A few months ago while on break during an event I was working with several colleagues from different language combinations, we had one of those not-so-common moments when we all gather outside the booths and talked about the industry. As we were having this conversation I brought up the note taking topic saying that I had noticed that some of the interpreters were using a tablet while others were working “old-school” with pen and paper.
I have been taking advantage of the benefits of the iPad for quite some time. I love showing up for work with nothing but my tablet. No more heavy briefcases with multiple dictionaries. I now have my glossaries, dictionaries, and textbooks in my iPad; and if for some reason I need to consult other sources, I just go online with Safari. It is great to have my calendar, invoices, and even my travel apps handy at all times. Note taking for both, simultaneous and consecutive interpretation are another good reason to go to work with an iPad as well. Although I now use the Livescribe Echo Smartpen for consecutive renditions during press conferences and other non-judicial settings, because of the issue of recording in-court statements that has been raised in some courthouses, I am taking advantage of my iPad with a different application when interpreting in a courthouse, and many times when working in the booth.
There are many good efficient note taking applications for your iPad and other tablets: Paper Desk Lite, Idea Sketch, ABC Notes, Penultimate, Note Taker HD, Notes Plus, and others specific to Android or Microsoft are a good option, but in my case, I have been using TopNotes for about a year. This app has
everything I need to have in the booth and in the courtroom. It is a friendly application that takes you to your bookcase as soon as you open it. Once you
are at the book case you can either retrieve the notes of a conference or case you have been using, or you can simply create a new notepad for a brand new
event. To make it easier to identify your notepads, the program lets you name them, and then it allows you to pick a color for the cover and a paper style for the notepad. Finally, you can link or unlink your notepad to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and Evernote, you can copy from Dropbox, Google Drive and Box, and you can protect your notes by setting a 4-digit passcode.
Once you have a notepad you can write in different ink colors: blue, purple, grey, black, red, orange, yellow and green; you can select the width of your handwriting making the lines and letters bolder or finer, and you can highlight, erase, copy, and paste your notes.
You can also choose your paper, turn on the read-only mode, change fonts, and turn on a wrist protection that allows you to write without having to worry about any marks or alterations by your hand and wrist pressing against the screen.
This app lets you switch the screen so you can see all of your notes at the same time making it easier to go back and forth without having to shuffle papers at the speed of light. Finally, with TopNotes you can email your notes, upload them to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or Evernote, open the notes in other apps installed in your iPad, print your notes via air-print, and copy pdf files from your Dropbox and elsewhere so you can underline the text of a presentation or court file without ever touching the original documents.
I just want to end by saying that my choice of stylus for the iPad are:
Bamboo for fine handwriting. It is beautiful, its shaft is a little girthier than a Bic pen, and it is strong and durable but light enough to carry it in the shirt pocket like a regular pen; and
Boxwave from Amazon for bolder writing. It is heavier than Bamboo, its tip will not write with the fine precision of a Kensington, but it is far less expensive than Bamboo and you would not be very sad if you lose it. In my experience I found it better to have them both by my iPad and use the Bamboo stylus to write and the Boxwave to underline or to write big bold messages to my colleague in the booth.
Technology has changed the way we take notes as interpreters, and I invite those of you who have not switched to a tablet to give it a try. You will discover freedom and speed thanks to your new tool. Please tell me what apps you prefer and what stylus are more compatible with your handwriting.
ABC notation is a shorthand form of musical notation for computers. In basic form it uses the letter notation with a–g, A–G, and z, to represent the corresponding notes and rests, with other elements used to place added value on these – sharp, flat, raised or lowered octave, the note length, key, and ornamentation. This form of notation began from a combination of Helmholtz pitch notation and using ASCII characters to imitate standard musical notation (bar lines, tempo marks, etc.) that could facilitate the sharing of music online, and also added a new and simple language for software developers, not unlike other notations designed for ease, such as tablature and solfège.
The earlier ABC notation was built on, standardized, and changed by Chris Walshaw to better fit the keyboard and an ASCII character set, with the help and input of others. Originally designed to encode folk and traditional Western European tunes (e.g., from England, Ireland, and Scotland) which are typically single-voice melodies that can be written in standard notation on a single staff line, the extensions by Walshaw and others has opened this up with an increased list of characters and headers in a syntax that can also support metadata for each tune.
ABC notation being ASCII-based, any text editor can be used to create and edit the encoding. Even so, there are now many ABC notation software packages available that offer a wide variety of features, including the ability to read and process ABC notation into MIDI files and as standard “dotted” notation. Such software is readily available for most computer systems, including Microsoft Windows, Unix / Linux, Macintosh, Palm OS, and web-based.
Later third-party software packages have provided direct output, bypassing the TeX typesetter, and have extended the syntax to support lyrics aligned with notes, multi-voice and multi-staff notation, tablature, and MIDI.
Install abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application on Windows 10
Please note: you should Download abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application app only from trusted publishers and retail websites.
- Firstly, open your favorite Web browser, but not an Internet Explorer we means hahaha.
- Yeah, you can use Brave Browser or any other browser
- Then download the abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application installation file from the trusted link like on above of this page
- Select Save or Save as to download the program. Most antivirus programs like BitDefender will scan the program for viruses during download.
- If you select Save, the program file is saved in your Downloads folder.
- Or, if you select Save as, you can choose where to save it, like your desktop.
- After the downloading abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application completed, click the .exe file twice to running the Installation process
- Then follow the windows installation instruction that appear until finished
- Now, the abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application icon will appear on your Desktop
- Click twice on the icon to runing the Application into your Windows 10 PC.
- Enjoy the app!
Remove abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application App
- Hover your mouse to taskbar at the bottom of your Windows desktop
- Then click the “Start” button / Windows logo
- Select the “Control Panel” option
- Click the Add or Remove Programs icon.
- Select “abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application” from apps that displayed, then click “Remove/Uninstall.”
- Complete the Uninstall process by clicking on “YES” button.
- Finished!
- Now, your Windows operating system is clean from abc Notes – ToDo & Sticky Note Application app.abcNotes is great for shopping lists, student class notebook, to record lecture and interview notes or to track projects, recordings and more tasks at home, school and university (class or homework).2. abcNotes was designed to become your stylish and highly customizable, functional and easy to use assistant in taking notes and managing To Do lists.Or follow the guide below to use on PC:
If you want to install and use the abc Notes – Checklist & Sticky Note Application app on your PC or Mac, you will need to download and install a Desktop App emulator for your computer. We have worked diligently to help you understand how to use this app for your computer in 4 simple steps below:
Step 1: Download an Android emulator for PC and Mac
Ok. First things first. If you want to use the application on your computer, first visit the Mac store or Windows AppStore and search for either the Bluestacks app or the Nox App. Most of the tutorials on the web recommends the Bluestacks app and I might be tempted to recommend it too, because you are more likely to easily find solutions online if you have trouble using the Bluestacks application on your computer. You can download the Bluestacks Pc or Mac software.
Step 2: Install the emulator on your PC or Mac
Now that you have downloaded the emulator of your choice, go to the Downloads folder on your computer to locate the emulator or Bluestacks application.
Once you have found it, click it to install the application or exe on your PC or Mac computer.
Now click Next to accept the license agreement.
Follow the on screen directives in order to install the application properly.
If you do the above correctly, the Emulator app will be successfully installed.Step 3: for PC – Windows 7/8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11
Now, open the Emulator application you have installed and look for its search bar. Once you found it, type abc Notes – Checklist & Sticky Note Application in the search bar and press Search. Click on abc Notes – Checklist & Sticky Note Applicationapplication icon. A window of abc Notes – Checklist & Sticky Note Application on the Play Store or the app store will open and it will display the Store in your emulator application. Now, press the Install button and like on an iPhone or Android device, your application will start downloading. Now we are all done.
You will see an icon called “All Apps”.
Click on it and it will take you to a page containing all your installed applications.
You should see the icon. Click on it and start using the application.Step 4: for Mac OS
Hi. Mac user!
The steps to use abc Notes – Checklist & Sticky Note Application for Mac are exactly like the ones for Windows OS above. All you need to do is install the Nox Application Emulator or Bluestack on your Macintosh. The links are provided in step on