Chapter 3. Editing.
Saving your work !
Before going any further, it's important to know how to save your bookmarks ! Save operations are found in the 'file' category in the popup menu (right-click over a document).
Save: write the current document in the associated file. If this document has not yet been saved (i.e. no file is associated with it), then this will be a 'save as'.
Save As...: write the current document in a new file, which will now be associated with the document. The document is considered to be saved (if no further modification is applied, you won't be asked to save again). The old file is not erased.
Save a Copy As: write the current document in a new file, but don't associate it with the document. This allows to backup the current state of a document in any file you want. You will still be prompted to save your document in the file associated with it, if any modifications occured since the last time you saved 'in the normal way' (or since you opened it if you've never saved).
Keep in mind that there's currently no 'autosave' feature. Still, a few things prevent accidents: you will be prompted to save if you try to close a document that you've modified without saving it; and an automatic backup (with .bak extension) is made each time you save. This way you can retrieve a previous backup if you need it.
Updating bookmark properties
The first thing you can do to edit your bookmarks is to modify bookmarks properties : name, location, description. You will find the appropriate action in the 'bookmarks' item from the popup menu. Note that you actually must have selected a bookmark to edit its properties !
The 'bookmarks' menu item is the first one in the popup menu, and the 'edit' option is the first one in the 'bookmarks' submenu, since it's the feature you may use most often. You may be able to change menus order in a future version (right now you can change it in the source if you like ;-), and also associate the 'edit' action with double-click of the left mouse button (it's currently used to browse by default).
Reorganizing
Basic operations
You'll find all the basic operations in the 'selection' item from the popup menu: cut, copy, paste (with default behaviour, or with any variant in before/after/into), and select/unselect all for global selections.
You can also perform almost anything by drag'n'drop, with left or middle mouse button, and with keyboard modifiers. See the chapter on drag'n'drop. Especially, moving is more efficient and practical by dragging than using cut and paste, most of the time.
Creating new entries : bookmark, folder, separator.
A note about aliases: in version 0.4.2 of Gnobog, aliases are managed automatically. Whenever one or more bookmarks has the same name and same location as another, it becomes an alias. Any modification will propagate to all identical aliases.
To finish with basic operations, you can use the 'show' menu item at any time to display locations in addition to bookmarks names. You can hide locations again with the same menu item.
Other features
Two functionalities may prove useful when editing bookmarks, which you can find in the 'window' menu item :
'split', to split the current window in two parts (that way you can see different parts of the same document at the same time, and perform several operations from one view to the other). You can 'unsplit' with the same option.
'new window', which you may use as much as you want to open as many windows you wish displaying the same document. Here also you can abuse of drag and drop, and any other feature :-)
Some more advanced features
'Extended selection mode': in this mode, selections are slightly altered to allow fastest manipulation of groups of bookmarks. When extended selection is activated, you can select several rows at once with the mouse only, and event select several uncontiguous groups of rows. Drag'n'drop is still available: you need to hold the mouse button a little and then move (the delay will be user configurable in future version of Gnobog, when we'll write the preferences dialog). This mode might require a little time to get used to it, but is useful when you have to perform a lot of reorganization in your bookmarks hierarchy.
'Set as root' allows you to restrict the tree display to any folder's contents (instead of the root folder). This is particularly useful when you have lots of bookmarks, to save space on display, when you're focusing on a particular subset of your bookmarks. It's also very useful when you drop bookmarks from your browser to Gnobog. 'Show all' goes back to the standard display (default root folder).
Documents management
Working with several documents
Each time you open a document or create a new one, a new window is displayed. The location of the associated file is displayed in the 'documents list' in the main window of Gnobog, as well as the number of windows displaying this document.
For now, working with several documents involves two types of actions : Drag'n'Drop (see the corresponding chapter), and working with the clipboard (that is, using cut/copy/paste).
Future versions of Gnobog will certainly use the documents list to perform actions on several documents at once.
Advanced pasting and saving
Speaking of clipboard, one feature offers a way to create a new document directly by pasting the contents of the clipboard : 'Paste as a New Document'. You can use it whenever you have copied a selection. It will create a new document (with a new window) and paste into it.
Another somewhat related feature is 'Save a Copy As', which creates a new file by copying the current document into it.