Sempere
Guide contents

Advanced

Text, equations, images, PDFs and video

Everything besides ink that a page can hold, how to add it, and the limits.

Pictures, text boxes, equations, PDFs, video clips and recordings are items on a page. Each is encrypted into the vault like your ink.

To move or resize an item, switch to Hand and tap it (on the Mac, click it). While you annotate on an iPhone or iPad, a tap on an item also selects it; a stroke that starts on an item still draws. A selected item shows handles and a bar beside it with Item Actions (its menu) and Delete Item. Holding a finger on the item, or a secondary click on the Mac, shows the same menu. Tap elsewhere or press Escape to let go. Drag the item, pull its handles, or use the menu: Copy, Duplicate, Rotate 90° Left and Right, Bring to Front, Delete, and for pictures Crop… and Replace Image. Arrow keys move a selected item by one point (ten with Shift), and the Delete key removes it (on an iPad with a keyboard, and on the Mac). The Mac’s Note menu has Duplicate Item (⌘D), Bring Item to Front and Delete Item.

New pictures, clips, equations and recording cards are placed below the items already on the page.

The Insert menu

Insert (in the note’s toolbar, or its ⋯ menu on the iPhone) has:

  • Photos and Videos… from your library, Take Photo… and Record Video… (iPhone and iPad), Paste, and Video File…;
  • Text Box;
  • Insert PDF Pages… (the label says where they go);
  • Equation….

You can also drag pictures, PDFs and video files onto a page, or paste them. On the Mac, File ▸ Insert Photo… (⌥⌘I) and Insert PDF Pages… do the same.

Text boxes

Tap Text in the toolbar, then tap the page where the box goes (⌥⌘6 on the Mac). The tool places one box and then returns to the tool you had. Tap a box to edit it; Scribble lets you handwrite into it with the Pencil.

  • The style bar sets the font (Sans Serif, Serif, Monospaced), size, color, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment (Start, Center, End) and direction (Automatic, Left to Right, Right to Left). Text boxes take any script, and :smile:-style emoji shortcodes work as in note titles.
  • Text boxes are Markdown: headings, lists, task lists, quotes, code and links, and math between $…$ (inline) or $$…$$ (display). The box shows the result and you edit the source.
  • A box holds up to 64 KB of text.

Equations

Insert ▸ Equation… opens New Equation. Type LaTeX in math mode, without dollar signs (\frac{a}{b}, x^{2}, \int_0^1 f(x)\,dx), choose Display or Inline, a size and a color, and watch the Preview. The equation is stored with its source and a typeset image, so exports and the web viewer show it without a typesetter. Its menu has Edit Equation…. An equation’s source is searchable.

Images

JPEG and PNG come in as they are; HEIC from Photos is converted to JPEG. By default, location and camera data are removed when a photo is added (Settings ▸ Writing ▸ Photos ▸ Remove Location and Camera Data). An image can be up to 100 megapixels.

PDFs: write on them

  • Import PDF… in the note list (File ▸ Import PDF as New Note…, ⇧⌘I, on the Mac) makes a new note with one page per PDF page.
  • Insert PDF Pages… adds a PDF’s pages to the note you are in. In a pageless note, the menu offers Switch to Pages and Insert PDF….
  • You can also open a PDF in Sempere from the Files app or the share sheet.

The PDF pages sit behind your ink, so you annotate them like paper. Their text is searchable. A password-protected PDF asks for its password once; it is stored without it. One PDF can be up to 1 GB and 2,000 pages per import.

Video

Add clips with Photos and Videos…, Video File… or Record Video…. A clip shows its first frame with Play Video. Clips are converted to MP4 when needed and lose their location data. One clip can be up to 1 GB; trim longer ones first.

Recordings

Recordings are items too: cards you can move on the page. See Recordings and transcription.

From the CLI

sempere attach image "Week 3" diagram.png --page 1 --at 72,200 --width 300
sempere attach pdf "Week 3" slides.pdf --pages 1-10
sempere attach text "Week 3" "Review chapter 4" --page 1 --at 72,72
sempere attach math "Week 3" --latex '\nabla \cdot E = \rho / \varepsilon_0'
sempere import pdf paper.pdf --title "Paper" --notebook Reading
sempere items list "Week 3"

The CLI stores an equation’s source (it does not typeset it unless you pass --render with a PDF). Images must be JPEG or PNG.