FLEx Scratchpad 0.2.0-beta.1

FLEx Scratchpad 0.2.0-beta.1 for Windows, a pre-release. What is new since the 0.1.0 release is listed first; try it alongside your work and keep 0.1.0 at hand. It is tested by hand on real FieldWorks projects, and it will still have rough edges. Please report what breaks.

FLEx Scratchpad is a notebook for FieldWorks: notes in tabs and folders that show live FLEx lexical entries and interlinear examples, read straight from your project (never written to). Highlight words in an example, put examples in tables, number them, collect them into an example collection and export that as a FLEx text.

New since 0.1.0

• ⎘ Copy, for a note, Word, PowerPoint and LingTeX Word. The ⎘ TSV button is now ⎘ Copy with a ▾ beside it. ⎘ Copy puts both an example's reference and a formatted copy on the clipboard, so a note pastes the example again and Word, PowerPoint, Excel or a web page paste a formatted example (a table per line, the translation in quotes, the text's abbreviation and line numbers linked into FLEx). Under ▾: Copy for LingTeX Word (FLEx's own rows, a column per morpheme, each translation followed by its reference such as (DOG 1.1)), Copy as HTML (for web, Word, PowerPoint, other) and Copy example source ({{flex}} code). Charts, entries, selected lines and rows, tables (Table ▾ → ⎘ Copy the table), copied cells and the pivot copy the same way.

• Slides the way you want them. The slideshow and PowerPoint exports open a dialog listing the note's blocks: tick New slide where a slide begins, untick Show to leave a block out. It starts at one example per slide, and several examples, a chart and the text between them can share a slide. Choose a theme (Classic, Dark, Paper, High contrast, Forest), your own background, text and accent colours and a font. The ticks and the look are remembered.

• Recordings in PowerPoint. Each example and chart with time-aligned lines gets its recording beside it on its slide: a ▶ that plays it in the slide show, with PowerPoint's own player bar (AAC through the bundled ffmpeg, else WAV).

• A design prompt for an AI assistant. The web page and slideshow exports can save a prompt beside the file (<name>.design-prompt.md) for Claude Design or another assistant: restyle the plain page, keep every word, gloss and number, the alignment and the players. The prompt is editable in the export dialog, and your version is kept.

• Long examples and charts in PowerPoint. PowerPoint never fits a table to its slide, and a long example came out with its words broken inside their cells and its translation drawn over the next line. The writer now measures everything: no word column is narrower than its words, a long line wraps onto further rows, the type shrinks from 18 to 12 pt to fit, and what still does not fit continues on a "(cont.)" slide (16 pt), a long chart with its header rows repeated. PowerPoint files still want a look-through and some adjusting by hand after export; the export dialog says so.

• A chart's own rows in the exports. An exported chart object showed every row of the chart instead of the rows it names (rows=1-2); every interlinear export now keeps the punctuation on the Word line.

New in 0.1.0 since 0.1.0-beta.2

Everything below arrived in the pre-release 0.1.0-beta.3 or since.

• Recordings kept in lameta. Picking a missing recording inside a lameta project now makes the program remember the whole project, so every session's recordings are found. The guide and the export dialog now advise keeping whole-text recordings out of the FLEx project's own LinkedFiles folder, where FieldWorks' Send/Receive fails on files of more than a few megabytes.
• The bar / line / pie chart block is gone. It was never what a linguist's notebook needed and it muddled the word "chart", which here means FieldWorks' text charts. A note that still holds a ```chart block shows it as a code block; a picture made in another program can be attached instead. Text charts and tables stay.
• A user guide on the website (rulingants.github.io/flex-scratchpad/guide): everything the program does, section by section with a table of contents, every picture taken from the real program. Also: a quotation in a note exported without its > markers (the web page and Word exports kept them).
• A FLEx concordance search becomes a collection. Run the concordance (or complex concordance) in FieldWorks, File › Export Concordance Results…, then + New ▾ → New collection from a FLEx concordance export… and choose that CSV: every line it lists is placed in your project (the text by its name in any writing system, the line by FLEx's number, the baseline checked) and becomes an example, in the file's order; what could not be placed is listed at the end of the collection.
• Copy a few lines of an example, or a few rows of a chart. Click line numbers (Shift for a range) or Ctrl+click chart row labels, then Copy: pasted into a note they are a new example of just those lines; pasted into a sheet they are FLEx's rows, a chart's with its headers.
• A chart as an example, an example as a chart. A chart object's ⋯ menu turns it into an interlinear example of every line its rows touch; an example's ⋯ menu turns it into the rows of the text's chart that hold its lines. Inclusive both ways; trim the range afterwards as usual.
• Merged chart cells, your way. A cell merged with its empty neighbour counted under both columns for the visual filters; the chart's ⋯ menu › Merged cells now chooses: both columns · both named, one border · the owner's look, both for the rules · the owner only. And merged cells are a filter target of their own (Merged cells in the ⚑ popover: any, merged right / left, or a column merged a given way — "PRED merged right").
• Marker chips under the words in the one-column and grouped chart views ("on a line of their own" and "no longer than the words" now do what they say), and the ⚑ popover and the chart's ⋯ menu have a title bar with a ✕ that stays in view while they scroll.
• Text charts. FieldWorks' constituent charts (Texts & Words › Text Chart) in your notes: a whole chart, a range of rows or a block of columns, always with its column headings; FLEx's moved-text, clause and chart markers; the free translations spliced in as you like (a row after each segment's rows, a Free column, a tip for the clicked cell, or hidden); words, cells, rows and columns styled with a click; the chart's plain-text grid saved in the note file so it reads without the program; HTML and Word exports, and an export of the chart itself as FieldWorks' chart XML or as JSON. Notes are found with marker:Topic. A chart note is a note that is one chart, with your own columns: a choice list shared by the notebook, free notes, or a rule that fills each row from its markers and columns and can colour the whole row. Chart markers are styled like text tags (for a chart, a note, a folder, the tab, the text or the whole notebook, or in a visual filter), and a marker can colour its whole row. Search the charts: words, col:Subject, marker:Topic, lex:kabir, gloss:…, clause:…, moved; insert the matching rows, see which columns a lexical item sits in, or collect the rows into a collection that finds new rows later. An example can show the chart columns its words sit in, drawn like tags; a chart can show the text's markup tags in its cells; a pivot counts rows by marker and column; an entry card tells which columns the item sits in.
• Exports, for every kind of note. A web page with the recordings embedded (one compressed clip per example or chart, written into the file; a ▶ per line plays it and lights the line, a bar pauses and stops; charts light the cells of the playing line); Word with text charts on landscape pages and the words of a cell aligned over their glosses; Excel with the note, each chart as a table and as flat rows to filter and pivot, and an Examples sheet with one row per line; PDF (on Windows written straight to the file you choose; elsewhere the print dialog's Save as PDF); a slideshow (one web page, a slide per heading, example, chart and table, with the players); and PowerPoint. A chart note's custom columns and rule colours come along everywhere. (The direct PDF has not yet been tried on a real Windows machine; if it fails you get the print dialog.)
• Charts play: ▶ beside the first row of each line of the text (and one for all of them), ▶§ a whole sentence and ▶¶ a whole paragraph; the cells that hold the playing line light up. Chart columns resize by dragging a heading's edge (a wide chart scrolls sideways), the header rows stay put while you scroll down a long chart, and the row labels stay put while it scrolls sideways. A column heading hides its column; Hide empty columns, Zoom, and a one-column layout (each row in one cell, word groups labelled with their columns — for the discourse work where visual filters by column and marker matter more than the columns) are in the chart's menu; Change the chart… puts another of the project's charts in the same object or chart note. A chart note's custom columns can sit left or right of the chart and be frozen. The sentence and paragraph boundaries are drawn under the free translation row. The ⚑ button (markers, the text's tags, visual filters) is on every chart, markers or not, and now lists the chart's columns too: style a column's cells (a tint, a border, a colour, bold…) or hide it, for this chart, a note, a folder, the tab, the text, the notebook or a visual filter — a header group styles its columns as one box, and the chart's structure is there as well: dependent, speech and song clauses, the [2a] clause markers, and preposed or postposed text (with the look of the column it came from or sits in, and a l...

FLEx Scratchpad 0.1.0

FLEx Scratchpad 0.1.0 for Windows, the first full release. It works, it is tested by hand on real FieldWorks projects, and it will still have rough edges. Please report what breaks.

FLEx Scratchpad is a notebook for FieldWorks: notes in tabs and folders that show live FLEx lexical entries and interlinear examples, read straight from your project (never written to). Highlight words in an example, put examples in tables, number them, collect them into an example collection and export that as a FLEx text.

New since 0.1.0-beta.2

Everything below arrived in the pre-release 0.1.0-beta.3 or since.

• Recordings kept in lameta. Picking a missing recording inside a lameta project now makes the program remember the whole project, so every session's recordings are found. The guide and the export dialog now advise keeping whole-text recordings out of the FLEx project's own LinkedFiles folder, where FieldWorks' Send/Receive fails on files of more than a few megabytes.
• The bar / line / pie chart block is gone. It was never what a linguist's notebook needed and it muddled the word "chart", which here means FieldWorks' text charts. A note that still holds a ```chart block shows it as a code block; a picture made in another program can be attached instead. Text charts and tables stay.
• A user guide on the website (rulingants.github.io/flex-scratchpad/guide): everything the program does, section by section with a table of contents, every picture taken from the real program. Also: a quotation in a note exported without its > markers (the web page and Word exports kept them).
• A FLEx concordance search becomes a collection. Run the concordance (or complex concordance) in FieldWorks, File › Export Concordance Results…, then + New ▾ → New collection from a FLEx concordance export… and choose that CSV: every line it lists is placed in your project (the text by its name in any writing system, the line by FLEx's number, the baseline checked) and becomes an example, in the file's order; what could not be placed is listed at the end of the collection.
• Copy a few lines of an example, or a few rows of a chart. Click line numbers (Shift for a range) or Ctrl+click chart row labels, then Copy: pasted into a note they are a new example of just those lines; pasted into a sheet they are FLEx's rows, a chart's with its headers.
• A chart as an example, an example as a chart. A chart object's ⋯ menu turns it into an interlinear example of every line its rows touch; an example's ⋯ menu turns it into the rows of the text's chart that hold its lines. Inclusive both ways; trim the range afterwards as usual.
• Merged chart cells, your way. A cell merged with its empty neighbour counted under both columns for the visual filters; the chart's ⋯ menu › Merged cells now chooses: both columns · both named, one border · the owner's look, both for the rules · the owner only. And merged cells are a filter target of their own (Merged cells in the ⚑ popover: any, merged right / left, or a column merged a given way — "PRED merged right").
• Marker chips under the words in the one-column and grouped chart views ("on a line of their own" and "no longer than the words" now do what they say), and the ⚑ popover and the chart's ⋯ menu have a title bar with a ✕ that stays in view while they scroll.
• Text charts. FieldWorks' constituent charts (Texts & Words › Text Chart) in your notes: a whole chart, a range of rows or a block of columns, always with its column headings; FLEx's moved-text, clause and chart markers; the free translations spliced in as you like (a row after each segment's rows, a Free column, a tip for the clicked cell, or hidden); words, cells, rows and columns styled with a click; the chart's plain-text grid saved in the note file so it reads without the program; HTML and Word exports, and an export of the chart itself as FieldWorks' chart XML or as JSON. Notes are found with marker:Topic. A chart note is a note that is one chart, with your own columns: a choice list shared by the notebook, free notes, or a rule that fills each row from its markers and columns and can colour the whole row. Chart markers are styled like text tags (for a chart, a note, a folder, the tab, the text or the whole notebook, or in a visual filter), and a marker can colour its whole row. Search the charts: words, col:Subject, marker:Topic, lex:kabir, gloss:…, clause:…, moved; insert the matching rows, see which columns a lexical item sits in, or collect the rows into a collection that finds new rows later. An example can show the chart columns its words sit in, drawn like tags; a chart can show the text's markup tags in its cells; a pivot counts rows by marker and column; an entry card tells which columns the item sits in.
• Exports, for every kind of note. A web page with the recordings embedded (one compressed clip per example or chart, written into the file; a ▶ per line plays it and lights the line, a bar pauses and stops; charts light the cells of the playing line); Word with text charts on landscape pages and the words of a cell aligned over their glosses; Excel with the note, each chart as a table and as flat rows to filter and pivot, and an Examples sheet with one row per line; PDF (on Windows written straight to the file you choose; elsewhere the print dialog's Save as PDF); a slideshow (one web page, a slide per heading, example, chart and table, with the players); and PowerPoint. A chart note's custom columns and rule colours come along everywhere. (The direct PDF has not yet been tried on a real Windows machine; if it fails you get the print dialog.)
• Charts play: ▶ beside the first row of each line of the text (and one for all of them), ▶§ a whole sentence and ▶¶ a whole paragraph; the cells that hold the playing line light up. Chart columns resize by dragging a heading's edge (a wide chart scrolls sideways), the header rows stay put while you scroll down a long chart, and the row labels stay put while it scrolls sideways. A column heading hides its column; Hide empty columns, Zoom, and a one-column layout (each row in one cell, word groups labelled with their columns — for the discourse work where visual filters by column and marker matter more than the columns) are in the chart's menu; Change the chart… puts another of the project's charts in the same object or chart note. A chart note's custom columns can sit left or right of the chart and be frozen. The sentence and paragraph boundaries are drawn under the free translation row. The ⚑ button (markers, the text's tags, visual filters) is on every chart, markers or not, and now lists the chart's columns too: style a column's cells (a tint, a border, a colour, bold…) or hide it, for this chart, a note, a folder, the tab, the text, the notebook or a visual filter — a header group styles its columns as one box, and the chart's structure is there as well: dependent, speech and song clauses, the [2a] clause markers, and preposed or postposed text (with the look of the column it came from or sits in, and a label such as ‹‹ Subj). A group heading's box switches everything under it on, off, or back to the mix it had; groups with nothing in the chart start folded. Markers in cells with no words can be hidden for a chart (and shown or hidden per marker), and in the one-column layout a cell whose chips are all hidden draws nothing at all. A chart note's rule columns have a Builder (conditions picked from the chart's markers, columns, clause types and word fields, with contains / matches pattern / a writing system / "in this column"), and the rule language and the chart search take regular expressions on any word field (txt:/^ka-/i, gls@fr:/…/, col:Subject[txt:/^ka-/]). A rule can show the row's markers as chips (@markers:/^ShdArg/), draw its text as a chip, and join a row to the one above (no line between them, the row style on both). The chart search has its own ▦ Search charts button (Ctrl+Shift+K) and a Build a search… dialog; wherever a pattern can be typed, a link names the flavour (JavaScript in rules, Python in the search) and opens regex101 set to it. README › Query languages documents all three languages. A ▥ Groups layout shows one cell per header group with the sub-columns' words inside, styled by their own columns' rules; and in the one-column and groups layouts Line up on (the ⋯ menu) lines the text of chosen columns up on one axis across the rows — centred, or by their left or right edges — the rest of each row flowing to its left and right. A cell merged with its neighbour in FLEx now counts for both columns in searches, rules and layouts, and is drawn with both columns' looks (the chart's ⋯ menu can keep it to the owner column). The sentence and paragraph boundary lines are visual-filter targets too (⚑ › Chart structure): their style, thickness and colour, or hidden. Marker chips can go on a line of their own under the words, wrapped to the words' width, so a column is never widened by them; Line up on takes a whole header group; and the chart menus, ⚑ popovers and settings dialogs now always stay inside the window and scroll (the Merged cells and Marker chips choices sit right under Layout). Merged cells has a further choice, both columns named but only the owner's border, and merged cells are a visual-filter target of their own: any, by the side they extend into, or by owner column ("PRED merged right"). Marker chips on a line of their own now sit under the words in every layout. The ⚑ popover and the chart menu have a sticky title bar with a ✕. Dependent, speech and song clause rows take every look a cell or a word has: a tint, a highlight on the words, a border round th...