Home Button

MacJournal:
a writer's Swiss
Army Knife


About

Meetings

Articles

Links

Contact

Join

Forums

by Charles Wu

Do you ever find yourself needing somewhere to jot down a quick note or idea while working on your Mac? Looking for somewhere to keep frequently used images or verbiage for form letters right at your fingertips? Do you keep a journal for work or for yourself on your Mac?

If you said yes to any of the questions above, then you should check out a nifty freeware application by Dan Schimpf called MacJournal. This elegantly simple application won the Apple Design Awards in the Student Category in 2002.

MacJournal, as the name implies can be used to create Journals or diaries. When you start MacJournal there is a center pane, where you can jot down notes, or copy and paste text, HTML or pictures. This center pane is a single note or entry that can be tracked by date or topic name. MacJournal lets you organize these entries into Journals for different subjects. For instance, if you are a programmer, you might create a journal for programming notes, and one for documentation notes. If you are a writer working on many projects, you can create a journal for each of your projects. How you organize it is up to you.

However, to describe MacJournal as a simple diary application is misleading since it does so much more, in fact it is an ideal replacement for favorite Mac Classic applications of the Scrapbook, Notepad and Stickies desk accessories that hid in the apple menu for keeping notes. MacJournal is the ultimate desk accessory and I keep it at my fingertips by having it in my start up folder so I can have it handy whenever necessary.
The simple interface allows one to use MacJournal to capture multiple clipboards. If you find yourself copy and pasting multiple items between documents, MacJournal's ease of accessing different entries allows you to flip between notes as you compose. If you are a writer or programmer who often is copying and pasting multiple versions back and forth while composing, you will find MacJournal invaluable.

The other application that I have discovered MacJournal useful is organizing your thoughts in an outline form. I'll copy and paste notes from the web into different entries for a writing project I'll store as journal. When I am ready to start writing, I find myself flipping through the notes I've taken to help organize my thoughts before I start writing.

What makes MacJournal work for all these applications is that is anembodiment of the old Einstein quote, "everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler." MacJournal's simplicity makes it a fast responding application but powerful enough to capture your thoughts,That balance makes sure that nothing gets between you and your ideas.

While MacJournal makes me nostalgic for the little desk applications that came with the original Macintosh, it also brings back memories of when it was possible to for one programmer to come up with useful applications. Dan Schimpf is obviously a talented young programmer and has a strong sense that an application is not just a collection of features. I emailed him to find out that he has graduated and later this summer he will start working working for Apple, so we are sure to see his handiwork in the future. So if you are a programmer or wannabe programmer, check out MacJournal to get a sense that it is possible to create worthwhile applications on your own. I asked Dan how to get started writing your own Cocoa applications (Cocoa is a technology thatis part of OS X that makes it easier for people to write applications)and he offered this wisdom. "Start small. Don't try to write the Cocoa version of Word. Start with a small application with only a few moving parts and try to get it right. Then build on it as you learn. Don't be afraid to ask someone for help, either in person or on a mailing list somewhere. Everyone starts in the same place, so just take your time and do it right." With MacJournal, Dan's done it right.

MacJournal is for anyone who needs to jot down quick notes, regardless if they are for journal purposes or not. It's free and worth a look.

Download at: <http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/>. Requires: Mac OS X

This article was writtenby Charles Wu for North Coast Mac Users Group in the United States.


Home | About | Meetings | Links | Contact | Join | Forums

Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. 2002