ForumsQuestionsImporting Notes with Tab Characters
Importing Notes with Tab Characters
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Neal B |
I am working on importing about 1300 Palm Notes into Notebook through Outlook. The challenge is that I made extensive use of the Tab Character (ASCII character 9), and to my amazement and consternation neither Toodledo nor the iPhone support displaying the Tab Character!
After numerous tests, I've discovered that both Toodledo and the iPhone actually store the Tab Character; they just don't display it. So my current to solution is using VBA code to add 4 spaces after each of the tabs. While I was at it I had the code count them about found out there's over 60,000 tabs! This solution works reasonable well on the iPhone, where the table notes don't line up at all, but at least I can see what the different columns are. However on Tooldedo, the leading spaces on a line aren't shown at all. This removes all identation and makes outline type notes practically useless. So, I'd consider this a bug with the website. Just like the Tab Character, Toodledo does store these leading spaces, but it just doesn't display them. One other issue is that the Titles from an Outlook export don't import nicely into Toodledo. I've had to open the CSV file in Excel and use formulas to put the Titles in one column, and the Note without the Title in another. It's a hassle, but at least it works. If there's a better way to do any of this, I'd appreciate feedback. Otherwise, these can be some comments to consider to improve the CSV import feature, and make notes with leading spaces display properly in the web interface. Also, if anyone has any background on why the Tab Character doesn't display on the iPhone it'd be interesting to know why it works (or really, doesn't work) this way. This message was edited Aug 08, 2009. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
The reason why the tab character doesn't work anywhere on the internet is because of the way HTML was designed. In HTML, all consecutive spaces are compressed down to one space by the web browser. For example, there are 10 spaces between these quotes " ".
Additionally, it isn't even possible to type a tab character into any web form because the web browser uses the "tab" key to move to the next field. That is just the way that the web works, unfortunately. |
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whitten |
You can get a tab into a form, you just have to "cut-and-paste it". You can't type it in, because the web browser sees the key that is a tab and does something with it.
Is there a way to replace spaces (or tabs) with non-breaking spaces? those are supposed to be respected by Web browsers. As an experiment #1 line with 7 spaces between marks: | | #2 line with 7 non-breaking spaces between marks: | |
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whitten |
Curious, so my experiment failed. It pulled all the spaces out between the marks, and as soon as the web form saw the & in the entity for non-breaking space ( & n b s p ; ) but run together, the software cut the reply off.
So I am not going to put another one in, but will try to cut-and-paste a tab to see what it does: #3 line with a tab between marks | | |
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whitten |
and the tab was "eaten" too. So this isn't just the "internet" that is responsible. This is a choice that the toodledoo forum developers have made to limit what can be put on a reply. I expect it makes it hard for folks who want to use entities that are not ASCII, as explained on this page:
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_entities.asp one entity is this skull and crossbones :& # 9 7 6 0 ; ☠ |
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