PDFs, notes, web and desk tools

PDF

Open a PDF with Choose PDF in an empty PDF node, by double-clicking it in a Folder node, or by dropping it on the canvas and choosing Open in Warpstead. The node opens at the size of the document, like a photo: one or two pages sit side by side and you always see them whole, even if you resize the node, and from three pages on they go in rows with the page number under each one. The slider in the bar at the top makes them bigger or smaller.

Double-click a page, or select it and press Space, to read the PDF full size from that page. The mouse wheel scrolls through the pages, and a strip of thumbnails runs along the bottom: click one to jump to it. ← →, ↑ ↓, Page Up Page Down, Home and End turn pages too, and Esc closes.

The bar at the top shows which page you’re on: type a number there and press Enter to jump to it. The minus and plus buttons, or − and +, zoom out and in. The percentage between them is how big the page is on screen, with 100% the size of an A4 sheet; click it, or press 0, to fit the page again. Fit to page shows each page entire, Fit to width fills the width of the node, which helps with small print. Side by side lays out brochures and magazines like an open book, with the cover on its own (a two-page PDF just shows both pages together); a landscape page also stays on its own. Double-click a point on a page to zoom in right there, and double-click again to go back. Once you’ve zoomed in or fitted to width, ↑ ↓ scroll the page instead of turning it.

You can select the text on the pages as in any PDF reader: drag across the words, or double-click a word or triple-click a line, then copy with Ctrl+C. On text a double-click picks the word; anywhere else it zooms in. A scanned page is a photo, so there’s no text to select.

Full screen, the last button in the bar, takes the reading to the whole screen, the way a Web node goes full screen; Shift and scroll up on the node does the same, even from the pages, opening the one you selected. Esc or Shift and scroll down bring it back into the node on the same page, and a second Esc closes the reading.

Editing pages

Pages are always editable, there’s no mode to switch on. Select one or more and a bar appears at the bottom to rotate or delete them.

Your changes stay in the node, even if you close Warpstead, but the PDF file doesn’t change until you press Save (Ctrl S). Save overwrites the file and keeps no copy of the old one, so the folder holds a single PDF. The new file is written next to the old one first and opened again page by page; only then does it take the old one’s place. If Warpstead closes halfway through, or the check fails, the PDF stays as it was. If you change your mind, Ctrl Z in the node brings the pages back and you save again. Save as… writes a new file with the name and folder you choose: the original stays as it is and the node moves to the new file. Until you save, the footer says so, and other programs (or an email you attach the file to) still get the old version. Closing a node with unsaved changes asks first. Bookmarks, links between pages, form fields and the PDF/X profile stay in the file, and saves appear in History.

With a digitally signed file, Save would break the signature: the footer says so and you choose Save anyway, while Save as… leaves the signed original as it is. A file that doesn’t allow changes is read-only. A password-protected file has to be opened in another program for now.

Merging PDFs

A PDF node takes pages and files from outside. Drag pages from another PDF node and drop them between two pages: a line shows the spot, and the footer says where they’ll go. Between two nodes pages are copied; hold Ctrl as you drop and they’re moved instead, gone from the node they came from. A PDF dragged from File Explorer or from a Folder node goes in the same way, whole, where you drop it. Add → PDF or images…, in the bar at the top, picks files to put at the end, and the + that appears between two pages, next to the scissors, inserts one there.

When the pages come from more than one file, a row under the bar lists the source files, one colour each and how many pages each gave; the same colour sits next to each page number. Split → One file per merged PDF goes back the other way. Warpstead copies the pages the moment they arrive, so if you later change or delete the file you took them from, the node doesn’t change. When you save, they go into the node’s PDF like the others.

Photos and scans go in the same way. A JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, AVIF, JPEG XL or PSD dropped between two pages becomes a page the size of the one before it, turned sideways if the picture is landscape, with the whole image centred. A JPG goes in as it is, without being compressed again. On an empty PDF node one image becomes a PDF with its name, and several become Merged.pdf. Add → Blank page adds an empty page the size of its neighbour, after the last page you selected or at the end.

To merge into a new file, select two or more PDFs in a Folder node and choose Merge into one PDF from the right-click menu. The files are merged in the order you see them in the Folder, into Merged.pdf in the same folder (Merged (2).pdf if the name is taken), which opens in a node next to it. An empty PDF node works too: drag pages from another node, or several files at once, into it and it becomes Merged.pdf, next to the first file that arrived. A single file just opens in the node as it is. Until you change it, the footer says where it was created and has Rename to give it a name of your own.

Extracting and splitting

Extract, in the bar that appears when you select pages, makes a new PDF from those pages. Split, in the bar at the top, breaks the PDF into several files. The new files are created in the same folder as the original and open in nodes next to it; the original stays as it is. Past six files the nodes don’t open, so the canvas doesn’t fill up: a notice tells you where the files are, with Show in folder.

To split by hand, move the mouse into the gap between two pages: a line and a pair of scissors appear, and a click cuts there. The Split menu also cuts in one go, with One page per file, Every 2 pages, Every 4 pages or, when the pages come from more than one file, One file per merged PDF. If you can’t find where to cut, Show me where to split makes the gaps between pages blink. Each part has its file name above it, which you can change, and Rejoin part 1 removes the cut. When the parts look right, press Create 3 PDFs in the footer. Until then the cuts don’t touch the file, and Ctrl Z undoes them like any other change.

An extracted file is named after the original and the pages you took, for example brief p3-5.pdf, and parts become brief-1.pdf, brief-2.pdf and so on. If a file with that name already exists, Warpstead leaves it alone and calls the new one brief p3-5 (2).pdf. The new files show up in History, and undoing them there moves them to the Recycle Bin.

You can extract from a signed PDF too: the new file has no valid signature, the original keeps its own. Bookmarks that point to pages you left out stay in the new file and lead to the first page.

Filling in a form

You can fill in a printed form in the reading view even when it has no fields. With Edit open, Text writes where you click. As you move over the page, the line your text would sit on lights up, and the text lands on it, whether it’s a drawn line, a row of underscores or a row of dots. In a grid of boxes, like the ones for a tax code, each letter goes in its own box. Enter starts a new line; Esc or a click elsewhere closes the box. Check, Cross and Dot mark printed boxes, centred in the square, and Date writes today’s. The pointer takes the shape of the tool: a text cursor for Text and Date, and the mark itself, in the ink you picked, for the other three.

Click a piece of text to change it, drag it to move it. The small bar above it changes the size and the ink, black or blue, and Delete removes what you’ve selected. A scanned page is a photo with no lines to find, so there the text goes exactly where you click.

When you save, what you wrote becomes real text in the PDF: anyone can select it, copy it and find it with search, in any reader. For English and the other Western European languages the file barely grows. With letters from other alphabets, such as Polish, Greek or Cyrillic, Warpstead also puts the font in the file, which adds about half a megabyte; the small bar tells you first. Letters that font doesn’t have, such as Chinese or emoji, are marked in red and can’t be saved.

Forms with fields

Many forms from banks, tax offices and government agencies already have real fields. With those you don’t need Edit in the reading view: click a field and type, Tab moves to the next one, boxes tick with a click and drop-down lists open. A band under the bar says how many fields the form has, the footer counts the ones you’ve filled in, and Highlight fields turns the light blue tint that marks them off and on. Edit is still there for everything else: your signature, a note in the margin, a box the form forgot. Fields on pages that came from another PDF are shown but can’t be filled in here; use that file’s own node.

When you save, the values go into the PDF’s fields rather than being drawn on top, so whoever receives it can still change them. They also come out when you print. Some forms, like the IRS ones, carry a second XFA version inside them, and Acrobat reads that one: if you change a value, Warpstead removes it when saving, otherwise Acrobat would show empty fields. A form made only in XFA can only be filled in with Adobe Reader, and the band tells you so.

Signing

In the reading view, Edit opens a row of tools, and Sign lists the signatures you’ve saved on this PC. Click one and it follows the mouse; click again to put it down on the page. You can drag it, resize it from the corner, switch the ink between black and blue, and remove it with Delete. The same menu has your Initials, for the corner of every page.

New signature… gives you three ways to make one: draw it with the mouse or a pen, type your name and let Warpstead write it in a handwriting font, or take it from a photo of a signature on paper, where Remove the background keeps only the ink. If you draw it with the mouse, the line trails the pointer slightly, less than with Pen: the shake goes and the signature still looks like yours. Tick These are initials to keep it with your initials. Saved signatures stay in Warpstead’s data folder on this PC and never leave it.

The signature becomes part of the page when you press Save: whoever opens the file sees it in Acrobat, in Edge or on a phone, and it prints. Until then it’s one more unsaved change, and Ctrl Z takes it back. It is a picture of your signature, like one signed on paper and scanned. It is not a digital signature with a certificate, the kind some government forms ask for: Warpstead doesn’t create those.

Highlighting and marking up

Edit also has the tools for marking up a document you need to review or send back. Drag Highlight (H) across the words and it colours the lines it passes over, one by one, like a real highlighter; on a scanned page, which has no text, it colours the rectangle you drag. Shapes offers rectangle, ellipse, arrow and line, drawn by dragging: the arrow points where you let go. Pen (P) draws freehand, to circle a figure or underline your own way. Pen and shapes come in three thicknesses, next to the colours: Thin, Medium and Thick. With a mouse, the pen keeps the line slightly behind the pointer, so a shaky hand doesn’t end up on the page, and when you let go the line catches up. With a tablet pen or a finger, the line follows the tip exactly. The tool stays in your hand until you pick another, and Esc goes back to Select.

With Select (V), a click picks up a mark: change its colour from the small bar above it (and its thickness, for a shape or a pen stroke) or remove it with the bin or Delete, and drag shapes and pen strokes to move them. A highlight stays on its text, so dragging across it selects the words as usual. Ctrl Z undoes these too, like any other edit.

When you save, highlights and marks become ordinary PDF annotations: whoever gets the file sees them in Acrobat or Edge, finds them in the comments list and can remove them. The page underneath stays as it was, and the marks print and survive in PDF/A. In Warpstead you can still change them while the file is open in that node, even after saving.

Saving as PDF/A

PDF/A is the PDF for archiving: many public-administration portals, courts and long-term storage services ask for it. In Save as…, pick PDF/A, for archiving under Save as type in the Windows dialog; the node remembers it for next time. Warpstead writes PDF/A-2b, a file that always looks the same because the fonts, colours and field appearances are inside it. To get there it embeds the fonts the file uses but doesn’t contain (Helvetica becomes Arial, which has the same metrics), removes JavaScript, automatic actions and the XFA part of forms, and adds the colour profile. Text, images and bookmarks don’t change, and fields stay fillable. A line under the page says what changed, and PDF/A appears next to the name.

The node checks before writing. If the file can’t become PDF/A, nothing is saved: it tells you why and offers Save as a regular PDF. That happens with a font that isn’t in the file and isn’t installed on the PC, with attachments inside the PDF (PDF/A-2 doesn’t allow them) and with protected files. A file that’s already PDF/A stays PDF/A when you press Save; if a change makes that impossible, say a page taken from a PDF with a missing font, Save asks before saving it as a regular PDF. A PDF/A-3, like an e-invoice with its XML inside, stays PDF/A-3 with its attachments. Any save breaks a digital signature, and PDF/A removes it.

Printing

Print, in the bar at the top, or Ctrl P with the node selected, opens the Windows print dialog: printer, page range, copies. If you have pages selected, the dialog also offers Selection. What you get on paper is what the node shows right now: the order you gave the pages, the ones you rotated, the ones that came from other PDFs, even changes you haven’t saved yet. A page bigger than the sheet is shrunk to fit, a smaller one prints at its real size, and both are centred; a landscape page on a portrait sheet, or the other way round, is turned. With Microsoft Print to PDF Warpstead asks where to save the file, suggesting the name with (print) added. The Windows Fax can’t be used from here.

While the dialog is open Print is dimmed, so a second dialog can’t start. Close the dialog and nothing happens; print, and a notice says how many pages went to the printer. If Windows or the printer refuses, the notice carries the reason, and you can select and copy it. A node with no pages has nothing to print.

Note

A note is plain text on a colored card, in seven colors. Double-click to write, Esc to cancel the change you’re making. It counts the words. Double-click the header to rename it.

Web

The Web node is a real browser on the canvas: back, forward, reload and an address bar where you can type an address or a search. With the page in focus, Ctrl L goes to the address bar, F5 reloads, Alt ← and Alt → go back and forward. It can go full screen like a program. Each node shows one page: for another page, add another node.

The node starts with the proportions of your screen. If a page stops responding, the node offers to wait or reload.

Clipping from the web

Clip in the node’s bar opens a panel beside the node, on the right, or on the left when the node is against the edge. Right-clicking the page gives you Clip… as well, with the form already picked from what you clicked: an image starts on Images with only that one checked, selected text on Selection, a link on a bookmark of that link, anywhere else on Article. While the panel is open the page shows what will end up in the clip, and the highlight goes away when you close the panel or leave the page.

The forms:

• Article: the article as the site shows it, with its fonts and images; menus and sidebars stay out. The rest of the page dims, and a label on the article counts its words and images.
• Zone: you pick parts of the page with the mouse. The block under the cursor gets a dashed outline and a click adds it, numbered. ↑ widens to the block around it, ↓ narrows back, Enter adds, Esc stops picking. The panel lists the zones in the order you picked them, and you can remove any of them. Zones keep the site’s look.
• Selection: the text you selected, with its images, looking as it does on the site. It only appears if some text was selected when you opened the panel, and in that case it’s already chosen.
• Full page: the whole page as the site shows it, with its fonts, plus a long screenshot.
• Screenshot: what you see of the page right now, so the page has to be on screen.
• Images: a grid of the images on the page, 64 px and up, where you check the ones you want.
• Bookmark: title, address and description of the page.

Below the forms you set the title, a note and tags (the panel suggests the tags you already use in that Folder). Where is the Folder the clip goes into: connect the node’s Page output to the From the web input of a Folder node, and if more than one is connected you pick from a menu. With none, Clip into a new Folder adds one next to the panel, already connected. The Folder has to point at a folder before you save.

Images in the largest version is on by default. For each image Warpstead looks for a bigger file than the one the page shows: the largest size listed in the page code, the link around a photo, the original behind a Wikipedia thumbnail, the size written in the image address. It downloads them with the page’s cookies, and an image gets the HD badge only if the file it saved really is bigger. The panel counts them as it goes, for example “12 of 15 found in high resolution”, and shows the estimated weight next to the button. With the switch off the images are saved as the page shows them, which is faster and smaller.

The button says what it saves: Save clip, Save 3 zones, Save 5 images. When it’s done, a notice in the node says which Folder it went to, with Open for the clip and Undo, which deletes the file you just saved, for the 10 seconds the notice stays up.

Each clip is a single .wsclip file named after its title, and Warpstead never overwrites one that exists: the new one becomes Title (2).wsclip. Inside it’s a ZIP archive (rename it to .zip and File Explorer opens it): clip.json with the address, site, author, dates, note and tags, content.html with the cleaned content, the images in images/ exactly as they were downloaded, preview.webp for the card, and capture.png for Full page and Screenshot. A clip keeps 300 images at most: if the page has more, the rest are left out and nothing tells you. Each image can weigh up to 50 MB and the whole clip up to 1 GB. When the images you picked go past 1 GB, the panel says so and Save stays off until you drop some or turn HD off; an image over 50 MB stops the save with an error you can copy.

The Clip node

Double-click a .wsclip in a Folder node, in either view, and it opens in a Clip node next to the Folder. Double-clicking it again takes you to the same node.

The node shows the source, author, publication and clip dates in Warpstead’s style, then the content. Article, Full page, Zone and Selection keep the look of the site, with its colours, fonts and layout, and don’t follow Warpstead’s light or dark theme. A page wider than the node shrinks to fit, and grows again when you widen the node. When the page has no recognisable article, or its text is under 100 characters, the Article is saved simplified, in Warpstead’s type and theme, and nothing tells you so. A Screenshot clip shows the picture; a Full page clip has a Page | Screenshot switch (Text | Screenshot when it was saved simplified); a Bookmark shows the description and the address. The note and the tags can be changed right there and go back into the file: the note when you leave the field, a tag when you press Enter. Links in the text don’t open anything. Original reopens the page in a new Web node, at the exact spot when the clip is a zone or a selection. The images sit in a row with their size: a click selects them, and you can drag one out of the node onto File Explorer or into another program.

The site’s fonts are downloaded into the .wsclip, up to 24 files and 16 MB. Some things don’t come along: backgrounds made from an image, SVG drawings written inside the page, icons the site draws with its stylesheet, form fields, and images that couldn’t be saved. A page over 15 MB, or one that can’t be read whole, is saved simplified, in Warpstead’s type and theme. A sidebar that stays put on the site scrolls with the page in the clip.

Export, in the node menu:

• Page as HTML + images: Title.html with a Title (images) folder beside it, and a Title (fonts) folder when the clip keeps the site’s look.
• Markdown + images: Title.md, with the title, source and dates in a YAML header, and its own Title (images) folder.
• PDF, when the clip has text. It keeps the site’s look, and a page wider than the sheet is scaled to fit its width.
• Image (PNG), when the clip has a screenshot: a PNG named like the .wsclip file, which gets a free name if one exists.
• Only the images, all of them or the ones you selected.

Show the file opens File Explorer on the .wsclip. A clip saved by a newer version of Warpstead opens read-only, and the node says so.

Clips in a Folder

The Folder’s path bar has a Files | Clips switch. Clips shows the .wsclip files of that folder as cards with the preview, type, title, site and date, note and tags, and the Folder remembers the view. The clip you saved last since starting Warpstead is marked New. The tags at the top filter the cards, Ctrl F searches title, note and text without caring about accents or capitals, and the order switches between Most recent and Title. A clip saved from a Web node, or deleted in File Explorer, shows up or disappears on its own. Cards drag like files: onto the canvas they open a Clip node, and they also go into another Folder, File Explorer or the desktop.

From Windows, double-click a .wsclip in File Explorer, on the desktop or in an email attachment: Warpstead starts, or comes to the front if it’s already open, and the clip opens in a Clip node in the middle of the view. If you select several clips and press Enter, they all open in the same Warpstead.

File

The File node holds any file that doesn’t have a node of its own: a Word document, a spreadsheet, an Illustrator drawing, a ZIP. It shows the thumbnail Windows makes for it, such as the first page of a document, or the file type’s icon when there isn’t one. Below it you see the type, the size and when the file last changed.

Double-click it, or press Open with at the bottom, and the file opens in its usual program, in an App node next to it. The button names the program before you press it. The folder icon at the top shows the file in File Explorer.

From the node menu the File node starts empty: drop a file on it or press Choose file…. If the file has a node of its own, like a photo or a PDF, it becomes that node.

If the file has been moved or deleted, the node tells you: Find it searches your disk for its name, Choose another file… points the node somewhere else. Shrunk below about 240 pixels wide, it turns into a desktop icon with just the name and size.

Desk tools

Small tools for the side of your work, in the node picker under Desk:

• Calculator: type a whole expression and see the result as you go, basic or scientific, with memory and history.
• Clock: analog or digital, 12 or 24 hours, more than one time zone.
• Calendar: a month, with short text events on the days.
• Timer from 1 to 45 minutes or a custom time: at zero it rings and flashes.
• Stopwatch with laps.
• Pomodoro: 25 minutes of work, 5 of rest, a long rest of 15 every four rounds. At the end of each phase it rings and prepares the next one, which you start.
• Converter for length, weight, temperature, area, volume, speed, data, time and angles.
• To-do: add items, tick them, clear the completed ones.
• Color: hex, RGB and HSL, with saved colors.
• Counter with a step you choose.
• System: CPU per core, memory, disks, network and GPU, refreshed every half second to five seconds.
• Workspace time: how long you’ve spent in this workspace today, yesterday and in total, day by day.
• Clipboard: everything you copied in this session, up to 200 items (text, links, images, files), with filters and search. Click an item to copy it again, or drag it out.