Important Differences

Nota Bene has a long history starting in 1983 as a DOS program, and moving to Windows in the 1990's. In the early days of Nota Bene for Windows, the program did a lot of things in ways that were different -- and often better -- than other programs. We had a long list of "Important Differences." As word processing programs has evolved and become more standardized, Nota Bene has adapted to the industry standard, abandoning some of the unique ways of doing things. In many cases, the old ways of doing things are still available as options under Tools, Preferences. (For one example, see Tools, Preferences, Print Styles/Modes.) Our current list of the way we do things differently than other word processors is shorter than it used to be and the differences are not as important as they used to be (you'll be able to use the program even if you don't read this page).

Formatting: Text can be formatted in Nota Bene using tools that are similar to other Windows programs such as tool bar buttons (e.g., the bold, italic and underline buttons), drop down boxes (e.g., font box, font size box) and menus, and keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+I for italics). In addition, Nota Bene provides an action line that can be used to insert formatting (and other) commands. Many Nota Bene users like to use the keyboard rather than the mouse, and the action line as well as a wide assortment of keyboard shortcuts make this possible for many but not all actions.

Show Codes: When a formatting command is issued using the menus, tool bar buttons, keyboard shortcuts or action line, a command is inserted in the document at the point of insertion.The commands can be seen and edited in Show Codes View. See Show Codes View and Editing in Show Codes View and NB Commands.

Scroll bars: In many Windows programs, the scroll bars move the screen but not the cursor. If you scroll from page 2 to page 10, the cursor remains on page 2 until you click on page 10. If you start typing before you click, you new text is entered on page 2 not on page 10 and the screen moves back to page 2. Nota Bene is designed so that when you use the scroll bar to move through a document, the cursor moves with the screen. Your cursor (and any text or commands you enter) will always be on a page that is visible on your screen. For more information, see Scroll Bars.

Function keys: Nota Bene makes more use of the function keys (F1, F2, F3, etc.) than most programs do. This provides the experienced user with fast keyboard control. The instruction in NB Help assume that your keyboard has the function keys active, not the multimedia keys. For more information, see Function Keys.

Write defaults: Most Windows word processors automatically write the default settings into a file. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Suppose your colleague writes a section of a joint paper and the default settings on her system include Times New Roman, 10 point and 0.5 inch tabs. You take the file from her to integrate into your document. Your document is written using Courier 12 point and 1.0 inch tab settings. If default settings are written into your colleague's document, then they will be reflected in the section she has written in your document and will need to be reformatted. Nota Bene does not automatically write defaults into the document. In the above mentioned example, your system's default settings, not your colleague's would determine the appearance of the file you receive from her. Any formatting she did for this file (as opposed to her default settings) would in any case be reflected in the file you receive. Nota Bene gives you the option to write the defaults into the document so that they are part of the file and reflected even if the file is opened on another computer with different default settings. Simply press the "Write Defaults" button at the bottom left of the Page Layout dialog. For more information, see Write Defaults.