Q: What in digital terms is a QuickPad pad?
A: Each pad is simply a B/W image with your scribbles on it. The format is standard Franklin Image Binary 1 (fib1). The file extension is .pic. You can view and manipulate this image in PicDraw as well.

Q: How large is the image?
A: Small enough so that when it is converted to a Windows bitmap using PDAref's converter, it fits on a single legal or A4 sheet of paper when printed. In pixel terms, it is 588x666. Using a fixed size allows the program to easily check if an image is in QPad format, so only "real" qpads are listed in the file dialog. The image must be mono color and have the required size. Using a B/W image results in the smallest file size.

Q: What do you see on the screen in QPad?
A: You see a part of the whole image, zoomed to 1:1. The part you see is exactly one ninth, 196x222 pixels. (That is what you get when you take the 200x240 screen size and subtract the borders and title bar.) Each of these 9 parts corresponds to a page, 9 pages total.

Q: How do I get to see the other 8 parts of this image?
A: Use page up/down (jogwheel, arrows).

Q: How are the 9 parts or "pages" arranged on the greater 588x666 image?
A: You have a choice, set in preferences. If you choose side by side in 3 rows, the pages are arranged like this:
123
456
789

If you choose 3 columns, the arrangement looks like this:
147
258
369

These numbers correspond to the page numbers shown in the top left of the screen in QPad.

When you open a fresh pad, it always shows page 1. Paging down will show page 2, and so on. The actual part of the greater image that is shown depends on the preference. The arrangement of pages has no visible impact inside QPad itself.

Q: Why is there a choice when it has no visible impact in QPad?
A: If you convert the pad to Windows bitmap format in order to print out a hardcopy of your notes, the printout will have the QPad pages arranged in the order you choose in prefs.

Usually when you make a lot of notes, you will start on page 1, then go on to page 2 and so on until all 9 pages are full. If you print these notes in column mode, they will be arranged in 3 columns like newsprint, making it easier (in my opinion only) to take in the whole instead of going accross in a 3x3 grid of 9 small pages.

Q: OK, so I changed my pref from row format to column format, and now the page order of the notes I made yesteday is all screwed up. What the heck is going on?
A: Changing the format in an existing pad will only change the order in which the 9 parts of the greater image is shown. It does not move the actual image parts around as well. So what you are seeing is the page 4 info is now presented as page 2, page 7 as page 3 and so on. Currently there is no way around this. To avoid such confusion, don't change your page layout preference too often. I keep mine in column mode. That way my older pads always make sense.