Quick Start
When you start the Tab-List Tools program, a small Registration window will appear, informing you of the number of days remaining from the 7-day trial period. If you have purchased a password to register the program, you can enter it with your email address now, or press the 'Continue with Trial' button to continue with an evaluation of the program. Note that during the trial-period, the program performs with full functionality, just as it will when the program has been registered.
The main program-window will then open. It is split into 3 main regions:
Upper-left: The program 'Workspace', where you will open, create, and edit your lists.
Upper-right: The 'Extensions' area, where there are a number of facilities useful whilst working on your lists.
Bottom: The 'Tools' area for the program, with tabs that lead you to all of the main processing tasks.
In addition, there is a Menu-Bar along the top of the screen, and a Status-Bar along the bottom of the screen.
You can maximize or re-size the main program-window just like any other Windows program by clicking the boxes in the top-right of the main window, or click and dragging the sides or corners of the main window. Note that the program has a minimum size of 1024 x 730 pixels.
If you need more room in the Workspace at any time, you can hide the 'Extensions' and/or the 'Tools' areas by clicking 'View > Hide Extensions' or 'View > Hide Tools' in the Menu Bar. Shortcuts are also provided for these commands: press 'Control+Shift+E' and 'Control+Shift+T' on your keyboard.
When the program starts, an empty page is opened in the 'Workspace' section. You can start typing in it straight away, or paste some text, or load a file into that space using commands from the 'File Menu'.
You can have multiple pages open at once in the Workspace. To start a new page, click 'File > New Page' in the Menu Bar, or press 'Control+N' on your keyboard.
Some simple Test Files have been provided that will let you experiment with some of the program's capabilities. You will find them in 'Tools > Testing'.
To load a file of your own, press 'Control+O' on your keyboard, or click 'File > Open File' in the Menu Bar.
If you prefer to navigate to a file, click 'Extensions > Directories' and you will see a familiar 'Windows Explorer'-style tree that lists the drives and folders available in your own computer. Right-click a file for more options.
For now, click 'Tools > Testing > Load a Test List with No Errors'. Notice how words within square or curly brackets are colored a different color from the rest of the text. Notice how tab-characters are represented as a blue arrow, and that the background color for tab-characters and spaces are slightly different from the rest of the text. All these colors can be easily changed to suit your own preferences in the 'Options' window, and a number of pre-styled 'Themes' have been provided.
Click 'Errors' on the line of Tool-Tabs, then click 'Status Check' to perform a check for any errors on the page. Try making some changes to the page and then perform another Status Check to see the results.
Try altering some text and notice how the upper Workspace tab changes color when the text has been altered. Press 'Ctrl+Shift+S' on the keyboard or click 'File > Save Page As' to save your changes as a test-file. The file name on the upper Workspace tab will change to the new name that you have given it, and the color will change to blue, which indicates that the file has not been altered since the last time that it was saved.
Click 'Tools > Testing > Load a Test List with Included Errors' and then click 'Status Check' again. There are plenty of errors provided here! You can check for just certain types of errors by clearing the check-marks in the 'List Error Types' panel before clicking 'Status Check' again. Removing an error does not immediately clear the Error-Marker or change the Error Counters. To do this, it is necessary to click 'Status Check' again.
To the left of the Workspace area you will see 4 vertical margins. They are (L-R): the Line Number Margin, the Bookmarks Margin, the Error Margin, and the Hierarchy Margin. You can hide Line Numbers at any time by clicking 'View > Hide Line Numbers' in the Menu Bar, or pressing 'Control+Shift+L'. Try clicking in the Bookmarks Margin and a small blue Bookmarks Marker will be added. Click 'Tools > Bookmarks', and notice how the bookmark is listed in the box to the right of that Tools-Tab. Click the bookmark in the box to scroll the Workspace caret (the text cursor) to the correct line. Add more bookmarks and try the Step buttons to step between them. Bookmarks are saved between sessions for all files in your Recent Files or Favorites lists.
Click 'Tools > Testing > Load a Test List of Wedding Guests' to load a slightly more complicated tab-indented test list. We'll use it to demonstrate the Tree Viewer, which allows you to visualize your tab-indented list in the same way as your end-application will display it. Click 'Extensions > Tree Viewer', and click it's 'Visualize Current Page' button. The root line of the tree will be shown, and by clicking its '+' node-handles we can expand the tree as much as we wish. Note that the tree doesn't update itself automatically after changes in the list - there is just too much processing and error-checking required for that. After making changes in your list, just click the 'Visualize Current Page' button to see the latest results.