MojoPad

The Gallery

Some pages you can name. Others you can only picture. You know there was something about a clinic in Lisbon, or a diagram with three overlapping circles, or that long article you clipped on a Sunday — but not what you called it, and searching only works when you can guess a word that’s actually in it. The Gallery is for those. It turns every page into a card you can read, and lets you flip through them without losing your place.

It is a lens, not a view. Nothing is created, named, or saved when you open it, and there is nothing to tidy up afterwards. Close it and it’s gone.

Three ways in

The Gallery tool — every page in the document, as one wall. Press it again to leave. (If it isn’t on your toolbar, drag it there from Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Toolbar.)
A folder’s ▦ — hover any folder in the page list and a small grid icon appears at its right. That folder’s pages, as a corkboard of index cards in the folder’s order, with the folder’s name at the top — see A folder as a corkboard below. It shows the pages that folder itself holds — a subfolder has its own ▦, so you go down the tree the way you’d expect rather than getting a top-level folder’s entire subtree in one dump. A folder holding nothing but subfolders has no cards of its own, so it shows no icon.
A smart folder’s ▦ — a smart folder that finds pages by a property (“Status is Revised”) has the same icon when you hover it, and shows the pages it finds as a wall. A smart folder keeps no order of its own, so its pages are cards to read rather than index cards to rearrange. A saved search has no icon: click it to run it. Nor does a smart folder whose pages are all in Recently Deleted or have a password, since no wall shows those.

Each wall is in the order the Pages panel lists your pages, as a database view with no sort is (see Database Views), except a folder’s corkboard, which is in the folder’s order.

A folder as a corkboard

A paper, a thesis chapter or a book in MojoPad is a folder with its sections in the order they will be read. The corkboard is that folder laid out on a table, the way writers have always planned on index cards:

See the whole paper at once. Nine sections, each with its number, its title and the line saying what it is for — the shape of the argument fits on one screen, long before the words do.
Find what is behind. Each card carries its Status stamped in its own color and how many words it has against its target, so the sections still marked To do, or a long way short, stand out at a glance.
Try another order. If Replay should come before A short history, drag its card there. The folder, the Pages panel and Compile all follow the new order, and Undo puts it back.
Plan before you write. Make the empty pages, write one line in each saying what the section will do, and the board reads as an outline you can rearrange.

What a card shows

Its number — the section’s place in the folder, which is the order the Pages panel shows and Compile uses.
Its title, as the Pages panel shows it.
What it is about — the line you write under What this section is about in the Writing View or the Draft pane, on pale ruled lines, up to four lines of it. A page with no line of yours shows how it opens instead: its first words, in plain type a shade lighter, so the cards you wrote a line for still stand out (a first line that only repeats the title is left out, and so is anything a Markdown page hides, such as a comment). A PDF, a book or a picture says what kind of file it is and its name, and a canvas how many cards it holds. Only a page with no words yet asks for its line.
Its Status, stamped in the corner, when your wiki has a property named Status. Each of its choices has a color of its own, set by its place in the list of choices: the first is blue, the second gold, the third plum, the fourth green. To add the property, open the Properties palette and add one named Status, of the Select type, with your stages as its choices (To do, First draft, Revised, Done). A section that leaves its Status empty shows its kind’s — but never from a kind with a password, even while you have that kind open, because a board is seen over your shoulder. Grouped, sorted or filtered by Status, the board treats that section as having none, so no heading names that Status either. A table beside the board still shows it while the kind is open.
Its words, against its word target when it has one (1,630 of 3,000), and a line along the bottom edge that fills as the section grows and turns green when it reaches its target. What is counted is what the section says and the words of its notes properties, such as a Summary — including one it takes from its kind, but never from a kind with a password, even while you have that kind open, the same rule as its Status. So an empty section of a kind whose Summary has words counts those words. A database view's Words column, on a Board card or in a table, gives the same number.

A page with a password lies face down. Its card shows its number, its name and a lock — never what it is about, how it opens, its Status or its words, even while you have it open — because a board is something other people can see over your shoulder. It still has its place, and you can drag it like any other card. Click it, or walk onto it with →, and what opens over the board says only that the page is protected — even while you have it open. Open page opens it, asking for its password if it is locked.

Moving a section

Press a card and drag. It lifts off the board and a dashed space opens where it would land; the numbers on the other cards change as you move, so you can see where everything would end up.
Let go. The section moves in the folder, and a note at the foot of the window offers Undo.
Changed your mind before letting go? Press Esc, or let go where the card started, and nothing moves.

From the keyboard: Tab to a card, then ⌥← moves its section one place earlier and ⌥→ one place later. ↩ reads the card, as a click does.

A click reads, a drag moves. Clicking a card without moving it opens the page over the board, as on any Gallery wall, with ← and → to walk to the next card.

Sorting, grouping and filtering a corkboard

The toolbar works as it does on any Gallery: Sort says Folder order until you choose another column. Sorted or grouped by something else, the cards stand in that order instead, so they cannot be dragged, and the line above the board says so — choose Sort ▸ Folder order or Group ▸ None to move them again. With a filter, the cards that match keep their folder numbers, so a gap in the numbers is a section the filter left out; a page with a password is left out too, since nothing a filter asks can be read from it. Table shows the same sections as rows, in the folder’s order — all but a page with a password, which no table shows.

What a card on the wall shows

On the Gallery tool’s wall and a smart folder’s, each card carries the page’s icon and name, its cover image when it has one, a real slice of what is actually written on the page, and its key values as small chips. (A folder’s ▦ draws index cards instead — see A folder as a corkboard above.) The text matters: a card showing the first real sentences is what lets you recognize a page you can’t name. Pages that aren’t prose say what they are instead — a canvas reports how many cards and frames it holds, a file says what kind of file it is.

A card shows a page's words, not its styling. Pages imported from VoodooPad, and pages with writing pasted from other apps, carry their own fonts and colors, and a wall can hold hundreds of them. So a card leaves the page's styling out, which keeps the wall quick to draw and even to read, and opening the card over the wall shows the page in its own look.

Reading without leaving the wall

Click any card and the page opens over the wall, at full reading size. This is the part that makes the Gallery useful rather than pretty: the wall stays behind it, so you can look at a page, decide, and move on without navigating away and having to find your place again.

← and →, or the ‹ › buttons, walk to the next and previous card. The counter shows where you are in the wall.
Esc, the ✕ Close button, or a click on the dimmed background closes it and leaves the wall exactly as it was.
Open page leaves the Gallery and opens that page properly, for editing.

So the rhythm is: open a card, glance, →, glance, → — and Open page only when you’ve found the one you actually wanted.

Files open as files

A card for a PDF, an ePub, a saved web article, or an image doesn’t show you a note about the file — it opens the file itself, in the same readers the page uses:

PDFs get page position and paging controls, and zoom, in a small bar at the bottom of the peek.
ePubs reflow, so instead of page numbers they get text size.
Both carry a button to hand the file to your system viewer, for anything the peek doesn’t do.

This is what makes a wall of clippings genuinely browsable — you can read enough of a saved article to decide its fate without opening it as a page at all.

Four things people use it for

Triage what you never filed. Open the Gallery, walk the wall with →, and use Open page on the few that need filing. Clippings and quick captures accumulate faster than anyone files them; this is the cheapest way to work through a month of them.
The reading pile. Give your unread material a folder and open its ▦. Each clipping’s card shows how it opens, and each PDF and ePub says what it is and its file name. Click the first card: it opens over the board far enough to remind you what it is and whether you still care — a decision you cannot make from a list of filenames — and → brings up the next.
Find the page you can only picture. When search fails because you can’t guess the words, the wall lets you recognize it instead: covers, shapes, and first sentences do the work your memory was going to do anyway.
Re-read a folder you’ve neglected. Old research folders go stale quietly. Open its ▦, click the first card and walk the folder with →: every page in it, read one after another without losing your place — usually including two or three things you’d completely forgotten writing.

The Gallery and Database Views

The Gallery tool’s wall, and a smart folder’s, is the same card wall that Database Views can draw, with the setup removed: no filters to build, no view to name, no shaping to maintain. (A folder’s corkboard is the one wall of its own, made for planning.) Reach for the Gallery when you want to look through your pages right now. Reach for a database view’s Gallery layout when the wall is one you want to come back to — a filtered, sorted, grouped wall that stays put, like “books, grouped by status”.

Tips

The peek is for reading, not editing. Anything you want to change is one Open page away, so nothing is ever half-edited in a preview.
The Gallery tool toggles: the same press that opened the wall closes it.
A folder’s corkboard follows the folder. File a page into it and its card is there next time, numbered in its place — nothing to refresh or rebuild.