Take a look at one of the .atc files in one of the folders in the "flights" directory. Pick one in a folder that has the same name as one of in in the "tutorials" folder to see how this is done.
The key lines to look at are:
NOTESIZE - This determines the size of the text that will be displayed.
NOTECOL - This is the RGB values for the color of the text, and are values between zero and one, inclusive. They are a decimal value of the percentage of that color shown. A one indicates 100%, a 0.6 indicates 60%, etc. The numbers are seperated by spaces, and determine the red, green, and blue components in that order.
NOTEPOS - This determines the start (upper left) and end (lower right) of the text window. This will be four numbers, separated by spaces. The first two numbers are the X and Y coordinates of the start position, and the second two are the end position.
These values need to be set at least once. Once set, they remain in effect until you set them to different values. You can simply cut and paste these lines from another .atc file for simplicity. Please note that ALL lines in the .atc file MUST start with a simtime. You can use a simtime of zero for these lines if you want.
The other two lines you will use are NOTE and NOTEOFF. Insert these lines in order (according to the simtime you want the notes displayed or erased) with the other lines (such as ENG or TACC lines) in the .atc file.
Notes will remain on the display until another NOTE command, or a NOTEOFF command is reached. You do not need a NOTEOFF for every NOTE command, since every NOTE command will erase any text on screen, and print the text following the new NOTE command.
Notes should NOT be in quote marks unless you want those quotemarks displayed. Any text (or punctuation) between the NOTE command and the next End Of Line (ie, carraige return, when you press the enter key) will be displayed.
.atc files should be edited in a Text Editor, such as notepad, notepad++, textpad, etc. Do NOT use Wordpad, Word, OOo Write, or any other Word Processor software. These often use non ASCII standard punctuation, carraige return, and End Of Line commands.
It seems to work best if the notes are placed in the .atc file of the vessel which has focus at the start of the scenario. To avoid confusion, place all notes in the same .atc file to avoid one set of notes interferring with another. Notes in .atc files for vessels which do not have the focus will still be displayed.
Martins has planned to change the way annotations are handled in the next version of Orbiter. They will no longer be in the .atc files. There will be a global file in each flight directory for annotations and other global commands such as TACC. There will be a way to enter notes during playback or recording. The new version will maintain backwards compatibility with existing annotations, so ther's no problem with doing annotations in the current form - they will still work in the next version.
