Let's talk about text editing
If you have a topic selected, just start typing to replace the text. If a topic is selected,
it will have a blue border, and if you are editing the text, it has a red border. If
you want to insert text part way along a topic, you can click a selected topic, and you will
be put into editing mode with the cursor at the point that you clicked. If you want to
edit just using the keyboard, and want to edit the existing text without replacing it
in its entirety, select the topic and press Shift+Command+Quote, and then use the arrow
keys to position the cursor where you want to edit, and edit from there.
You can also double click to select a word, or triple click to select a whole paragraph.
These actions can be done whether the topic was already selected or not.
When you have finished editing the topic, just press Return to finish editing.
If you are editing and want to insert a new line within the same paragraph, press Control+Return,
and if you want to insert a new paragraph, press Shift+Return. If you don't have a particular
paragraph spacing set, a new line and paragraph break may look the same but they will behave
differently when you apply paragraph related settings, for example changing the text alignment.
The text formatting options are available on the text inspector. All of the options
on the text inspector operate on either the selected text if you are editing the text
at the time, or the selected topics if you are not editing the text, and also will operate
on the notes text if you are editing the notes.
The first button opens the font panel. From there, you can select the font you want to
use. We recommend that you use the font set fonts from the bottom of the font panel, so
that if you want to change the formatting later on, you can update all the themed fonts
at the same time. So for instance, if we change the text on this topic to be the first level
font, and then change the font set, you can see that the font is updated.
Note that the themed fonts just define the font face and not the bold or italic characteristics
or size, so if you adjust them, they will still be seen as font set fonts and updated
when the font set is updated. The default text size comes from the theme.
This color well allows you to select the text color. You can also set the text color to
be automatic. When the color is automatic, you see a little white A on a black background
in the color well. When using automatic coloring, the text color is set automatically to either
the lightest or darkest color in the current color set (usually white or black), depending
on the perceptual color difference between the background that the text is drawn on and
the available colors. So let's select a number of topics and change their text to be automatic
color. As you can see, when the text is drawn over a dark background, the text color is
light, and when the background is light, the text is dark. And this is kept up to date
when you change the color of the topics or background or enclosing boundary.
In just about all themes, the default text coloring will be Automatic, which means that
you don't need to worry about the visibility of the text on your Mind Map no matter what
colors you set on the Mind Map itself.
If you set a non-automatic color for the text, then that color will be used no matter what,
and if you set it to be a themed color, then when you change to a different color set,
then the text color will be updated. So let's change the color on this topic to be a color
set color, and this topic we will change the text to be a color that looks the same, but
is just an ordinary color. Now you can see that when we change the color set, the themed
color changes, but the explicitly set color doesn't.
In most cases, you should probably be sticking to automatic coloring so that your text is
always visible, but the second option would be color set colors, so that all the related
text gets updated when you change to a different color set, and you would only set a custom
color if you have a specific need for a color that will not change no matter what.
You can use the pull down menus on the inspector to select the underline and strikethrough
styles, and use the color wells beside them to set the color of the underlines and strikethroughs.
You can align the text to be left, center, right aligned, or fully justified. Note that
if your text is not wrapped, and you have not resized the topic, there will be no visible
difference between the different alignment options since the text takes up the full available
size on the topic. Let's just resize this topic so that you can see the differences.
The text alignment is a paragraph based formatting option, so if you want it to only apply to
some of your text, then you will need to put a paragraph break in the text using Shift+Return,
and just select the paragraph you want to alter when applying the formatting.
The text can be aligned vertically to the top, middle, or bottom of the topic. This
alignment affects the entire text on the topic, and positions it within the space available
for the text. Therefore, if you have not increased the height of the topic beyond the height
of the text, there will be no visible difference no matter which option you select.
You can get a background color drawn behind the text. This is particularly useful if you
want to highlight a portion of the text. When you turn this option on, the selected text
will draw a background - the color of the background is set using the associated color
well. Note that when you have some text selected and turn on this option, you will not immediately
see any change because the selection highlight is drawn over the background, but when you
change the selection, you will see the changes that you have made.
By default, NovaMind uses the standard character spacing which is optimized for readability,
so you should only rarely be looking to alter the character spacing, but if you do need
to have some other spacing for some reason, you can turn on the kerning option and use
the slider or text area to adjust the amount of adjustment of the spacing.
When you reset the text to the default, it will remove all your custom formatting for
the selected text and use the standard settings defined by the current theme and font set.
While you are editing the text, you may want to have spell checking and grammar checking
and similar services enabled. You can set the options that you want for spell checking
and substitutions in the preferences screen. If your version of MacOS X doesn't handle
a particular option, then it will be disabled.
If you want to go into editing notes when using the keyboard, you can use Command+Quote,
edit your notes, and then Shift+Command+Quote to go back to editing the topic. This means
that you can do the content creation for your Mind Map without having to remove your hands
from the keyboard.
I hope this helps you get the most out of text editing in NovaMind 5.