Guides

  • Getting started
  • The Home Site
  • Formatting
  • Editing
  • Communicating

    • Getting started

    Invites

    At the moment, doingtext is in closed beta. If you're interested in using it, please leave us your email address.

    Create your account

    After having entered your invitation code, you're asked to create an account. This is, because there are session ID whilst the closed beta. This means that your discussions won't get saved when you leave doingtext.com. In order to get them saved, creating an account is necessary.

    Start your first discussion

    To start a discussion, either copy & paste your text into the discussion box or write something. Doingtext will treat your text the following way:

    • Every paragraph will be an extra line.
    • Existing high-class formattings will be lost. Plain text is the basis. If you still want formatting please see below.

    The Home Site

    Your home site brings you the News Feed, Your dicussions and the starting box for new discussions.
    The News Feed shows recent activities made within your discussions, i.e. lines that were updated, comments that were given or discussions you were invited to.
    The list of Your dicussions contains, well, your discussions. Both the News Feed and Your dicussions are sorted by date.
    For starting a new disscussion, please see "Start your first discussion".

    In the header you also have a list of your discussions. Those are sorted by title.

    Formatting

    We use textile for formatting the texts. Textile is not activated by default. To use it, add .textile to the title of the discussion.
    Here is an overview of the formatting options and how to use them in doingtext.

    Textile overview

    _emphasis_
    *strong*
    __italic__
    **bold**
    ??citation??
    @code@
    h1./h2. headings
    # Numeric list
    * Bulleted list
    Links: "linktext":http://test.com
    Images: !imageurl!

    Editing

    When you mouse over a line, the little comment/edit balloon will appear. Choose to 1) give a comment, 2) edit the line, 3) change the background color or 4) switch through previous versions of that line.
    For directly entering the edit mode, simply click on the corresponding line.

    Changing the title of your discussion goes the same way.

    Creating new lines: Hit the enter key while in edit mode. Every line break creates a new line, i.e. if you enter 2 blank lines you get 2 blank lines (this will, btw, also create a new slide for the presentation mode).

    Move lines: Click the line number and the drag it to the desired location.

    Re-insert previous versions: When you flip through the versions of a line, you see those versions in the line. To re-insert a previous version, choose the desired one, click on "edit" and then save that version of the line.

    Communicating

    Sharing settings

    This link will be shown if you're the "owner" of a discussion, i.e. if you started it. You then can share the link and protect the discussion with a password. Once having protected a text, you can add other doingtext-users by typing in their username. The advantage is, they don't have to enter the password then.

    If you're not the one who started a discussion and the discussion is not protected, you see "share: " and the link of the discussion.

    In case you miss anything in this area, don't worry, it's only the discussion is started by someone else and protected.

    Protected mode

    Behind the link "sharing settings" you find the option to protect the discussion by setting a password. Working on protected discussions automatically sends the data encrypted.

    Share the text by either telling others the discussion link and the password OR add other doingtext-users.

    Comments

    Leave comments for your cowriters. These will be shown in the comment/edit-balloon. Both edits and comments are shown chronologically, so every comment regards to the version right below.
    When someone adds a line, this will also create a new comment, saying "Jane Doh added a line".

    Tracking changes

    Whenever a line is changed a comment is created that shows the difference between the previous and the new version. Insertions are marked green while deletions are marked red.

    Plus, doingtext gives you a quick look on what has happened in your time of absence by coloring the comment balloon. The dark orange indicates changes (comments and/or edits) recently added by your cowriters. The dark green refers to lines which you are the last editor of. And the paler it gets, the older the last change.

    History/ RSS Feed: Within the history you can see all changes. To receive any future changes, copy & paste the link of the history site to your feed reader.

    Presentation

    It is necessary to activate Textile to make presentations look good - even if you don't have any textile code in your discussion.

    Creating slides

    By default, there is 1 slide containing the whole of your text. To create new slides, insert 2 blank lines before the line you want to start with on the next slide.

    Navigating the presentation

    If you have more than 1 slide, switch between them by either clicking the next/previous-link in the top right corner or by hitting the space/backspace keys on your keyboard.

    Preview

    You may use the presentation link as your personal preview as well. As it opens in a new tab, you can parallely work on your text and then switch to the presentation, reload the page and - voila - there are your changes.

    Spread the text

    Importing files in another way than copy & paste will come. Stay tuned for it!

    Exporting the text is possible in 3 formats:

    1. as a txt-file,
    2. as a pdf,
    3. as an xml-file (includes comments).

    The download link is at the top of each discussion.

    Some words to the different file types:
    → The .txt opens in the browser. The reason is that special characters such as Germanic umlauts are only displayed correctly within the browser at this moment. You can then copy and paste the text into any other standalone text editor.
    → The pdf-file is offered as a download. Here special characters will do.
    → The xml also opens within the browser. Here you get all your comments downloaded as well.

    Feedback

    We're happy to hear what you think about doingtext. For short notes you can comfortably use the feedback button on the right hand side.

    The feedback button will also lead you to our uservoice feedback forum. Uservoice gives you the space for more elaborated feedback. You can propose new features and vote on them, report bugs and use the comments for broader reports.

    Alternatively, you can send us an email to .

    Privacy policy and Terms of Service

    Please follow the links to get detailled information about our privacy policy and our Terms of Service.