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Deleting all footnotes from Nisus Writer Pro – Easy!

Jun 28th, 2012
by Targuman.
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I made some tweaks and updates to my translation of Targum Ruth and I wanted to update it on the site. Before I did that I wanted to delete all the footnotes. You see, I use notes in my translation as my the basis of my commentary so they are fairly expansive and full of lots of rhetorical questions not really fit for public consumption. But how to delete them all in one go?

I use Nisus Writer Pro for my academic writing and have done since 1994. Back in the day, the old version of Nisus had a very nasty bug that bit me in my doctoral viva. If you didn’t delete a footnote properly (from within the text, not in the note itself) the numbering would go haywire. There is even still an FAQ about it on their site. Once bitten twice shy, as they old codgers say (that would be me), so I did a quick search to find out how to delete all footnotes in NWP. I found some neat macros to move all the notes inline (and back again), macros and scripting are some of the real strengths of NWP, but not hints about deleting them all in one go.

I girded my electronic loins (I had backups) and simply highlighted all the notes and hit the delete key. NWP asked, “Do you really want to delete XXX of footnotes?” And I said “Yes!” Voila! All the footnotes were gone, not fuss no muss.

NB: I know many use Mellel, as I did when it first came out and before Nisus had NWP running on the new OSX. Today they released version 3.0!

 

How I use the iPad for research and work

Jan 13th, 2012
by Targuman.
3 comments

I have been fortunate enough to have had an iPad since they first came out. (As an aside, as much as folks label me an “Apple fanboy,” this is the first Apple product I have purchased in its first run. Usually I wait until the kinks are out.) It is rather amazing to consider just how far the it has come in just over a year. And that is not even considering the advances made in hardware. The first version of the iPad is still a powerful computer and is in fact more powerful today than a year ago. So I thought one of my first posts here at Sacred Techs should be a quick review of some of my prior posts and thoughts about the iPad. You can find all my iPad tagged articles on my person blog by simply going here. I will be slowly moving and updating those posts here.

First Matters
When the iPad first came out there was a lot of discussion about just what the iPad was for, content consumption or creation? Early on I wrote this article about how I was, in fact, using the iPad to create content. Just this January (2011) I wrote a more philosophical piece about content creation and operational definitions. This article asking, “What is ‘Content Creation,’” includes a discussion of rabbinic literature as well.

When I wrote the first article one of the real drawbacks for my work in ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature was the lack of Hebrew support. iOS 4.2.1 finally brought Hebrew input in a solid fashion. There are still quirks, the main desktop app I use is Nisus Writer Pro (just updated to v. 2) which saves to RTF. As discussed on the Facebook group, there are no real RTF solutions for the iPad yet. But I am getting ahead of myself. UPDATE: See previous post where Chris Heard has found an app for allowing use of Hebrew with nikkudot.

Tools
In October of 2010 the iPad was already at a point where I could use it on the road as my only machine. In fact, other than one trip in last summer to a conference, where I needed a specific app that only ran in Mac OS (but now it is available on the iPad), I have not taken a notebook with me when traveling, just the iPad and my iPhone. So, as I was saying, in October I created this post outlining what apps I use for research and productivity. There are also various accessories and other apps that I have recommended in the past as well.

Using the iPad on the road

One of the reasons I have been able to replace my notebook on the road has been the ability to wirelessly connect Apple’s BlueTooth keyboard to the iPad. It is not a perfect marriage, as I have noted, but it works surprisingly well and keeps getting better with each new update to iOS. A very nice addition I recently made is the Incase Origami Workstation, as recommended by Andy Ihnatko on Mac Break Weekly. Caution: the little velcro tabs will come unglued the day you purchase it. One of our staff loaned me her nail glue (for gluing on fake nails) and it has worked a treat (6 months on and it is still holding).

Finally, I have made much of Sente for the iPad. I have a fairly thorough review here and will post more on Sente here at Sacred Techs in the near future. The desktop app is Mac only and it is not cheap. The collaborative features are also not as open as some other solutions. That being said, it has been nothing short of revolutionary for my research and productivity. I am an administrator as well as an academic, but the former takes precedence over the latter and includes a LOT of travel. This year, thanks to the iPad and Sente, I have been able to read dozens of articles, annotate them, and collaborate with my research assistant. The result is that this summer when I was finally be able to actually do some writing and real research, I had a running start. For me, that makes all the difference in the world and I was able to accomplish quite a lot.

 

Hebrew, with vowels, on the iPad

Jan 2nd, 2012
by Targuman.
2 comments

The December (or is it January?) Biblioblog Carnival is up and through it I discovered that Chris Heard had this great post on using Hebrew with vowels on the iPad.

Until recently, iPad-using Hebraists had no good options for typing Hebrew with vowels on the aforementioned iPads. Apple provides a Hebrew keyboard for the iPad, but it does not include the נְקֻדּוֹת. Recently, however, third-party developer Žiga Kranjec released Unicode Maps, an app with an unattractive name but a very attractive function. Unicode Maps allows you to look up and copy any Unicode glyph available on the iPad. Even better, you can create your own customized keyboard and type—but only on a notepad within Unicode Maps—using that keyboard.