
once in a while. Initially, you will want to use it to set up your 
popup menus...as you use your Newton and your menus, you may 
find slight changes are required, and so you can use the main 
application to tweak your menus. For the most part, however, you 
will interact with Vitamin A through it's menus. 

2. Installing Vitamin A

To install Vitamin A, you need to get the software package 
VitaminA.pkg onto your Newton.

(Note: This assumes you've already set up the Newton Backup 
Utility to talk to your Newton. If you have not, please consult the 
documentation that came with your Newton.)

1.	Open the Newton Backup Utility      on your Desktop 
machine.

2. On your Newton, go to the Extras Drawer    and tap the 
Connection icon    .

3. Once the Newton Backup Utility has loaded on your desktop 
machine, make sure your cables are connected and tap the         
button on your Newton.

4. For each of the packages you wish to install, do the following:
% Tap the Install Package button in the Newton Backup 
Utility          

% Go to the folder where your packages are, and select 
the desired package.

% Click on the RInstallS button
	

3. Creating and Editing Menus
	To create a new menu, or edit an existing menu, you will need 
to open up the Vitamin application from the Extras drawer (by 
tapping the icon) and selecting the menu you wish to edit from 
the list at the top.  
                                                        
Greyed out icons indicate inactive menus

After choosing the menu you wish to edit or create, a blank menu is 
shown on the right side of the screen. If the menu already exists 
(i.e., you're editing rather than creating) then it's items will be in 
the menu.
                                 
To the right of the popup items is a list of available actions. These 
can be dragged and dropped into the popup list. Items in the list can 
also be dragged to re-order them, or dragged to the trash can (at the 
bottom of the screen) to remove them from the menu entirely. 

Note: You cannot drag items within an icon grid to reorder them.

To add an item to the list, drag it from the action list into the menu. 
To add an item to an icon grid, drag it to the grid square you'd like 
to assign it to.  To see a brief description of an item, tap the "i"
button next to the item.

Using the Add button, you can add separators and icon grids to the 
menu.
                          
Tapping next to an icon grid will bring up a window in which you 
can configure the grid.  By tapping on any of the numbers, you can set new valuesfor the size and number of items in the grid. The only limits on any of these are the size of the menu itself.

To edit an individual icon grid, tap on that square in the grid.  You can tap on a text item to modify it.

Checking or unchecking the "Show Icon" checkbox will determine 
whether the icon is shown to the left of the item in the menu. The 
indent is the number of pixels in to set the text of the item.

To see what your menu will actually look like, you can tap the 
"Test" button, which will popup your menu (selecting anything in 
this test menu will do nothing.)

After you are satisfied with your menu, you'll need to install it.  To 
do this, tap the action button, and select "Install into Location", 
where location is the current menu (i.e., for the caret menu, this 
would be "Install into Caret".)

If you make any changes to the current menu, you'll have to re-
install it to access them. If you decide not to keep your changes, 
select "Reset Location" from the action button. This will reset the 
menu to the last time you selected the menu from the picker list at 
the top of the screen, or opened the application, whichever was 
later.

If you decide you no longer want to have a menu in the current 
location, you can remove it by selecting "Remove Location" from 
the action button (if you select this for the Caret menu, the default 
caret menu will be used.)

If a button has only one item associated with it, that tapping it will 
not popup a menu, but will execute that action.

4. Vitamin A Actions
	There are several dozen actions that come pre-installed with 
Vitamin A. In addition, other applications can install their own 
actions, which will be listed in the action list in the application. 

Any item that pastes text or character will paste that information 
directly after the current location of the caret. If there is no 
caret on screen, selecting the item will do nothing.

Below is a list of all the pre-installed actions, along with a brief 
description:
 
AppMan      
	This item cannot be added to the caret menu. When 
placed in a menu, this item will generate a list of all currently open 
applications, allowing you to jump from one to another. In addition, it 
will offer choices to jump to the NotePad, the Styles palette, and the 
Connection app.

Change Volume
	You will have to select a particular volume when you add this 
to a menu (by tapping on the menu item.) When chosen, it will set 
your Newton's volume to this value.

Clean and display memory                  
	This will calculate and display the amount of free heap 
memory both before and after clearing unused memory. Heap 
memory on a Newton is similar to RAM on a desktop machine.

Clean Memory
	This clear unused memory, but will not display the results.

Close all Apps
	This will close all open applications.

Connect
	This will open the Connection app and attempt to initiate a 
connection using whatever method was last used.

Cursor Left
	This will move the caret left one character.

Cursor Right
	This will move the caret right one character.

Dates Keyboard
	This will open the Dates keyboard.

Launch Extra
	You will need to select a particular extra to launch after you 
add this to a menu (by tapping on the menu item.) The icon will 
change to reflect whatever you have chosen. When selected from a 
menu, this will open the desired application.

Numeric Keyboard
	This will open the Numeric keyboard.

Paste Space
	This will paste a space.

Paste Accent
	This will paste an accent. You will have to choose which accent 
to paste (by tapping on the menu item.) The accent will be applied to 
the character just to the left of the caret. The accent can be any of 
the following: `, +, ^, ~, ,, 
, or .

Paste bullet
	This will paste a bullet.

Delete
	This will delete the character to the left of the caret.

Forward Delete
	This will delete the character to the right of the caret.

Paste my Name
	This will paste your name, as entered in your Owner Info.

Paste Punctuation
	This will paste an item of punctuation. You will have to choose 
which character to paste (by tapping on the menu item.) It can be 
any of the following: ., ,, @, !, ?, :, ;, ', ", R, S, _, -, *, &, \, /, (, ), {, }, [, ], T, U, 
and #. In addition, you can paste sets of the following: "", '', RS, and TU. 
Pasting a set will paste both the left and right elements, and then 
place the cursor in between them. Two versions of each icon are 
available, so that you can create regular and small sized icon grids.

Paste Tab
	This will paste a tab.

Paste the date
	This will paste the current date. You can select the format for 
the date in the Vitamin A prefs.

Paste the time
	This will paste the current time. You can select the format for 
the date in the Vitamin A prefs.

Paste Return
	This will paste a return.

Phone Keyboard
	This will open the Phone keyboard.

Receive Beam
	This will open the In Box, and set up to receive a beam 
automatically.

Remove Space
	This will remove all spaces from any currently selected text. If 
there is no currently selected text, it will remove all spaces from the 
chunk of text in which the caret is currently in. This is useful for 
properly formatting email and web addresses.

Restart Newton
	This will restart your Newton. It is equivalent to pressing the 
restart button in the battery compartment, and is not harmful to 
your data.

Retreive Eudora* Email
	This will tell Eudora* to check your email (if Eudora* is 
installed.)

Rotate Screen
	This will rotate your screen. If you have a Newton with more 
than two screen orientations, it will popup a menu from which to 
choose a new orientation.

Run Script
	This will run a section of NewtonScript code. After you add it to 
a menu, you will need to choose a script to run. You can create and 
edit scripts from the Script Editor. You will need to have some 
knowledge of NewtonScript to use this feature.

Send Eudora* Email
	This will tell Eudora* to send any email in your Out Box (if 
Eudora* is installed.)

Sleep Newton
	This will put your Newton to sleep.

Super Caps
	This will properly capitalize the selected text. If there is no 
currently selected text, it will properly capitalize the chunk of text in 
which the caret is currently in. This consists of changing words to 
lowercase, capitalizing the beginnings of sentences, and of proper 
nouns.

System Info
	This will bring up a small window listing your free heap, and 
free storage space on each card and your internal store. 

Toggle Backlight
	If your Newton has a backlight installed, this will toggle it on or 
off.

Toggle Guest Mode
	This will place your Newton in Guest recognition mode, or, if it's 
already in Guest mode, will return it to user mode. You should do this 
before letting other people try out your Newton, so that it does not 
learn their handwriting in place of yours.

Toggle Recognition
	This will toggle recognition between Cursive and Printed styles.

Toggle Stores
	This will let you set the store on which new information and 
packages are stored.

Typewriter Keyboard
	This will open the typewriter (qwerty style) keyboard.
