|
 Microsoft Office OneNote is a software package for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration. While OneNote is most commonly used on laptops or desktop PCs, it has additional features for use on pen-enabled Tablet PCs, in environments where pen, audio or video notes are more appropriate than an intensive use of keyboard.
OneNote's interface is an electronic version of the familiar tabbed ring binder which can be used directly for making notes, but also to gather material obtained from other applications. OneNote notebooks are designed for collecting, organizing and sharing possibly unpolished materials, typically for projects, while word processors and wikis are usually targeted at publishing in some way. The difference shows in certain features and characteristics (e.g. pages can be arbitrarily large; bitmap images can be pasted in without quality loss); there is no support for enforcing a uniform page layout or structure). Pages can be moved inside the binder, annotated with a stylus, word-processing or drawing tools. Users may add embedded multimedia recordings and web links.
OneNote's file format (.one) is proprietary. The published API has resulted in a small number of extensions being written.
One of OneNote's innovations is the integration of search features and indexing into a free-form graphics and audio repository. Images (e.g., screen captures, embedded document scans, or photographs) can be searched for embedded text content. Electronic ink annotations can also be searched as text. Audio recordings can also be searched phonetically by giving a text key, and can be replayed concurrently with the notes taken during the recording.
Its multi-user capability allows offline editing and later synchronization and merging at the paragraph level. This makes it a tool for workgroups that collaborate on research whose members are not always online. OneNote is designed as a collaborative tool and allows more than one person to work on the same page at the same time, making it a shared whiteboard tool as well.
OneNote was originally marketed by Microsoft as a companion to Tablet PCs, and it has support for pen interfaces as noted above. However, many people have recognized its use as a general note-taking platform, and it is widely used in education by both students and teachers. |