Universalis

Instructions

The Universalis program has two main screens to it.

The text screen shows the text of the page you want. It is described below.

The calendar screen shows the calendar, listing days, dates and feasts. Read about it here.

The text screen

This shows the text of each Hour, or the Mass or the About Today page.

Size

ScreenshotThe screen starts off at a standard width that doesn't make the text too wide to read. If you want to make it wider, drag its right-hand edge to the right just as you would with any other window.

Text size and appearance

The command View > Fonts lets you choose a font and a font size to suit your needs.

Options in the text

In the middle of a text page, you will often see a menu button on the right-hand side of the screen. The menu button lets you choose among various options within the page. Depending on which program or app you are using, the menu button will either be a stack of red lines or a blue arrow.

Hours and pages

The Hour menu lets you choose between all the pages Universalis offers: the Liturgy of the Hours, the Mass pages, and additional pages such as About Today.

Dates and calendar

The Date menu lets you go back and forward through time, go back to today, or display the calendar screen. As well as letting you pick any date you want, the calendar screen lets you choose which local calendar you want to use.

There is a General Calendar, shared by the whole Church, and then there are local calendars which have saints and celebrations of more local interest. For example, Saint Benedict is celebrated with a memorial in the universal Church but with a feast in Europe, while Saint Willibrord, who isn't in the General Calendar at all, is celebrated with an optional memorial in some English dioceses and a solemnity in the Netherlands.

Settings

The Tools > Options command gives you various general choices about Universalis: for instance, the languages to be shown in the Order of Mass, Mass readings and Liturgy of the Hours, and whether to show commentaries below the readings at Mass.

Extra content

The “Daily Books” feature allows you to read spiritual and devotional books, divided into daily or weekly instalments, as part of most of the Hours and other pages. Full instructions and explanations are here.

The toolbar

The toolbar gives you short cuts for the commonest operations.

Button picture This control lets you choose the date. The left and right buttons move you back and forward by one day. Clicking the numbered button in the middle takes you to the calendar screen, where you can go to any date you want.

Button pictureThe button at the top right shows you the name of the current page and lets you move from one page to another.

Screen Reader mode

To make the text in Universalis visible to screen reader programs which read the text of the screen out loud to you, Universalis has a screen reader mode. The menu command Tools > Format for Screen Reader will turn that mode on and off. Here are instructions for using Universalis in Screen Reader mode.

Copying and printing

Universalis does not support printing directly from the program. However, you can copy the text of a page to any word processing program, format it as you want, and print it out from there.

To copy one passage: Right-click on it and select "Copy" from the menu.

To copy a whole page: You can do the same, but select "Copy All", or you can use the command Edit > Copy, or you can just press Ctrl+C.

Emails and e-books

The File menu contains commands for signing up to our monthly newsletter or to daily emails of selected Hours. It also lets you create e-books in ePub or Kindle format.

Getting help

The Help menu has a link to these instructions; it also has a "Contact Us" command which you can use to send us a message.

To copy a section or the entire page, right-click on the text and pick the appropriate command from the menu: Copy to copy one section or Copy Page to copy the whole page.

Alternatively, press Ctrl+C to copy the entire page to the Clipboard.