Note-taking
 

There are times when I wish to take a few notes in a PBW game.

Bringing MS Word to the fore in a SE4 game, causes the secondary window such as log, ship/unit window, or construction queque to close.

Anybody know what can be done to prevent the closure of the secondary window when a word processor is brought up?

Re: Note-taking
 

i have notepad in my quicklink tray. extremly useful. i'd recommend that or any other notepad-like program. Notepad is virtually one of the best not-taking programs because it does not take any resources. You can have 20 notepads open and still have about 90% of your resources.
Try opening 20 word documents and navigating through them... for notepad it only takes alt+tab press.

Re: Note-taking
 

Hey I wonder if you have dual monitors setup, can you play SE4 on one screen and have a word processor open on the other monitor? That would be handy...

Re: Note-taking
 

I continue to be baffled by some people's aVersion to taking notes on a piece of paper. It's so much easier than alt-&ltTab&gting back and forth, and not that difficult to keep organized.

I only use Notepad for things that I plan to copy & paste somewhere else, such as a story thread like History of the Galaxy II {link}.

Using Word to take notes is like watering your garden with a firehose.

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks Taera

But I am not sure what you mean by "quicklink tray". Do you mean the Quick Launch Toolbar (also called the "application launcher") which is on the taskbar [edit: just]to the right of the Start button?

[ November 23, 2002, 18:07: Message edited by: tbontob ]

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, it is easier...at least for me.

For example, just entering a difficult spelled planet means I have to move to the right of my computer (my desk is L shaped), enter the name, go back to the computer to look at the name again and then go back to my notes to make sure I spelled it correctly. My spelling ability is good, but it fails me with respect to planets/systems.

Re: Note-taking
 

I may be biased, (I supported it for Micro$onge for 3 years), but the outlining and book marking / linking and Graphics capicty of Word makes it a great notetaker.
If I want to save a screen shot for later referance I can Alt PrintScreen, Alt Tab and Ctrl C
Most folks consider me a lazy man. I keep telling them that is Redundant.

Re: Note-taking
 

There are advantages to taking notes on computer.
- Most of us can type faster than we can write with a pen.
- Sometimes you can grab stuff from the screen to include in your notes.
- You can easily edit what you've written.
- You can e-mail it.
- You save trees.

Re: Note-taking
 

yeah, trees are the most important part.
Help the green peace! Save trees! what? ok, i'll shut up for now.

Anyway, i still consider notepad to be a powerful tool. My Documents folder on my PC is full with notes from various places (links, passwords etc) saved in .txt. Also it is a file you can upload and view from everywhere, no Version conflicts, no spelling warnings, and everyone can open it.

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">SE streches across both (or 3 in my case) of the monitors. Your menu will be across across all of the monitors. Once you start the game one of the monitors goes black while the normal playing area is on only one of them. In my case, the center monitor shows the normal game area like it was on a single monitor. Other 2 are black and cover the desktop. Funny thing is though is that when you enter combat, the game will once again strech across all of the monitors.

I havn't tryed playing with any setting to see if I can make it use only 1 or 2 monitors. Would be handy though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: Note-taking
 

I simply use Wordpad (Very nice compromise), and hit alt-tab to bring it to the front while SE4 is running...

If you have win2000 or XP, a program such as This "actual title buttons" one could be very helpful, allowing you to make SE4 partially transparent!

No need to keep switching windows or minimizing things in order to see your notes while typing up a long political message!

Re: Note-taking
 

i was just wondering what do you take notes of?

Re: Note-taking
 

PBW games can take a while and sometimes its difficult to forget what where when who.

Re: Note-taking
 

I use { this } program.

There is also a dicussion of this topic { here }

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">lucky you. i have a hard time REMEMBERING what, where, when, who and why. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Note-taking
 

err, i meant to remember/not forget

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even worse if you have alhzheimer's...you meet new people everyday!

Re: Note-taking
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This, I must admit, is about the only advantage I can see for using Word. Can WordPad handle images? I can't remember the Last time I took a screenshot of anything, let alone of SE IV.

For straight text, .doc format is several times as large as the same file saved as .txt or .rtf . I've seen size differences as high as a factor of 5.

Most of my stack of notes on paper is a record of everything I've researched, in order, for each of my SE IV games that I started prior to v1.78. This was meant to be a reference base for writing my own AI files, if I ever get around to that.

Other stuff I've written down is lists of things I need to know when writing diplomatic Messages to another human player in a PBW game (system and planet names, stuff I want to trade for, etc.), total costs of ship designs that I need to retrofit, reminders of things that need to be done on a future turn, etc.

Re: Note-taking
 

Plain text files cant have images. But, rtf files can, and those can be edited with wordpad. So yes, wordpad can handle images, with the right document format. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Note-taking
 

I must admit that I use MS Outlook for all my note taking. It does everything that Word does, but it files it by creation date & subject. Plus the fact that I have Outlook open constantly and not Word.

Notes consist of all Communications received and sent and screen shots of enemy system map layouts.

Re: Note-taking
 

Hmm, I haven't had much luck with MS Outlook. It's slow and crashes a lot when I do stuff like archive my old data or try to rename a folder or something. Oh, but that was when I had Windows 98. Maybe it's better now that I'm using XP...

Re: Note-taking
 

I love GS notes, as posted by dumbluck below. It is like a super organized database. I also found this program here it is but am not sure about it and you have to pay eventually. I'm probably not quick enough to get it though. And as for mr transparent it is so cool. My computer is now like an invisibilty cloak http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .