Faber Workspace

Opening Workspace

Workspace is part of Faber. It opens in a browser tab of its own, beside Faber's page, and shows the project you are in.

• Workspace, under the Files header on Faber's page, opens the tab for the project.
• Each tool's tab has its own title, such as Faber PDF or Faber Sheets.
• A file's preview has a button for its editor: Edit in Faber Draw, Edit in Faber PDF, Edit in Faber Images, Open in Faber Slides for a PowerPoint deck, or Edit in Faber Workspace for a document, a workbook or a text file. The editor opens in Faber's pane; Open in new tab moves it to the tab, and Faber remembers which you prefer.
• The bar at the top of the tab switches tools: Draw, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Text, Images, PDF. A file opens in its own tool whichever one is showing.
• Ctrl+K is Go to file: type part of a name, press Enter.
• Each side panel closes to a narrow strip and opens again with a click. Ctrl+\ hides them all and brings the same ones back.

On your phone

On a phone Workspace is the assistant with the job's files behind it. You read the files there, and the assistant makes the changes.

The phone is paired with Faber first: see Faber on your phone. Then, in Faber on the phone, Workspace under the Files header opens the assistant for that job.

• One pane at a time, under three buttons: Assistant, File, Files. A file opened by asking, or tapped in Files, comes up by itself.
• Files are for reading. One finger scrolls. Two fingers zoom the file itself, a PDF page, a Word document, a workbook, a slide, a drawing, a picture or a text file, about the point between your fingers.
• Changes are made by asking. The answer shows what changed, with Undo and View; Save appears in the bar while something is not saved. Drawings and pictures are view-only on a phone.
• A PDF shows one page at a time, with buttons for the page before and the next. A PowerPoint deck shows one slide at a time, fitted to the screen, with ‹ and › and its speaker notes under it; Export PDF is in the three dots.
• The three dots have Undo, Faber (the chat), Phone check and Desktop layout, the editors as on a computer, for a tablet; and Reload when Faber is an app on the Home Screen, which has no reload of its own.

On the Home Screen

• On the computer, open Remote and pick the Tailscale HTTPS address. Under the code, choose where it lands: Faber's chat or Workspace's assistant. Scan it.
• Android, in Chrome: the menu (three dots), then Add to Home screen. The icon opens Faber full screen, on the assistant, on the job you used last.
• iPhone, in Safari: Share, then Add to Home Screen. The first time the icon is opened it asks for a pairing code: on the computer, Pairing code in the same Remote box gives it. An iPhone keeps the app apart from Safari, so the scan does not sign the app in.
• A phone that uses Faber stays signed in. One left unused for 30 days scans the code again, or types a pairing code.

Voice on an iPhone

• Read aloud and Answers aloud work in Safari and in the app on the Home Screen.
• Speak and Hands-free work in Safari, with Siri & Dictation turned on in the iPhone's Settings. Apple gives an app on the Home Screen no speech recognition: there Speak says so, and the microphone key on the iPhone's keyboard puts your words in the box.

The file list

The left side of the tab is the project's folder, the same one Faber's own page shows, with the same folders open and the same order. Its rows look like Faber's own tree: a picture of each file's kind (a PDF, a sheet, a picture, words, settings), the name, and the day it was last changed. The list and the file each scroll on their own, so opening a file deep in a long job never moves the page.

• Tree or Recent (the newest files first). Date or Alph for each folder; click again to turn the order round. Names sort the way people read them: "Rev 9" comes before "Rev 10".
• A search box that takes words in any order, and a filter for All files or only the kind the tool in front opens.
• The project's name at the top of the list, with its Change button, picks another project without going back to Faber's page. The whole tab goes there: the file that was open is closed (you are asked first if it has changes that are not saved), and the assistant is that project's.
• Drag the list's edge to make it wider. Long names are cut in the middle, so the revision at the end stays in view. A list 560 pixels wide or more shows the hour beside each date; point at a row to see its whole date, size and folder.

New, rename, move, delete

• Right-click a row, or use its three dots. The + at the top and a folder's menu make a New text file, a New workbook or a New folder. F2 renames; Delete deletes.
• Move a file or a folder by dragging it onto another folder, onto a file in that folder, or onto the project's name for the top of the project. The folder it would go in lights up, and a closed folder you hold it over opens after a moment. Workspace asks before it moves anything: "Move Quote.xlsx from Bids to Sent?" A folder cannot go into itself, and nothing is moved over a file or folder of the same name.
• Move to... in a row's menu does the same with a list of the project's folders to pick from. It is the way to move on a phone.
• What you delete is kept for 30 days. The list says so and offers Undo; Deleted files lists everything kept, with Put back and Remove. A file put back never writes over one that is there now.
• The file you have open is not deleted: open another first. It is renamed or moved only when nothing in it is unsaved, and stays open in its new place.

Save as

Every editor has Save as: Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDF, Images, Text and Draw. It opens the project's folders, starting at the one the file is in, with the name ready to type over. The file is written as a new file there with your changes, never over a file that is there; the file you opened is left as it was, and the editor carries on in the new one. A folder outside the project cannot be picked.

Not in the list yet: copying files, moving several at once, moving to another project, and making a new Word document, PDF or picture.

The assistant

A panel on the right of the tab that answers from the file you have open, and makes small changes in it for you.

• Ask about the open file. It reads the PDF, Word document, workbook, PowerPoint deck or text file as it was last saved, a deck's speaker notes included. Facts in an answer carry references such as p. 4, Estimate!B12 or slide 4, and each is a button that takes you there. Ask "what does the kickoff deck say about badging?" and it finds the deck by its name.
• + Add a file lets it read up to four more files with the open one. Each answer says which files it came from.
• It finds files by name. Ask "what does the proposal say about controls" and it reads the proposal, taking the highest revision and telling you which ones it passed over. "Open the latest proposal" opens it.
• It searches inside the whole job. Ask "what did we carry for the VAV boxes?" and it finds the answer in whichever file holds it, whatever the file is called and whether or not a file is open. The file is listed under the answer as found by searching the job, and the reference opens it at the place. When two files disagree it goes by the newer one and says so. See Searching the job.
• It knows the job. The project's open items, decisions and lessons are given to it with your question.
• It changes the open file when you ask, as one step you can undo, and nothing is saved until you save. View, beside Undo, goes to the place that changed:
  • a workbook: cells, rows and columns, formats, and how it prints;
  • a text file: find and replace;
  • a Word document: the words inside a paragraph, whole paragraphs added and taken out, and table rows added and taken out;
  • a PDF: the words on a page.
• It keeps notes for the job. Say "remember that the owner wants the valves by Friday", "note that ...", "add to the job notes: ..." or "remind me to ...". The note is saved with the job's decisions and open items, where Faber's chat and the job record have it, and is shown whole under the answer with Undo. Only your own words make a note: nothing written in a file can.
• Send to Faber, under an answer that drafted a request, starts the work: Faber's builder runs the request in that project, with no Faber page open anywhere, so it works from a phone. Under the answer a line says Faber is working on it, with the latest thing it said and Stop. When Faber is done a message appears in the assistant by itself, with Faber's summary and the files it made or changed as buttons that open them. The work runs in the project's "Workspace assistant" chat in Faber, where you can read all of it. Your press is the only thing that starts it. Copy copies the answer.
• Answer Faber from the assistant. When Faber stops to ask you to decide something, its options are buttons under its message, the one it recommends marked. When it asks a question while it works, the question is drawn under "Faber is working on it" for as long as the assistant is on your screen; with nobody looking, Faber chooses for itself after half a minute and says what it assumed.
• The open file follows. When Faber changes the file you have open, the editor loads it again by itself. If you have changes that are not saved, nothing is loaded over them, and a line says how to keep yours.
• Told by voice. With Answers aloud ticked or hands-free on, what Faber hands back is read out. In hands-free, saying "send it" presses Send to Faber under the last answer.
• Told by a notification. Notify me, beside Answers aloud, has this device tell you when Faber hands work back or stops to ask, with the app closed: "Faber finished" and the job's name. A tap on it opens the assistant on that job. Turn it on once on each device, opened by Faber's secure address (https://….ts.net); on an iPhone, in the app on the Home Screen (iOS 16.4 or later). What goes through the phone maker's notification service is a ping with no words in it: the words come from Faber itself. Send a test checks it.
• Files by their number. Ask for a document by its number ("open AG052126A", "what does RFP 10138 say about insurance") and the file whose name holds it is used. A file named with an Aberdeen proposal number counts as a proposal, so "open the latest proposal" finds it even when its name never says "proposal". The job search also knows what every file is called, so a scan or a drawing that matches your words is offered under the answer to open.
• What changed between two revisions of a workbook. With an estimate open, ask "what changed from Rev 2?" or "compare this to the last one". Faber lines the two up by what they hold, so rows you added are not counted as changes, and the answer gives the totals first and what moved them, then each change as a button to its cell in either workbook. A line under the answer says which two were compared. An old .xls revision is converted by Excel first.
• Tracked changes are read as changes. In a Word document someone marked up, such as the GC's copy of a subcontract, the assistant sees what was struck and what was put in, by whom and when, and the comments with their replies. Ask "what did the GC change?" or "what is the retention?" and it says which words are their proposal, not yet accepted. The job search finds both the old words and the proposed ones.
• Two Word documents compared, and a redline. With our subcontract open and the GC's copy added, ask "what did the GC change?"; or ask "redline Rev 3 against Rev 2" with either open, or neither. Faber compares the two word by word before it answers, and lists every change under the answer, each a button into the document it is in. Which was taken as the older is said: the one your words name after "against", "from" or "since", else the lower Rev, the earlier date in the name, or the file saved first. Make the redline writes a third Word file beside the newer one, such as "Proposal Rev 3 (redline against Rev 2).docx", with every word put in and taken out a tracked change; asking for a redline in your words writes it at once. Neither document is changed, and the redline is checked to read as each of them before it is written. The redline opens in Faber Docs with its red lines drawn; Open in Word beside it on the computer opens it in Word.
• The job's record. When a document is found by its number and the job's AG-JOB.md names it without its file, the answer offers Record it in the job's record: a request for Faber to record the file there, with the AG Engineering plugin's own command. The assistant never writes the record itself.
• One conversation for the whole project, which follows you from file to file.

By voice

• Speak, beside Ask: press it, say the question, press again. Or hold Alt in the box and talk. What is heard goes into the box; it is sent when you press Enter, never by itself.
• Read aloud, under an answer, reads it to you. Answers aloud reads each new answer as it comes.
• What is read is shorter than what is written. A long list is read by its first lines, then "and nine more on the screen"; a table is not read; a long answer stops at the end of a sentence. The screen keeps every word.
• Hands-free, beside Speak, is a conversation without touching the screen. It listens; when you stop talking for two and a half seconds it asks what it heard, which is shown as any question is; it reads the answer; then it listens again. A note it saved or a change it made is read back whole. Say undo by itself to take the last one back. Stop ends it, and so do a minute of silence and leaving the page. It is off each time a page opens, so turn it on again after a file opens.
• All of it uses the browser's own speech services. Chrome and Edge can listen; every browser can read aloud.

Searching the job

• Faber reads the job's files once, in the background, the first time you open the assistant on a job or ask it something, and keeps what they say on your computer, in Faber's own folder. Nothing is written into the job's folder. Files that change are read again.
• One line at the top of the panel says where it stands: "Job search: ready, 3,812 files read, 14 not read" once the job has been read. Press it for what was not read and why, and for Turn off, which stops the search of that job until you turn it on again, and Forget, which deletes what was read.
• What is read: PDFs, Word documents, workbooks (.xlsx, .xlsm, .csv), PowerPoint decks (.pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, their speaker notes too, and only their words: a deck full of photos or video is read in a moment) and plain text (.txt, .md, .log).
• Old .xls workbooks are read too, when Excel is on the computer. Excel converts them in the background, hidden, a few at a time, after everything else in the job has been read; the workbooks themselves are never changed, and an Excel window you have open is left alone. One that Excel will not open (a password, a damaged file) is listed as not read.
• What is not: scans, drawings and pictures; old .ppt decks; Google Docs and Sheets, which are links to the web; and any file whose name says it holds passwords or keys.
• A job on Google Drive is not read until you say so. Drive does not tell Faber which files are on your computer, and reading one that is not makes Drive download it. The panel says how many files and how much that would be, with one button, Read this job. Your yes is kept for that job.
• While a job is still being read, an answer says it may have missed files.

What it does not do

• It does not read a drawing or a picture. In Draw and Images the panel still opens files, answers about documents by name and drafts requests.
• It does not read a scan: words that are only a picture of words.
• In a Word document it does not change the header and footer, pictures or text boxes. Faber's main chat changes a header's and a footer's words: see Work in your files from chat.
• It will not answer about a file whose name says it holds passwords or keys.

Faber Sheets

A spreadsheet that works like Excel, on the Excel file itself: .xlsx and .xlsm, old .xls, and .csv.

• Formulas are worked out as you type, with about 300 of Excel's functions and a list of them while you type one. Build a formula by clicking cells.
• Checked against Excel. A workbook Excel saved last is checked as it opens: every formula Faber works out is held to the value Excel saved. The line at the bottom says "Checked against Excel: 412 match". Where Faber works a formula out differently, the bar over the grid names the cell as a button, the cell shows Excel's value with a small mark in its corner, and the assistant and Faber's builder are given Excel's value too, never Faber's. Such a cell does not follow your edits until Excel works the workbook out again. A workbook Faber saved last says it was not checked.
• Everyday editing: fill, cut, copy and paste, rows and columns added and removed with every formula following, find and replace, undo.
• Formats: fonts, colours, borders, alignment, wrap, merge, number formats, currency, percent, decimals, Freeze.
• Data: sort by one column or several, Filter with a button in each heading, Conditional formats (rules, data bars, colour scales), and Validation lists.
• On the grid: a Picture, and a Chart made from the cells you selected.
• Sheets: add, rename, delete, move, hide.
• Printing: the Page menu sets the print area, page breaks, repeated rows, orientation, margins and scaling. Print shows the pages as Excel would print them, with Save as PDF.

Saving

• The file is patched, not rebuilt. What you did not change, including pictures, charts, macros and print setup, is copied over exactly. The save is read back and compared before it replaces the file, and the file before is kept as .bak.
• Save as writes an Excel workbook, or the sheet in front as a .csv, under the name and in the folder you pick. A new workbook is then the one open; after a .csv you stay in the workbook.
• An old .xls is never written over: Save writes an .xlsx beside it.
• A .csv is saved as the text it is. Every field you did not change is written back exactly as the file had it; zeros in front and long numbers are kept as written. A .csv is its one sheet, so that sheet cannot be deleted.

Limits

• No pivot tables, no Excel tables as such, no formulas that spill into neighbouring cells. Comments are kept and not shown.
• Charts: no combination charts, second axes or trendlines are made here. Ones a workbook has are kept.
• Icon sets are kept and not drawn.
• Printing, Save as PDF and opening an old .xls need Excel or LibreOffice on the computer. Without either, Faber says so.
• A workbook that is open in Excel cannot be saved from here until Excel lets it go.

Faber Docs

Edit a Word document and write the changes back into the original .docx, with its letterhead, tables and pictures where Word has them.

• The document is shown as sheets of paper, with its header and footer on each.
• Characters: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, font, size, colour, highlight, clear formatting.
• Paragraphs: style, alignment, bullets, numbers, indent, line spacing. Table cells can be edited.
• Undo and redo, find and replace, Print, and Export PDF.
• Tracked changes are drawn as Word draws them: words put in underlined and words taken out struck through where they stood, in each author's colour, a moved paragraph in green, a small ¶ where a paragraph break was put in or taken out, and a bar in the margin beside every changed paragraph or row (hover a thin bar for a change of formatting: what changed and who changed it). The header and footer show theirs too. Show changes switches between the document with its changes, as if all were accepted, and as the original (nothing can be typed there). Review lists every change with who and when; each line is a button to it. Accept or reject them in Word for now.
• Comments stand beside the page against the words they are on, with their replies; resolved ones are dimmed, and Resolved hides them. On a phone the changes and comments are listed under the page.
• A save never undoes someone's tracked change: a paragraph that holds one is not joined to another, split inside a change or deleted, and a paragraph whose paragraph mark was struck is not typed into. The page says so as you try, and Save refuses the same. Typing beside a change, or inside someone's inserted words, is saved and the change kept.
• A note above the page says what the file holds, such as tracked changes, comments or footnotes, and what is not shown here: tracked changes in footnotes, text boxes and other headers and footers are counted, not drawn.

Saving

• Every edit, or none. The save is written beside the file, read back, and compared with the editor in both words and look. A paragraph you did not touch must look as it did. Only then does it replace the file, and the file before is kept as .bak.
• Save as writes your changes into a new .docx under the name and in the folder you pick, with the same checks, and carries on in it; the document you opened is left as it was.
• Export PDF saves first, then has Word make the PDF from the saved file (LibreOffice if Word is not there), so the PDF is the document and not a picture of the editor.

Limits

• Headers, footers and text boxes are shown and not edited here.
• Table rows and columns cannot be added or removed; pictures cannot be put in, moved or resized. Pasted text comes in plain.
• No new document, page setup, spelling or word count.
• A page ends at a whole paragraph, so a page break can fall a little differently from Word's.
• Export PDF needs Word or LibreOffice.

Faber Slides

A PowerPoint deck as PowerPoint shows it, and its words changed in the deck itself: .pptx, .pptm and .ppsx.

• Faber's preview of a deck lists its slides by number and title under their sections, a hidden slide marked, with Open in Faber Slides.
• The slides down the left as small pictures, a hidden one faded and marked. The slide large in the middle, with its background, what its master puts on every slide, its words in the deck's own fonts, sizes and colours, pictures, tables, shapes, charts and SmartArt. The speaker notes under it.
• Page Up, Page Down, the arrow keys and the wheel go from slide to slide; Ctrl and the wheel zoom; Fit puts the whole slide in the window.
• A line over the slide says what is not shown as PowerPoint shows it: a font this computer lacks and what stands in for it, or a chart of a kind Faber does not draw. The Aptos fonts of a new Office deck are Office's own, kept from every browser, so Calibri stands in and a line can break at another word.
• Export PDF has PowerPoint make the PDF from the deck as it is saved, hidden slides left out, and writes it beside the deck. It asks the name first, and asks again before it replaces a PDF. A PowerPoint you have open is left as it is.
• Type in it. Double-click a title, a bullet, a text box, a table cell or the speaker notes, and type. Each word keeps its look, and Enter starts a paragraph like the one it is in. An empty placeholder shows its prompt faintly, and what you type there takes its look. Undo and Redo; a refresh brings back what you have not saved.
• Words fit their box as PowerPoint fits them. A box set to shrink its words, or to grow with them, is fitted again as you type, and saved that way.
• Slides. In the strip: New slide (a menu of the deck's own layouts, each drawn), Duplicate, Delete, Hide or Show, and drag a slide to move it; Ctrl+M makes a new slide and Ctrl+D duplicates the one picked. Each has Undo. A copy gets its own notes and charts; a deleted slide takes with it what only it used. A link on another slide to a deleted slide is taken off its words, and Save says on which slide. A slide that a slide zoom, or a link on a shape or picture, points at cannot be deleted: Delete says why. A moved slide joins the section it lands in.
• The assistant reads the deck and its notes; slide 4 in an answer is a button to that slide. Ask it "change the date on slide 3 to March 10", or "hide the pricing slide and move contacts to the end", and it makes the change in the open deck as one step, with Undo and View; nothing is saved until you save. On a phone, Save appears in the bar.

Saving

• Only what you changed is written. Everything else in the deck, its animations, video, macros and whatever Faber does not know, is copied over exactly. The saved deck is read back and compared before it replaces the file, and the deck as it was is kept as .bak.
• Save as writes a new deck under the name and in the folder you pick, and carries on in it.
• Save will not write over a deck that was changed on disk since you opened it, or one PowerPoint has open: close it there first.

Limits

• Not changed here yet: the boxes and pictures (moving, resizing, replacing), and the formatting of words. A new slide's footer, date and number are taken from the slide it is made after. The words of a box an animation builds paragraph by paragraph change, but a paragraph cannot be added or taken out there.
• Animations and transitions are kept and not played; there is no slide show.
• Glow, bevel, 3-D and bent WordArt are drawn plainly.
• An old .ppt is not opened: open it in PowerPoint and use Save As, PowerPoint Presentation. A deck locked with a password is not opened either.
• Export PDF needs PowerPoint on the computer. Without it, Faber says so.

Faber PDF

Change what is on a page, mark it up, measure it to scale, and put pages together and take them apart.

• Read through it with the wheel. The wheel scrolls the page, and turned on past the bottom it goes to the next page (past the top, to the one before). Ctrl and the wheel zooms at the pointer. Page Down, Page Up and the thumbnails work too.
• Change the words. Double-click a line and retype it, in the file's own font where the file has the letters. Several lines are retyped as one paragraph. Find has Replace and Replace all.
• Move and remove the lines, pictures and shapes a page already has. Deleted means gone: it is not left hidden inside the file.
• Add: Text, Callout, Line, Arrow, Polyline, Polygon, Rectangle, Ellipse, Cloud, Pen, Highlight, Stamp, Picture.
• Markups other programs understand. What you draw is saved as real PDF markups that Bluebeam and Acrobat can edit, and theirs can be picked, moved and deleted here. Flatten markups, when you save, draws them into the pages.
• The markups list: every markup with its page, kind, words, author, date and status. Sort it, filter it, reply, set a status, and save the list as a CSV or a PDF table.
• Stamps of words or of a picture, from a stamp library of your own.
• Measure to scale: set a page's scale or calibrate off a known length, then Length, Polylength, Area and Count, with totals in the list.
• Pages: delete, turn, reorder, insert a blank page or the pages of another PDF, combine, extract, split.

Saving

• Nothing is written until you save. Save as writes a new PDF under the name and in the folder you pick (it starts as name (edited) beside the PDF) and carries on in it; Ctrl+S writes that copy beside the PDF at once. Save writes over it after asking.
• Print (or Ctrl+P) prints every page of the PDF at its own size, as it was last saved. Changes you have not saved are not printed: save first.
• The saved file is opened again and checked before it is put in place: the page count, that each page draws as the editor showed it, that the fonts can draw the new letters. If any check fails, nothing is saved.
• Your unsaved work is kept as a draft for the tab and comes back after a refresh.

Limits

• No form filling, comparing two PDFs, reading scans as text (OCR), passwords or signatures. Removing words is not a guaranteed redaction.
• When a replaced word makes a line longer, the rest of the row does not move over.
• No angles, volumes or radii, and measurements do not snap to the drawing's lines.
• Up to 300 MB and 3,000 pages.

Faber Draw

Engineering sheets kept as objects you can edit, drawn by Faber or by hand, with DWG and DXF drawings in and out. It has a page of its own: Faber Draw.

Faber Images

For job photos and screenshots: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF (the first frame) and BMP.

• Crop freely or to a shape, Rotate by quarter turns, flip and straighten, Resize.
• Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and hue. Hold to see the picture as it was.
• Mark it up with Text, Arrow and Box in six colours.
• Save as is the main button: it writes a new picture under the name and in the folder you pick (it starts as name (edited) beside the picture), as PNG, JPEG or WebP; the name's ending picks the kind. Ctrl+S writes that copy beside the picture at once. Save writes over the picture after asking once.
• Save will not write over a picture that was changed on disk since you opened it, in another window or by Faber's agent. It says so and keeps your changes in the editor; Save as still works.
• A JPEG keeps the date it was taken, its GPS position and its camera.

Not here: layers, brushes, retouching, sharpening and blur, HEIC and TIFF, animated GIFs. A picture over 64 megapixels or 64 MB is refused, never opened smaller.

Faber Text

A plain editor for plain files: notes, Markdown, JSON, configuration, source, up to 2 MB. It changes nothing you did not type and keeps the file's own line endings. Save writes the file; Save as writes a new file under the name and in the folder you pick (the same ending, or .txt or .md) and carries on in it; Download copy gives you one. It asks before another file replaces typing you have not saved, and it will not save over a file that was changed on disk since you opened it, in another window or by Faber's agent.

This page matches Faber 0.10.86.