Dan Bricklin's® Note Taker HD App (a Software Garden® product) is an app for the Apple iPad.

You can use Note Taker HD to take notes, sketch diagrams, quickly and easily jot down names, phone numbers, to-do items, directions, and more. Pages are flexibly organized by date/time last modified, tags, favorites, and more, with thumbnail images of part of each page to help you find them later. Pages may be grouped together as multiple "sheets". You can also email one or more pages as a single PDF file.

VGA output is supported with zoom and pan. Other features include an optional wrist guard to avoid inadvertent touches, custom page backgrounds from images or PDF pages, layout variations better suited to some left-handed users, and extensive built-in help.

Note Taker HD lets you create pages by writing on the screen with your finger. You can either write directly on the page for large drawings, or have the "ink" you write shrunk down. You can write in large letters on the screen rather than trying to make tiny motions like a pencil. Note Taker HD automatically shrinks your writing so you can fit a lot of text on a page. You just keep writing and Note Taker HD automatically adds new writing next to the old. To quickly correct mistakes, it has a multi-level undo button as well as an eraser -- just drag your finger over the page to erase the "ink" under it. You can read the reduced-size ink as if you had written those letters with a very fine pen.

You can zoom in on a page when viewing using the pinch gesture.

This is not the same product as "Note Taker" for the iPhone/iPod touch, though it started out based on that product. It is a very major revision specifically for the iPad.

Dan Bricklin's Note Taker HD is available on the Apple App Store for only $4.99 in the USA. Search for "Note Taker".

Here is a video of a demo:

This is from the Note Taker HD YouTube Channel.

Here are some screenshots:

Note Taker HD can email pages rendered as PDF files, with one or more pages per file. Here is such a file with the page similar to that shown above: Sample of Remarks at Gettysburg.

Our support email address for Dan Bricklin's Note Taker HD is: support@softwaregarden.com. Support videos are on the Note Taker HD YouTube Channel.

As of August 27, 2010:

Version 4.0

• Some people are reporting instances when adding an image from the iPad Photos on the Background Image List while changing a background's image crashes the app. (This is on the the Background Images List, not on the Background list that includes Narrow Lined, etc.)
  
  This seems to be when you try to "change" the background's image and no backgrounds have been "created" and added to the list to change. (You create a background with the "-- Add New Item --" row in the list.) That is, the selected item is the "-- Add New Item --" row. The app is not catching this as a not-allowed case (changing the attributes of a non-existent item), so make sure that you have an actual, created Background Image item selected in the list before pressing "Change" or making other changes to the item.
  
  
• There are cases where the ink is not echoed to the VGA screen in Edit 1. For now, try using Edit 2 or making sure that the App Setting "VGA Adapter Echoing and Performance" is set to "Echo as you write". (The performance issues are less with version 4.0 than previous versions.)
  
  
• The Transcribe New Contact tab's Save operation does not give you a "Done" button to save the contact in the Contacts database. Instead, if possible create the contact manually with just the name using the iPad Contacts app, and then go back to the Note Taker HD Transcribe tool and use the Contacts tab to add to the existing contact. The values in other fields that you already filled in should still be there from the original attempt.
  
  
• There are times when the Transcribe tab's Save operation does not save changes. This happens when you are using an external keyboard (not the pop-up, on-screen one). The internal "page modified" indication is not being set to let the app know to save the new text edits when you go away from that sheet or page. A work-around is to do the following: After Saving the Transcribe edit, do anything that "changes" the state of that page, such as zooming or panning, writing, or, in Edit 1, tapping the "fit to width" or "fit to height" button, or, in Edit 2, moving the Detail Area. That will set the "page modified" indication and the page will be written out along with the text edits.
  
  Note: While such changes cause the page to be saved, the "Last Modified" date/time is only set by changes such as writing or erasing. Many other changes, like changing the zoom, are not considered "modifications."
  
  

Version 3.0

• No reported problems.

Version 2.1

• Auto-Advance during cursive writing issues: Automatic Advance does not always move over the correct amount when you are writing an overlapped stroke that is not considered something like a dotted "i" or crossed "t". This occurs when the Detail Area has been set to a size other than the smaller preset size. It should not be as much of an issue if you use printed characters.
  
  This was fixed in the 3.0 release.
  
  
• No other reported problems. (2.1 is the first released version. It was chosen to be higher than the last Note Taker for the iPhone/iPod touch one.)

• Can I use a stylus? Yes, and many people prefer using a stylus with notetaking programs like Note Taker HD. Note, though, that the iPad screen uses a technology that only works with a special type of stylus. This is usually not the sharp-pointed type that you might find on desktop tablets, Tablet PCs, or many older pocket organizers, but rather one that has a wider end that simulates the electrical characteristics of a finger. Even though the tip is wide, the iPad software only tells programs like Note Taker HD about a single point of contact for the tip so it acts like a pointed pen and small finger motions result in small variations in the "ink" position.
  
  The Help includes information about one such device, the Pogo Sketch stylus, which was used for some of the sample pages in the screenshots.
  
  
• How do I open a multi-sheet page for edit on the sheet last edited? Instead of double tapping on the thumbnail or preview in the list of pages (which opens to the currently shown sheet -- something you'd logically expect), use the "Edit" or "Preview" buttons below the preview display. The multi-sheet page will then open on the last sheet displayed when that page was last edited.
  
  Alternatively, you can quickly get to any sheet in a multi-sheet page by Viewing it (use the View button) and making sure that the List of sheets is showing (press the "List" button near the upper-right of the screen). Double-tap on a sheet's thumbnail to edit it. You can also reorder sheets (except the first) using this list.
  
  
• I have a page with a PDF background but it doesn't print or prints with funny characters. There is an App Setting for email called "Include Background (Lines and Images) in PDF Output". In some older versions of the app this was set to a default of "No". Set it to "Yes" to include the backgrounds.
  
  Note that background images can only be included in PDF output. When emailing as an image (from the Editing Tools) only the ink itself is output. Image output usually takes up a larger number of bytes and is not of as high quality as PDF output, but is required for some purposes such as character recognition by other products.
  
  Normally, PDF backrounds are included in the PDF email as PDF data for maximum quality (and often smallest size). There are cases, though, where the fonts in the original PDF do not export correctly, in which case you can specify that background output for that particular background be a bitmap image of the PDF instead of the PDF data. This is set on the Background Image List where the background image is defined.
  
  
• I switched pen colors and I seem to be stuck on gray instead of going back to black. Is this a bug? No. The pen color on the color chooser that looks like black is indeed black. However, in Edit 2, all colors are displayed a little lighter in the bottom Close-Up View. (Technically, they have an alpha value less than 1.0.) I found the lighter color less jarring than a solid one so left in this effect that was first introduced in the iPhone Note Taker app. The line actually being drawn in the Page View, though, is indeed the color you chose, in this case black.
  
  
• What about typed text? Copy/Paste/Move? Folders? An Erase button near the Adance button? Etc., Etc.? People are constantly requesting features such as these. They are all, almost without exception, useful features that many of us would like. They have been going on a "wish list" and slowly but surely I'm trying to implement a lot of them. It is going to take a long time, but I hope you are happy with each new feature as it's added.
  
  Thanks for all of the support and positive feedback, and for recommending Note Taker HD to your friends. It helps keep things going.