behind the scenes

This section of the manual gives some high-level technical information about some of the things that iSilo™ does.

what happens when you start iSilo

When you start iSilo™ for the very first time or if the last time you used iSilo™ you exited while in the
document list view, then you start in the document list view. Otherwise, you must have been viewing a document before exiting iSilo™ the last time, in which case, iSilo™ starts in the read view with that document. See what happens when you open a document for more about the latter.

In the document list view, iSilo™ searches for files to add to the document list of the current view, going through your handheld's internal memory and/or mounted storage cards. The search happens in the background when you are in the document list view.

So while you are deciding which document to view next, iSilo™ is busy in the background checking to see whether an update to the list is necessary. If you have a lot of databases in the internal memory of your device or if you have a lot of files on your external storage cards, the total time to see whether an update is necessary may be very long. But iSilo™ does this check in the background so that you do not have to wait before beginning to read an already listed document. You can tell that iSilo™ is busy working in the background doing this check if you see a blinking dot in the upper left.

a document's default category

When you open a document for the very first time (e.g., never opened before), iSilo™ checks to see whether the document specifies a default category, the document is placed into the specified default category.

Note: When you open a document you have previously opened at least once and the document specifies a default category that the document is not currently a member of, the document is not placed into the specified default category.


what happens when you open a document

opening a new document

When you open a document you have never opened before, the document automatically gets the default display and interface options. Either they are the original default options or they are your modified default options.

opening a previously opened document

When you open a document you have previously opened at least once, the document starts with the display and interface options that were in effect when you last closed the document. iSilo™ stores these settings in a database that it maintains in your handheld's memory.

determining the color display mode

In the
Display Options dialog, you can set the color display mode for the current document, but you can not set a default for the option. You may wonder why this is. The reason has to do with the fact that for almost all devices, but not all, the highest color mode results in a noticeably slower display speed. Usually running in pure 1-bit black-and-white mode gives the fastest display speed.

The color display mode affects the entire screen, including the user interface. This means that user interface items such as the title bar, scroll bar, and tool bar appear different in different color display modes.

So when you open a given document for the first time, iSilo™ makes a quick determination of whether the document uses color. If the document uses only black and white, iSilo™ starts the document in 1-bit color mode. Otherwise, the behavior depends on whether the device supports color. If it does, iSilo™ starts the document in the highest color mode available. If not, then iSilo™ starts the document in the highest color mode that is no greater than the highest color depth used by the document.

The behavior described above only applies to running iSilo™ on Palm OS® devices prior to Palm OS® 4.0. In devices with Palm OS® 4.0 or later, iSilo™ starts documents in the highest color mode available.

Subsequent to the first time you open a document, the document opens in the color display mode in effect when you last closed the document. So, for example, if you had a document that opened by default in 1-bit color mode, but you changed the color mode to 16-bit color and then closed the document, the next time you open the document, it opens in 16-bit color mode.

displaying the document

As soon as you open a document, iSilo™ displays its content so that you can immediately begin reading or using it. However, this initial display of the content may not be the way the content finally displays after iSilo™ finishes the content layout. In particular, if the current page that you are viewing has tables, iSilo™ can not display the table in row and column format until it has finished the layout of the content on the page. Nevertheless, iSilo™ gives you the opportunity to start viewing the table content with a linear layout, whereby each cell outputs to a new line. In many cases, the table content is still readable, so in those cases, you do not need to wait until layout is complete before being able to access the data. As soon as iSilo™ finishes layout of the page, it redisplays the table data in row and column format.

content layout

When you open a document or go to a new page of the document, you may notice that a blinking dot appears in the upper left. The blinking indicates that iSilo™ is going through the page performing layout of the content. iSilo™ does the layout in the background so that you can begin reading the content without having to wait for iSilo™ to complete the layout task. Layout of the content involves the following items: With regard to tables, iSilo™ sizes rows and columns according to the table specification in addition to taking into consideration the screen size.

Images, preformatted text, and tables are three type of content that can span wider than the width of the screen and thus require horizontal scrolling.


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