Typing

Keyboard

This is a full-screen typewriter: a physical keyboard is required, and sound should be on. The machine starts on a blank sheet, so just begin typing. If keystrokes are not registered, click the paper once. Preview (Typebasket group) prints the standard font-sample text.

One key at a time

One character key at a time, like a real manual typewriter. Overlapping keypresses are ignored, exactly like colliding typebars.

Shift and Caps Lock

Hold Shift for capitals. Caps Lock toggles the shift lock: tap to lock capitals on, tap again to release.

The bell

The bell dingles a few spaces before the right margin stop, and the indicator lamp (Busy light) turns red in the bell zone.

Margin release

The carriage stops at the right margin stop; one last character fits, then keys jam until the carriage moves back (Line Lock, both modes). Press Margin release (also in the Quick menu, M) to free the carriage and type past the stop, to the paper's edge. The button lights yellow while engaged; a new line (Enter, the roller feed keys or the Platen slider) disengages it again.

Paper release

Paper release buttons sit on each side of the paper, below the Carriage Release arrows; pressing either pulls the sheet out of the machine (Release Page), the same as the Release Page button in the Paper group or Quick menu E.

• Up to 5 pages can be held at once. Each release goes into the next free slot, shown as a small folded-corner page icon down the top-right edge of the paper, one below the other, its fill coloured to match the page's own paper type; a couple of short lines stand in for typed text (not real characters) when the page has writing on it. With all 5 slots in use, Release Page is disabled until one is freed. Click an icon for that page's popup; Swap puts the mounted page into the same slot.
• While a page is held, the machine keeps an invisible placeholder sheet mounted — always the widest available format but only 4 lines tall and always centred on the carriage, so margins stay freely movable along the whole ruler, including all the way to the left. The caret keeps its column but resets to the top row, so it always shows up in its normal spot instead of landing below the Line Indicator if the caret was several lines down. Rolling (the Platen thumbwheels/sliders/Index) is locked while a placeholder is mounted, and typing, printing and exporting are disabled until a real page is back.
• Click the icon to open Insert, View, Swap, Pin, Trash and Close. Insert puts the page back (confirm if the mounted page already has content); View opens the held page itself, without inserting it (its Print/Save/ Snapshot buttons are hidden there, since the page isn't actually mounted); Swap trades it with the mounted page with no warning; Pin sticks it to the machine cover (see Pin below); Trash discards it (confirm). Esc also closes the popup.

Pin

Pin (in the released page's popup) sticks the held page to the machine cover as a small image, only for A6 or Scrap format pages. Up to 5 can be pinned at once.

• Drag a pin with the mouse to move it across the machine cover, within the same limits as its sliders.
• Each pin has its own popup (click it) with four sliders: Placement moves it left/right across the machine, Vertical moves it a small amount up/down within the height of the cover, Rotation tilts it up to 30 degrees either way, and Zoom scales it 80-120%.
• A newly pinned page appears at a staggered position rather than stacked on an existing pin, so it is immediately visible; later pins render on top of earlier ones where they overlap.
• A pin's own popup also offers Insert (mount it back) and Swap (trade it with the mounted page, which resets that pin's placement/vertical/rotation/zoom back to default) and Trash (unpin it, confirm), plus Close or Esc.
• A short instructional note is already pinned to the cover the first time the app is opened, and behaves exactly like any other pin from then on — trash it like normal to get rid of it. It comes back on the next page load or visit (nothing is remembered, no cookies involved), but Reset All will not bring it back on its own.

Corkboard

A wall next to the machine for whole pages of any format. Open it with the Corkboard icon in the paper window (a page with two small frames) or Quick menu O; Back to the machine or Esc returns. Release to corkboard takes the page out of the machine and posts it in the middle of the board (not available when no real page is mounted); Post held page does the same for pages held out of the machine with Release Page, the topmost first, then the next one down on each press. Up to 16 pages fit on the board.

• Drag a page with the mouse to move it; it stops at the edges of the board. The page you touch comes to the front.
• Click a page for its popup: Horizontal and Vertical move it across the board, Rotation turns it all the way round, and Zoom scales it (only as large as still fits the board). Every format is shown at one common scale, so an A4 stays bigger than an A6. A newly posted page starts at 150% zoom.
• Insert mounts the page in the machine (confirm when the page in the machine has writing on it), Swap trades it with the page in the machine (which takes its spot on the board), and Trash discards it (confirm). Close or Esc closes the popup.
• The corkboard is saved with the session (Save / Load), including every page's position, turn and zoom. Saves are compressed, so even a full board of written pages stays a small file. Reset All clears it, like the pins.

View page

Opens a non-destructive full-page preview. The View page button (Workspace group), the zen quick bar or the Quick menu (V) opens it; disabled while a placeholder page is mounted.

• The machine underneath keeps every character and setting, and the view opens zoomed to the screen height.
• Top-right buttons zoom to 400%, print, save PNG or JPG, make a photo copy, take a snapshot, or close; when zoomed, the view scrolls and drags.
• The on-screen preview is low-resolution; printing and image exports always use the full page data.
• Esc or Close puts the paper back and typing resumes exactly where you left off.

Dollar sign

Make a $ by typing a capital S, backspacing over it, then striking | (vertical bar): two characters printed on top of each other.

Carriage and paper feed

Backspace

Backspace does not erase! It moves the carriage back one space so you can overtype. To erase, cover the character with correction paper and retype, or use the one-strike Lift-off correction in Electric mode (see Ribbon and corrections below).

Moving the margin stops

The blue triangles on the ruler are the margin stops. Set them with the Left/Right Margin sliders (Settings tab, Marginstop group) or drag a triangle on the ruler; arrow keys move one column at a time after clicking. Sliders and ruler stay in sync, and a gap of at least 4 columns always remains. The ruler is screen-only and never appears in print.

Tab release

Engage Tab release (also Ctrl+Shift+Backspace) and Backspace returns to the start of the line, while Tab jumps to the right margin stop (or the paper edge with Margin release engaged). Ctrl+Shift+Space does either jump without engaging first; Ctrl+Shift+Tab is reserved by browsers for switching tabs. Either move disengages the release, and the button lights red while engaged. The carriage arrows beside the paper do the same two runs. A run sounds and, in Mechanical mode, glides like a carriage return over the same distance (without feeding a line); keys wait until it has arrived.

Space and Tab

Space moves one space. Tab jumps forward by the Tap stop setting; Shift+Backspace jumps back the same amount (all the way to line start at Tap stop 0). Plain Backspace moves one space back.

Carriage return

Enter returns the carriage to the left margin and feeds the roller one line; keys are ignored until it finishes. The time grows with the columns travelled back to the left margin: Electric takes roughly 70 ms plus 6 ms per column (max 250 ms); Mechanical takes 140 ms plus 12 ms per column (max 500 ms), and the carriage visibly slides back over that time, reaching the margin stop with the stop clunk.

Cursor keys

Left/right move the carriage without printing. Up/down feed the roller by the Line Space Selector setting. The page scrolls with the caret and keeps it near the middle of the view.

Line Space Selector

Sets the roller feed per carriage return: 0 keeps the next line on the same line, 1 is single spacing, 1.5, 2 and 3 add proportionally more. Each line keeps the spacing it was fed with; the setting affects future lines only.

Paper Injector

Feeds a fresh page to a top margin on insertion: 0 inserts it flush at the top, 1, 2 (default) and 3 feed one, two or three line spaces, multiplied by the Line Space Selector. Roll the platen back afterwards with the Platen Rotation slider or the up cursor key to start near the paper's top edge.

Page end

Feeding past the last line is refused, like reaching the bottom of the sheet; the lamp turns red. Move the caret up or start a fresh page.

Ribbon and corrections

Ribbon ink

Ribbon ink fades as you type; use Change ribbon for a fresh one, or pick a pre-worn ribbon: Used starts at 70% ink, Dry at 30%. In Electric mode the ribbon becomes a single-colour carbon cassette: every strike prints fully saturated, and typing stops once the carbon runs out until a new cassette is fitted (New cassette, or Empty with 5 units left). A cassette colour is picked at each change: black (default), red, blue, green or brown.

Colour shift

Hold Esc for a single red-ribbon strike. Tap Caps Lock while holding Esc to lock red on, and again to unlock. Mechanical only: Electric mode has no red shift or colour selectors.

Correction paper

Load a virtual correction sheet with Load correction paper (or Ctrl+Alt+C), move the carriage over the bad character and retype it: the strike covers it with a paper-coloured patch. The sheet stays loaded until you click the button again to unload. Mechanical only; Electric uses the Lift-off correction below instead.

Correction Tape

Electric mode replaces the correction sheet with a lift-off tape (Correction Tape group, General tab).

• Press Lift-off correction (also Ctrl+Alt+C or the Quick menu) to arm it: the caret backs up over the letter last typed, blank or not, and the button and top-row Correction lamp light up.
• The next key struck covers that character with a tape-coloured patch (one tape unit) and the correction disengages by itself, like the Corrector key on the IBM Selectric.
• Repeated presses walk the caret left while staying armed; press Space to disengage without moving the caret. Backspace just moves the carriage, in both modes.
• Nothing is deleted automatically: you choose which letter to strike.
• Change tape offers a New tape (full 1000 units) or an Empty tape; the Capacity gauge shows what is left. The Correction lamp lights yellow when the tape is empty, and the Cassette lamp next to it lights red when the cassette is empty.

Typebasket and quality

Typebasket

Pick a typebasket (font face) in the Typebasket group of the Settings tab. Every character remembers the basket used when it was struck, so you can mix faces on one sheet; switching affects only new characters. In Electric mode the group is renamed Type Ball (golfball type ball).

Off-register

The Off-register slider makes text wobbly and uneven, like a misaligned typebasket. Above 75 keys break permanently until you dial it back: broken keys print a solid block. Electric mode resets it to zero (available in both modes otherwise).

Pressure

The Pressure slider makes some characters print lighter, like striking unevenly hard. Available in both modes; Electric parks it at zero because the motor is completely precise. Reset (Quality group) restores both quality defaults.

Paper

Choose A4, Letter, A5, A6 or Scrap sheets and paper types like standard, antique, legal pad and onion skin; changing the type clears the page after confirmation. Scrap paper is a small strip, the same width as an A6 but much shorter — just enough for 6 typing lines.

• Paper alignment: a fresh page is inserted against the left edge of the machine (default) or centred, always snapped to the ruler tick grid.
• Orientation: fresh pages feed vertically (default) or horizontally, turned 90 degrees on the platen. Horizontal fits more characters per line and is available for the narrow formats only (A5, A6, Scrap); the margin stops keep counting from the paper's own edges, so they move with the sheet, while the ruler's numbers never change.

Export and print

Save the full selected page as PNG or JPG, or print it directly. Image exports use the complete format and orientation, include the paper colour, and are not limited to the typed area. Save snapshot (Quick menu, Ctrl+K, then Q) is a PNG trimmed to the written lines only. Printing always uses plain white paper at 100% regardless of on-screen zoom; the paper colour is not printed.

Photo copy

Photo copy (Workspace group, below Save / Load, the View page overlay, or Quick menu G) makes a grayscale copy of the page in the machine on white paper, the same size: everything typed and overtyped is kept, the inks turn grey, a little lighter than the original, and correction paper or tape turns white. Choose where it goes: Insert puts it in the machine instead of the original, Release holds it in the next free released-page slot, Corkboard posts it on the corkboard, and Cancel (or Esc) does nothing. Release and Corkboard can't be chosen when there is no room.

Saving and loading

Whenever the session has changed since it was last saved or loaded, "(Unsaved changes)" shows in the top right corner. Only real changes count: rolling the platen or moving the carriage around the page doesn't. The Save / Load button in the Workspace group (also in the Quick menu, S) opens the Save dialog: type a file name (the field has focus, and .txt is added for you) and press Save or Enter to download the session as that file; Esc, Cancel or X closes it. The name is remembered until you leave the page; Reset all goes back to the default name. Load (in the Save dialog, or Quick menu L) opens the Load dialog: paste a save string into its field (it has focus) and press Load to restore the session; Esc, Cancel or X closes it. More, in either dialog, opens the full Save / Load overlay, which packs the whole session into one portable text string: the written page with every character's ink detail, plus all machine settings, including the Colourscheme, Knob style, Surface condition, Edges, Indicators and Line Indicator settings and which preset button is active. Whether the mounted page is a placeholder, the held released pages (all 5 slots), and every pinned page (its content plus placement, vertical position, rotation and zoom) and every page on the corkboard (with its position, turn and zoom) are included too. The session is stored compactly and compressed, so even many full pages make a small file (a typical session is a few KB); sessions saved by earlier versions, in the older format or from before Pin existed, still load correctly. Copy or download it, paste it back later and press Load to restore exactly. Overlay keys: C copies, D downloads, E exports the written text, L loads.

• Quick menu (Ctrl+K), W: download the session directly, under the last file name used.
• X: export the written text as a plain .txt file, one line per line of paper, taking the top character of each overtyped stack.
• I (or the Import button): open the text import instead.

Internals

The Utility tab's Internals group has a Data button: a debug page listing every current setting and value, including Placeholder page, Page released and Pages pinned (N / 5). In Electric mode its ribbon entries read Cassette and Carbon Ribbon, plus rows for the bypassed fade (full saturation) and the empty-cassette limit, and a Wobble animation row shows the disabled carriage-return wobble.

Machine and view

Paper controls icon

A folded-corner page icon with a small "+" sits in the top-left corner of the paper viewport, shown only in zen mode with the control panel hidden — the Paper group's own Fresh Page/Release Page buttons are already reachable otherwise (also Quick menu F). Click it to open the whole Paper group (Fresh page, Format, Paper type, Orientation, Paper alignment, Release Page and, in Mechanical mode, correction paper) in an overlay, without leaving zen mode. It's the same controls and the same live state as the Paper group in the General tab, so a change in one place shows immediately in the other. While it is open, Enter presses Fresh page, and pressing Enter again presses Confirm (the Page at risk warning shows in between), so two presses put in a fresh sheet; outside the overlay Enter stays the carriage return. Esc cancels an armed Fresh page first; otherwise Esc, its X button, or clicking outside the panel closes it.

View page icon

A matching page icon with a magnifying glass sits directly beneath the Paper controls icon, also zen mode only. Click it (or press V) to open the same full-page preview as Workspace -> View page. Disabled whenever no real sheet is mounted (e.g. right after Release Page).

Corkboard icon

A page icon with two small frames, always shown in the paper window: at the top left while the controls panel is open, beneath the View page icon in zen mode. Click it (or press O in the Quick menu) to open the Corkboard.

Controls tabs

The control panel is split into four tabs.

• General: Ribbon, Correction Tape (electric only), Paper, carriage, Workspace and Typewriter.
• Settings: Typebasket (first group), Format, Line Space, Paper Injector, Marginstop and Tap Stop.
• Utility: Mode (first group), Quality, View and Internals.
• Presets: four one-click setups (Standard Mechanical, Raven Electric, Flea Market Treasure and 60's Barn Find) with a Reset button that returns to Standard Mechanical, followed by the Colourscheme group and the Caret, Platen Knob and Surface group. Each preset also sets the surface condition and Rounded edges.

Mode

The Mode switch is in Utility → Mode. Electric uses bright indicators and active buttons; Mechanical uses dim, flag-style indicators.

• Electric uses a single-colour cassette and Type Ball (Courier); Mechanical uses the Elite typebasket.
• Electric replaces colour shift and correction paper with Lift-off correction tape.
• Electric sets quality sliders to zero, hides carriage controls, keeps Paper Release available, and disables carriage wobble.

Reset all returns to Mechanical and clears the sheet.

Indicators

In the Mode group, below the Mechanical and Electric buttons, the Indicators radios offer ON (default) and OFF. ON shows the top indicator strip next to the branding; OFF hides it for distraction-free typing (the paper stays exactly where it was). Reset all and Preset Reset set ON; the Flea Market Treasure and 60's Barn Find presets set OFF, the other presets ON. The choice is part of the Save / Load session string.

Viewing angle

Radios in the Mode group, or the buttons above the paper (7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30; default 10). The number is the row of the typing point: a higher value shows more paper above the caret and makes the viewport taller, while the Line Indicator and platen thumbwheels stay aligned with the typing point. Reset all restores 10.

Carriage return speed

In the Mode group of the Utility tab, below the Line Indicator radios, this slider sets the carriage sweep in four steps: 1 is the slow hand-and-spring return, 2 the standard mechanical return (default), 3 faster, and 4 the full electric motor return. Switching to Mechanical sets 2, to Electric sets 4. Reset all restores 2; the choice is part of the Save / Load session string.

Line Indicator

In the Mode group of the Utility tab, below the Indicators radios, Line Indicator offers ON (default) and OFF. ON draws a translucent light gray band with a jagged row of ruler ticks just below the caret path row, spanning the paper viewport edge to edge; it marks where the sheet exits the machine and never crosses written characters. The ticks are dark gray in Mechanical mode and Vermilion in Electric. Reset all restores ON, and the choice is part of the Save / Load session string.

Colourscheme

In the Presets tab, Colourscheme recolors the machine, in this order: Industrial (standard grey), Forest (lime-green), Pastel (dark green), Walnut (dark brown), Plum (purple) and Black (an Industrial variation with a black accent; its active buttons light up orange with dark text for readability). Each scheme also colours the group legends and radio captions to match. Reset All returns to Industrial.

Caret, Platen Knob and Surface

In the Presets tab, this group picks:

• Caret: five styles (A, a curved-spike clamp with a pointed tip; B, a flat-topped half-height clamp; C, a raised curved-spike clamp; D, a tall classic clamp; E, a wide flat-topped clamp), all hugging the current letter, in Blue, Smoke, Bronze, Gold or Chrome (metal-chrome gradients).
• Knob style: the side platen thumbwheel plastic, anchored to the Line Indicator: Black, Gray, Brown or Cream.
• Surface condition: desk wear around the paper, Pristine (default), Dusty, Scratched or Rusty. Textures show only on the desk and header background; paper and controls stay clean. In zen mode a worn surface darkens the header branding and accents for readability.
• Edges: Rounded (default) rounds the corners of buttons, groups, radio lamps, slider knobs and fields; Angular keeps the square industrial look.

Full-width dividers separate the rows inside the group. Reset (and Reset all) restores the Smoke style-A caret, black knob, pristine surface and Rounded edges.

Vim Mode

Turning it on

For people used to the Vim editor: Utility -> Internals -> Keymap switches Vim Mode on (a short introduction asks first; Cancel leaves it off) or off. It is off by default, saved with the session, and Reset all turns it off.

Normal, Insert and Command

The mode shows above the paper on the left. In --INSERT-- you type as usual. In --NORMAL-- the keys move around the page: for example h and l move the carriage, j and k roll the platen, w jumps to the next word and x switches correction on or off. Press i to type, Esc to go back to Normal. In Vim Mode Esc doesn't shift the ribbon colour; use the Colour lock instead.

Command line

In Normal, type : to open a command line along the bottom of the window (the mode shows --COMMAND--), then a command and Enter: for example :w saves, :new a6,h starts a fresh A6 page lying sideways, :rel releases the page, :pc cork posts a photo copy on the corkboard, :42 rolls to line 42 and :set ts=5 sets the tap stop. Esc closes it. A command that would throw away writing needs a ! (like :new!).

Console

A small black console just above the command line keeps a log: the mode each time it changes (NORMAL in blue, INSERT in green, COMMAND in yellow), whether the session is saved, and every command with its answer. The bottom line always shows the paper format, the ink colour (or Correction while you correct), how much ink is left and how big the session file is; its colour shows the current mode. When it is full, the oldest line drops off the top. Hide it with :set noconsole or the Console button under Keymap; :set console shows it again.

Every key and command

Type :help (or :h) for the full reference, with every key and command in tables, with examples.