Creating a Quick Work Journal for Orbis

Greg Polly

Here's an easy way to create a quick work journal--that is, a teaching or research journal that you can open with just one keystroke at any time to input quick entries on the fly. You can then use Orbis to find particular entries with a free-form keyword search.

The procedure below creates a "run file" macro which is assigned to a key. I've used the example of a teaching-ideas journal.

Procedure

1. Using Windows Explorer, create a new folder to hold your journal files (e.g., c:/journal)

2. Open Nota Bene and create a new text file for your journal (e.g, ideas1.nb). A blank file is fine; formatting is not required--though you can add whatever format you like. I recommend setting two tab stops, one at 0.5 inches and one at 3.5 inches (command line ts 0.5,3.5). This will make it easier to add headings and indent paragraphs in your journal entries.

3. Before proceeding, familiarize yourself with the way your journal entries will look. You'll write them as text blocks separated by a blank line. On the first line of each journal entry, you'll write a subject name for the entry, the day's date, and whatever other identifying information you deem helpful. Here's a sample entry from a teaching-ideas journal:

English 201--teaching editing

June 6, 2000

David Huddle in "Taking What You Need" describes two or three "tricks" that he uses to get students to see criticism of a text as a "natural act." 1) "One tactic...I suggest that stories yearn toward a state of perfection, that it is up to an author to give a story what it wants or needs, and that it is up to a critic to help the author discern a story's desires. This is not nearly as much of a fairy tale as it sounds in this fast version; my own experience of writing has been one of developing sensitivity to the signals my work is giving me as I compose it. ... 2) ask, "Sarah, if this story were yours, what would be the first thing you'd try to change in it?" A student who would never dream of saying "I think you ought to develop the male character," would think it perfectly all right to say, "If this were my story, I'd try to develop the male character a little more." 3) "Let's say this is your story, and you sent it to The New Yorker and they sent it back to you saying, "We loved this story, but we think it needs to be cut by about a page and a half." Where would you do the cutting, Sarah?" In this case, Sarah might not wish to suggest cutting the story even while pretending she wrote it, but pretending that she wrote it and the The New Yorker wants her to cut it will allow her to see and to say exactly where the story should be edited. (130).

These questions would be useful in literature discussions as well as writing workshops.

Notice that there is no blank line between the subject line and the body of the entry and no blank line between paragraphs. Orbis will use a blank line to find the beginning of each new entry, so it's important to avoid double carriage returns within any given entry.

The date can be placed in the heading quickly from the command line: after entering the subject, tab to the middle of the page, hit F9, type "today," and hit F10 or enter.

4.  After closing the ideas1.nb file, open Orbis and create a new textbase. From the File menu in Orbis, choose "New Textbase" and fill out the dialogue boxes. For "Type," choose "Paragraphs: Double <Enter>." Index the ideas1.nb file in this textbase.

5.  Now create a "run" program that will open this journal with a single keystroke. Open a blank textfile and write the following (if you're working in NB-DOS, see the alternative instructions below):

•  Go the command line with F9

•  Type: pfunc BX (A BX should appear in the file.)

•   In the textfile, type ca and, after a space, the pathname of your journal file:ca c:\journal\ideas1.nb

•   Go back to the command line with F9 and type: pfunc Q2 (a Q2 should appear in the file).

•  Press F9 and type on the command line: pfunc BF (A BF should appear in the file.)

Your run file should now look like this:

BX ca c:\journal\ideas1.nb Q2 BF

The program you've written is the equivalent of pushing F9 to go to the command line (BX), typing the instructions to call the journal file, pushing F10 to execute the command (Q2), and then paging to the end of the file with Control + End (BF).

6.  Save this file in the journal directory as journal.run or some other name with the ".run" suffix.

7.  Finally, to load this program onto a key, go to the command line and type ldpm followed by the pathname of "journal.run" file, a comma, and the key you want to hold the program.  Here I've assigned it to "j" for "journal."   

F9 ldpm c:\journal\journal.run,J  F10

There! Now if you type Shift + Alt + J  your journal will open and automatically page down to the bottom of the file, ready for a new journal entry.

8.  You can use Orbis to search your journal for specific entries by keyword. In Orbis, choose your journal database in the upper lefthand pulldown window. In the longer text window to the right, type a keyword. Orbis will find all paragraphs containing that word and display a list of choices. See Orbis documentation for more details on searching and viewing results.

Orbis is particularly well-suited for creating a work journal because you can index multiple files. When your journal file grows large and unwieldy, simply create another journal file (e.g., ideas2.nb)--then rewrite your run file to call the new file and reload the program onto the key.  Your journal-writing won't be restricted to you main workstation, either. When you're away from Nota Bene, you can record thoughts or information in plain text files on another computer--or even in memos on a PDA. Later you can give these files singular filenames, copy them to your main work station, and index them in your Orbis database. Keyword searches in Orbis will work just the same whether your journal is contained in a few related files or scattered across dozens of widely-dispersed ones.  

Tips

Important: Anytime you edit the run file, you must reload it onto the key with ldpm before it will take effect. If you forget to do this, NB will continue to see the old run file--even if you've deleted it from the hard drive.

Mark Suzchman suggests using a particular suffix like *.jrl, *.tch or *.res for all the textfiles associated with a specific journal. Then you can create a mask for *.tch or *.res in Orbis and it will automatically select your journal files for indexing. This will save you the trouble of manually indexing each new file as you create it, and you can easily keep different journals separate.

If the Shift+Alt+J keyboard call fails to open the journal, try hitting the F9 key once. Sometimes clearing the command line will allow a macro to function.

Quick Work Journal in NB-DOS

Follow the instructions above, with the following alterations:

In NB-DOS, run files are assigned to the Alt tier rather than the Shift + Alt tier. Execute your macros by typing Alt + key.

When you create the run file, go the command line and open it with nep (new program). Similarly, call the program for editing with cap (call program) and save it with sap (save program).

When writing the run file program:

Instead of pfunc BX, use pfunc BC.

Instead of pfunc Q2, use pfunc XC.

Your finished run file should look like this:

BC ca c:\journal\ideas1.nb XC BF

This coding will also work in NB Windows. As some people on the list have explained, the old BC (Blank Command line) and XC (eXecute Command) codes were updated in later versions of XPL with the alternatives BX (Blind eXecute) and Q2, which do the same thing but bypass the command line. The BX and Q2 are supposedly preferred now unless there is a specific reason to make the results visible on the command line.

Download a NBWin version of this tutorial (4k).

Comments & corrections to Greg at polly@denison.edu.