Daytz Frequently Asked Questions

Table of Contents

• Daytz is a funny name. Why'd you pick it?
• Where is the Save command?
• What is the most amount of text I can put on one day?
• What does "drag & drop aware" mean?
• What does "services menu aware" mean?
• What does "contextual menu extension aware" mean?
• What does "global find aware" mean?
• What about multiple fonts, sizes, styles, and other languages?
• What about appleScript support?
• What about synchronizing with iCal, iSync, PDAs, iPods, etc.?
• Why do you expect me to pay for a license for Daytz?

Daytz is a funny name. Why'd you pick it?

TurboZen generally names its products with a "TZ" suffix, but with a name that gives you some idea of what that product does. For example, I am planning a drawing program named "Plotz".

Where is the Save command?

The text you type into Daytz is saved when you leave the current day or quit Daytz. Daytz, like the old Macintosh program Hypercard, doesn't need a separate Save command. If you want to see where your text is stored, -click on the titlebar, and you'll get a popup menu showing you the file path to the root of your Daytz diary tree of years, momths, and days.

What is the most amount of text I can put on one day?

About 30,000 characters. Daytz uses the "Text Edit" engine, and that is the limit that it supports. If you try to add too many characters, Daytz will give you a warning message and remove the excess. I've used Daytz and its ancestors for years, and never hit this warning message except when I was directly testing the program for it. But see also the answer to the question on Fonts.

What does "drag & drop aware" mean?

Once you've selected some text in Daytz, you can click and hold and drag it to another spot on the same day, or to a different program. A common thing to do is drag ti to the desktop, where it becomes a "Clippings File". At some later time, you can drag the "Clippings File" back to Daytz or some other program.

What does "services menu aware" mean?

On the menu bar, next to the menu, is the Daytz menu. On the Daytz menu is a hierarchical menu named "Services". If you select some text in Daytz, then pull down the "Services" menu, you'll see that some of the choices on it are enabled.

• If you select a URL like <http://www.Apple.com/>, then choose the "Open This URL" command, your Macintosh will do that.
• If you choose "Speak This Text" from the "Speech" subMenu of the "Services" menu, then your Macintosh will attempt to read the selected text aloud.
• If you select a file path like: "~/Documents/" then choose "Open" from the "Finder" subMenu of the "Services" menu, then the Finder will do that.
• If you select a numeric expression like "5*8+2", then choose "Get Result Of Applescript" from the "Script Editor" subMenu of the "Services" menu, then Script Editor will evaluate the expression and replace the original expression by the reesult.

What does "contextual menu extension aware" mean?

Contextual Menu Extensions behave a lot like Service Menu items (see above), but you get at them by holding down the key (not the Command key), as you mouse-click on a selection.

What does "global find aware" mean?

Under OS X, when you type search text into a Find dialog, many programs share that search text. If you do a "Find" in Safari or Stickies, then move to Daytz and do a "Find", you'll see that Daytz has pre-loaded the Find Dialog Box with your search text. Note that your previous searches are saved in chronological order in the Find Dialog Box's Search Text's popup menu.

What about multiple fonts, sizes, styles, and other languages?

Daytz will eventually be rewritten to use Apple's Multi-Lingual Text Editor, which supports all of these things, and removes the 30000 character limit on text.

What about appleScript support?

Daytz will eventually be scriptable, and further in the future it will be recordable.

What about synchronizing with iCal, iSync, PDAs, iPods, etc.?

Daytz will eventually, but not yet.

Why do you expect me to pay for a license for Daytz?

This is my son, Isaac. Your payments go to keep him and his parents housed, clothed, and fed. Our agreement was that if you use Daytz, you will pay for a license for Daytz. US $12 for a single user licence. Multiple-user and upgrade licenses are also available at a discount. You can pay for it here.

last updated: January 5, 2005