OLE Behavior in UR

[Jakem mazon]

I use a drawing tablet and pen for my work, and I've always liked applications ( Such PenOffice) which let me scribble diagrams and simple drawings on a note that can be saved or emailed. I've created a simple template in UR which allows me to insert scribble notes in UR. I am pretty sure that most UR users are aware of this.

I opened MSPAINT.EXE and create a new blank document with attributes of "8.5inX11.5in" and then choose "Select All" from its "Edit" menu. I then copy this blank document to the Windows' Clipboard.

I then insert a "Rich Text" Info Item under the "UR" "Templates" Info Item. I paste the blank MSPAINT document into the "Item Details" pane. I go into this new template "Item Attributes" pane and give the template a name such as "Pen" and give the "Item Title" a name such as "Scribble." Now, I am able to scribble notes in UR by double clicking on the "Item Detail" pane of such an inserted Info Item.

But, my question is: What other Microsoft applications or Office applications besides MSPAINT can allow me to carry out this type of behavior within UR? Or, what type of application must an application be in order to behave like MSPAINT does within UR? What happens with MSPAINT within UR seems to me like the behavior of "Object Linking and Embedding" within UR. I now see the value of letting external applications handle stored data in UR, and I realize that starting an external application such as M.S. Word through a document template more or less does the same thing as OLEing. but it's such a hussle. Is this OLE type behavior in UR unintended?


By the way, on another subject, on LCD's screens with resolutions of 1280X1024 DPI's and up those icons in the explorer pane look too darn small. Is there anything that you have plan to do about that in a future version? Thank you. Jm

[xja]

That is really cool. If you go into MS Word and select Insert>Object, you can choose from the list of all OLE objects available, then select just the inserted object, copy it, go to UR and paste it on an InfoItem and a child Text info item will be created that contains that object. You can actually insert a Word document object into a Word document, then copy the object into UR and in UR, edit it while it is embedded in an info item. Then you can edit with all the Word functionality. Interesting.

What is particularly useful for me however, as a TabletPC user, is that you can do this with an "Ink Drawing and Writing" object. Paste the ink object onto Templates, rename, edit the name, item title, etc., resize the ink object in the template to whatever size you want. When you create a new item from this template, like the MSPAINT object, you can then double click the ink object and draw directly in the object (note that after drawing in the object, you have to tap outside the object box and then click the Save toolbar icon in order for changes to be saved). That works really well. I'll probably use the Ink Drawing and Writing object for writing notes and the Bitmap/MSPAINT object for drawing.

Thanks for pointing this out.

[Jakem mazon]

Thank you, XJA, for your further suggestions. The problem that I am having is getting the MS Word OLE objects to stay put so that I can reopen the Info Item and see the writen text again.
jm

[xja]

For some objects, including a Word object and an "Ink Drawing and Writing" object, you have to click/tap in the Item Details pane outside/below the object after editing the object in order for UR to recognize that the item has changed and auto-save it when you switch to another info item. Notice that the Save icon in the toolbar is inactive and unclickable until you do so.

Also confusing is that when you use the Word object, you have to double-click just above the object frame in the Item Details pane to activate it for editing. That doesn't happen with the Ink Drawing or Bitmap objects.

But, hey, this probably wasn't a planned feature in the first place, so can't complain!

[kinook]

That's a great suggestion for editing images within UR, and we didn't actually realize it worked until you mentioned it. This method works great for bitmaps, but isn't ideal for Office documents, due to the quirks mentioned and also because UR isn't able to keyword the content. A couple other options are to 1) use the internal IE browser for viewing/editing Word/Office documents [1]: or 2) configure the documents to be opened writeable externally in Word (this is the default behavior), and UR will update its item with any changes to the external copy when moving to another item or exiting.

Regarding icon sizes, almost any tree control on Windows uses the 16x16 icon size, so this isn't a UR-specific issue. We could provide an option for using larger icon sizes in the tree, but I'm not sure how good it would look (since 32x32 and 48x48 icons will typically be much larger than the text).

[1] http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?threadid=1042