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Notes

Notes hold text on a MultiTaction Canvus canvas. You can colour them, format them with Markdown, choose a font and draw on them.

Create a note

  1. Open the finger menu on the canvas where you want the note.
  2. Tap New note.
  3. Tap a colour. The colours come from the canvas note palette.

The note appears where you opened the menu.

Edit the text

Tap the note and type. On a touch wall the on-screen keyboard opens. Your administrator can add predefined text that you insert from the keyboard. See Predefined text snippets.

Text wraps at the width of the note. Resize the note with its resize handle, or scale it with two fingers.

Note colours

To change the colour of a note:

  1. Tap the note to activate it.
  2. In the sidebar, tap more, then tap the colour button.
  3. Pick a colour from the palette, or open the colour picker for any colour. Note colours can be partly transparent.

The text colour follows the note colour: Canvus uses black text on light notes and white text on dark notes.

The note palette belongs to the canvas, so everyone working on it sees the same colours. In the colour picker you can add, change, delete and reorder the palette colours. To return a canvas to its default colours, see Colour palettes.

Draw on a note

Tap the pen button in the note's sidebar, then draw. Until you choose an ink colour for the note, the pen uses a colour that contrasts with the note. See Pens and ink.

Text options

From Canvus 26.10.1, the note sidebar has a Text options button. It opens a panel with three controls:

  • Markdown turns Markdown mode on or off for this note.
  • Font sets the font for the whole note.
  • Insert emoji opens an emoji picker and inserts the emoji at the text cursor.

The Markdown setting and the font are saved with the note, so everyone sees the same result. Text options appears only when the server that hosts the canvas is version 26.10.1 or later. Older clients show the raw text in the default font.

Markdown mode

In Markdown mode the note shows formatted text. Tap the note to edit the raw text. When you finish editing, the note shows the formatted view again. Canvus never changes the stored text.

Markdown mode supports:

  • headings, bold, italic and strikethrough (~~text~~);
  • bulleted, numbered and task lists (- [ ] and - [x]);
  • tables, code, block quotes, horizontal rules and links;
  • GitHub alerts: > [!NOTE], > [!TIP], > [!IMPORTANT], > [!WARNING] and > [!CAUTION], shown with a coloured title and bar;
  • emoji shortcodes such as :smile:.

A marker you have not closed yet, such as **bold, shows as if it were closed.

Tapping an http or https link opens it in a web browser on the canvas. Other links show as plain text.

In Markdown mode the note keeps its size. Text that does not fit runs past the bottom edge, so resize the note to show it all.

A plain note, without Markdown mode, grows taller when its text no longer fits, including text changed on another site or through the REST API. It does not shrink or get wider by itself; resize it with the handle.

Fonts

Canvus bundles 16 fonts for notes. The list shows each font in its own typeface.

Style Fonts
Sans serif Signika (default), Atkinson Hyperlegible, Josefin Sans
Display Barlow Condensed, Bebas Neue
Serif and slab Merriweather, EB Garamond, Playfair Display, Arvo
Monospace Roboto Mono
Handwriting and script Caveat, Kalam, Permanent Marker, Satisfy, Great Vibes
Casual Comic Neue

Code in Markdown mode always uses Roboto Mono.

View-only canvases

On a canvas you can only view, the colour and Text options buttons are disabled.