Writing, Editing, and Formatting with QED
QED accepts input from Grafitti, the on-screen keyboard, or external keyboards like the GoType! or Newton. CorrectHack (a Hackmaster extension that expands user-defined abbreviations, much as the AutoCorrect feature in Word does) also works with QED.

Once you've finished your writing and editing and wish to work with your file on your PC, all you need to do is make sure that Backup is checked in the Options dialog box and then HotSync to your desktop computer. When the HotSync is complete, you should find your file (named yourfile.pdb) in the Backup subfolder of your Pilot directory.

Unfortunately, there's another step before you can use your file. You'll need MakeDoc (which can be found at http://pc-28134.on.rogers.wave.ca) to convert your documents back to plain-text files.

MakeDoc is a DOS program and you'll need to use the following command line:

Once you've got a converted text file, you can do whatever you wish with it, such as open it in Word, apply formatting, and save it as a Word file.

Note: Here's a great incentive for registering QED. Registered users of QED are entitled to a copy of QEX, a Windows 95 utility that allows for easier conversion than that available with a DOS utility.

As I noted earlier, QED doesn't allow formatting, but there's a way around this, particularly if you work in Microsoft Word. Let's say you want certain words or characters to be in italic. When working in QED, you might enter such strings with a "plus" sign before and after (e.g., "I read it in the +New York Times+").

After you bring the converted-to-text file into Word, make sure you're at the top of the document, open the Replace dialog box, check Use Pattern Matching, and then enter "\+*\+" (without the quotes) in the Find What field. In the Replace With field, enter no text but select italic formatting. When you click on Replace all, Word will search for strings that appear between plus signs and apply italic formatting to them. Go back to the top of the document, unselect Use Pattern Matching, click on No Formatting, and replace all plus signs with nothing. If you're like me and use this method frequently, you'll want to record it as a macro and then make the macro available as a toolbar button, menu command, or keyboard shortcut. See Word's Help file for more information.

Drawbacks
The only real problem I have with QED concerns its method of saving. Like most Palm device applications, QED has no Save command. Once, while I was editing in QED, my Palm organizer crashed (for reasons unrelated to QED), and when I did a soft reset and returned to the program, I found that I had lost a substantial amount of my work. Apparently the only way to avoid having this happen is to exit the program and then return to it, thereby effecting a save. Unfortunately, with large documents this results in a "Wait... compressing" box, during the appearance of which you can't do much of anything (it's the equivalent of your Windows cursor's turning into an hourglass). Sometimes this box will appear on its own, such as when you use the slider bar to navigate through a similarly long document. And, apparently, the only way to avoid seeing this message at all is to work on uncompressed documents, but in doing so you sacrifice memory you might need for other things.