User Notepads

Web Version

This was prepared for the 2001 edition of the CPC. See context-sensitive Help in the product for further information.

This facility allows the user to create notes linked to specific data sheets on pests, crops or countries. These notes are shared between the user's subscriber group.

Creating a User note
Editing Notes
Softlinking
Inserting filenames and Internet addresses
Formatting text
Accessing another Notepad account
Notepad security

Creating a User note

From a data sheet

To create a User note from a data sheet, click on the node in the data sheet's Table of Contents (TOC). A free text box then appears in which notes, results or comments can be written. It is recommended that you include a Title (for display in Notepad Manager) and an Author. This note will now appear in the TOC and will be available for viewing and including in Reports in the same way as the other data sheet sections. Several individual notepads can be added to data sheets in the Web CPC.

From the Notepad Manager

Click the Notepad tab of the Main Menu bar or the button on the openign screen takes you to the Notepad Manager screen. This displays the Title, Data sheet, Author and Date created for all existing notes saved on your subscriber account and gives options to view or delete notes. To create a new note here, click the Add Note button, enter your text, Title and Author, then click on Refresh.

Editing Notes

When saving a note, the system checks to ensure that no modifications have been made to the same note by another member of the user's subscriber group. If someone else has edited and saved the note in the time that another was editing, the initial user is notified of the situation and asked to make a decision as to whether to cancel their changes and accept the ones already made, or to overwrite the stored changes with their changes. The user also has the option to rewrite their note to incorporate the changes made by the second user. This concatenated note may then be saved to the database.

Softlinking

Any text displayed whilst viewing a note is immediately active and can be softlinked. You can select any word or multi-word term in your User note, and then click the Softlink button to display a different data sheet, reference or a Glossary definition. From the displayed window other options may be chosen. For example, highlighting the word maize and clicking the Softlink button will find all the Glossary entries that contain the term maize and all the data sheets that have names containing the word maize.

Inserting filenames and Internet addresses

The notepad facility saves text in HTML. Therefore to link to filenames, web addresses, pictures, etc., the correct HTML tags must be used. Filenames of documents can be inserted in the User Note, but the appropriate application must be installed on the user's machine in order to run the file. For example, if trying to link to a .doc file, Microsoft Word must be installed.

Examples of how to insert the following are listed below:

To Insert	Format	Example
An Internet Address	<a href="http://web address goes here">title to display</a>	<a href="http://www.cabi.org">CAB International Website</a>

A filename	<a href="file://file name goes here">title to display</a>	<a href="file://c:\mytext.doc">My Text Word Document</a>

A picture or photograph	<img src="picture location">	<img src="c:\myphoto.jpg">

Formatting text

Notepad text may be formatted using the same method of applying HTML tags to selected words. Below are examples on how to do this:

To make text	Format
Bold	<b>text to make bold goes here</b>

Italic	<i>text to make italic goes here</i>

Underlined	<u>text to underline goes here</u>

Subheadings

If you wish to give your notes subheadings, you may do so by wrapping the text in HTML heading tags. An example of this is: <H1>My Title</H1>. To work your way down the levels of subheadings, simply increase the heading number, i.e. H2, H3, H4 and so on.

Accessing another Notepad account

If you are given the username and password of a colleague's CPC account, you could access his/her Notepad records for viewing and even adding new notes. Although you have to enter another username and password, you are still logged on to the the CPC session using your initial access account.

Notepad security

This facility has been set up to allow members of the same team or institution to share non-CPC information by adding, viewing, editing and deleting the same User notes. Please be aware that all users with the same subscriber account as yourself will have access to your notepad records and note that it is possible to set up multiple usernames and passwords for a single subscriber account (so different usernames and passwords do not necessarily distinguish those with and without access to the same notepad information). If you wish to keep personal notes that cannot be accessed by other users, request to have a separate subscriber account - this can be done by contacting CABI and does not affect the cost of your subscription.

CABI uses standard protection to ensure that users' data are secure.

If you have any questions about the set up of your notepads, please contact us at compend@cabi.org.