The F2 Key (or how Dana helped me finish my NaNovel)
This morning, I switched on my Dana, went into AlphaWord, the built-in word processor, and pressed the F2 key. Then I remembered I didn’t have to do that anymore, at least not for a while.
I’ve been pressing the F2 key all of this month, which takes me into the F2 file where my NaNovel is kept. Usually, it’s the F1 key I press – that’s where my private journal is kept.
This is how AlphaWord works. It’s like a big folder with eight files, named F1 to F8. These files can be empty, or you can open up a document to work in them. So, at any one time, you can have eight documents opened, one in each of the F files . And they remain there until you close them or open another document in their place.
As a word processor, AlphaWord is based on WordSmith, but without all the features – call it WordSmith Lite, if you want. But in terms of navigation, i.e., the F1 to F8 files, AlphaWord is based on its sibling, the AlphaSmart 3000, which is nothing more than an electronic typewriter with a little screen that lets you see 4 lines of text at a time, each line 40 characters long, and does nothing but lets you write, and then auto saves your writing so that when you switch it off, the next time you switch it on, you’re back at the last place you were at before switching off the AS3K. One of the really cool things about the AS3K is that it runs on 3 AA batteries for up to 700 hours.
The Dana doesn’t run on quite as many hours, altho’ at 25 hours, it’s still way ahead of even the most energy efficient laptop, even my Phoebe only gives 4 hours under really good conditions. It does, however, have one major advantage over the AS3K – it lets you save your work and even back it up to a card.
I wrote all of my NaNovel 2004 on my Dana. It’s one cool machine. It has a bigger screen than the AS3K which lets me see more lines at a time. I kept notes relevant to the novel on adjoining F files and switching between them is simply pressing a particular F key to immediately open up the document in it.
I can also select different fonts for different documents. For my private journal, I use a handwriting font which gives me the feeling that it’s a handwritten journal. Here’s a screenshot:
Resized to fit here
It’s okay – you’re not peeping into my private journal as I’m letting you. In fact, I posted an extract from it, and you can read it here (if you want).
For my NaNovel 2004, I used Garamond 12-point, and this is how it looks:
Cropped to show actual Dana screen size
