================================= EASY TEXT PLUS TUTORIAL ver. 1.01 ================================= (c) zzSoft 1989, all rights reserved TRADEMARKS GEM and GEM Desktop are trademarks of Digital Research Inc Atari ST, TOS, are trademarks of Atari Corp Epson FX-80 is a trademark of Epson Corp DEGAS Elite is a trademark of Batteries Included Inc --------------------------------------------------------------- Please include this document in all EASY TEXT PLUS DEMO versions ================================================================ CONTENTS -------- 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Welcome to EASY TEXT PLUS 1.2 Differences between EASY TEXT and EASY TEXT PLUS 2 EASY TEXT PLUS 2.1 Overview 3 GETTING TEXT ONTO THE SCREEN 3.1 Drawing a Frame 3.2 Placing Text in a Frame 3.3 Editing Text in a Frame 3.4 Moving a Frame 3.5 Altering Text 3.6 Select Frame & Edit 3.7 Select & Copy Frame 4 EDIT TEXT... 4.1 Using EDIT TEXT... 4.2 Importing Text 4.3 Option boxes in EDIT TEXT box 4.4 Control Codes 5 CLIP ART 5.1 Importing Clip Art 6 LOADING & SAVING 6.1 Loading and Saving EASY TEXT PLUS pages 6.2 Save Screen 7 OPTIONS 7.1 Clear All 7.2 Parameters 7.3 Guides 7.4 Set Buffers 7.5 Bring to Front 7.6 Justification 8 GRAPHICS 8.1 Fills 8.2 Restore Colours 8.3 Fill Outlining 8.4 Lines 8.5 Draw 9 OPTIONS2 9.1 Set Snap frame 9.2 Justification Spacing 9.3 Set Line Spacing 9.4 Set Frame Margins 9.5 Print Routine 9.6 Print Some frames 9.7 Trash a frame 10 KEYBOARD 10.1 Alternate selections 11 HINTS 12 MESSAGES and WARNINGS 12.1 Various Messages 13.1 EXPANATION OF SOME TERMS USED ------------------------------------------------------------ Acknowledgements ---------------- I'd like to thank some very helpful people and friends without whose assistance EASY TEXT+ would not have seen the light of day. First, my mother for all the encouragement, and help. For Pete Moulding for the loan of some great music cassettes. Mike Goodman of Goodman PDL for his time, generous advice, and help with promoting EASY TEXT+. Paul Glover of the ST Club for his support. Sid Jervis for his generous help with promotional material, and testing. Ian Atkinson for his help and general encouragement. And for my son, Jaz, without whom I wouldn't have even bothered. And Lucy for all the phone calls, and episodic letters and Bach's 48 preludes and fugues. Mark Annetts for advice, and laser testing. And last but not least Maharaji. ------------------------------------------------------------ Please direct all communications about EASY TEXT, and EASY TEXT PLUS to: zzSoft Phone: 0422 845528 3 Riverdale House Mytholm Close Hebden Bridge West Yorkshire HX7 6BP EASY TEXT PLUS costs 20.00 pounds, inc P&P. This includes a comprehensive illustrated User Guide. See READ_ME.1ST file on this disk. Overseas cost is 25.00 pounds inc P&P. Please submit all monies in Pounds Sterling. ----------------------------------------------------------- 1 INTRODUCTION ----------------- 1.1 Welcome to the EASY TEXT+ Tutorial Welcome to the EASY TEXT+ tutorial, a step-by-step description of the methods needed to get the best out of EASY TEXT+, budget DTP. EASY TEXT+ is a sophisticated DTP program, so if you are new to the ST and / or DTP please take time to read this document carefully. It is assumed that you have EASY TEXT+ loaded and that you are ready to go! In this tutorial the parts not covered will be GDOS, and its associated ASSIGN.SYS file. See separate GDOS.DOC file. 1.2 Differences between EASY TEXT and EASY TEXT PLUS EASY TEXT+ is the enhanced and improved version of EASY TEXT. EASY TEXT+ has many more features to help you design a page just how you want. Perhaps the main difference is that EASY TEXT+ now supports output to 9-pin, 24-pin, and laser printers. Overall printer output has improved even on the humble 9-pin dot matrix. Also, the EASY TEXT+ printer program can be called from within EASY TEXT+, or without actually loading EASY TEXT+. Added features and improvements: -------------------------------- Graphics: Six different line styles. Three different line endings. Four different line thickness. Boxes with or without rounded corners can be drawn, of unlimited size. Text and/ or one of the 36 fills can be placed inside the box. Vertical or horizontal straight lines of any size can be drawn, in anyone of the 4 line thicknesses. Replace mode used so that filled boxes can overlap one another. Outlining of fills: on or off. Frames: Frames can be any size. They can be resized to any size. They can be moved beyond the menu bar, past the scroll bar, and past the left side of the EASY TEXT+ screen, if necessary. Imported text can now be easily placed into long frames that fill the length of the EASY TEXT page. This allows newspaper like columns of text to be easily created. Frame margins are user definable: left, right, and top. Frames can be made to 'snap' to 3 defined amounts, horizontally, and vertically Frames may be copied. Text: Line spacing (leading) of text is user definable, from 1 pixel upward. Text can be adjusted within a frame to be either left, centred, right, or full justified. Imported text retains BOLD, ITALIC, and BOLD and ITALIC effects. But only when left justified, apart from headings when justified any other way. Fully justified text can be globally kerned, either with reference to characters and/or with reference to words. Text can be edited in the EDIT TEXT box as per EASY TEXT, but imported text is now saved in a separate buffer and can be brought back to view at any time. By the use of special characters, text within the EDIT TEXT box can follow certain options. Such as: Control E placed before a line ensures that this line is not placed into a frame. Other codes are used to facilitate text effects and formatting. Text buffer amount is user definable. Guides: Page Guides are user definable. This is a grid of lines that may be set-up to define the EASY TEXT page size, from A4 to any smaller size. Mouse: Clicking the right mouse button once can be used instead of USE FRAME, and instead of END USE FRAME menu selections. Printing: EASY TEXT+ if fully GDOS driven so all the appropriate GDOS printer drivers can be used. EASY TEXT+ now has separate print programs so that the maximum amount of RAM is available for GDOS-RAM hungry printer fonts. Screen/Page: As well as the usual vertical scroll bar, the EASY TEXT+ page now extends a small amount to the right. To utilise the maximum screen area, a bottom scroll bar was thought unnecessary. So that the extreme right area of the EASY TEXT+ page can be seen arrows at the top and bottom of the vertical scroll bar are utilised to shift the EASY TEXT+ page to the left and to bring it back again. Clicking with the mouse pointer over either of these arrows will move the screen the appropriate amount to the left or right. Alternatively pressing CONTROL-left arrow will do the same. The left arrow can be found under the Insert key. The EASY TEXT+ page is now 8 * 11.55 inches, or a very full A4 size. Naturally you may use as little, or as much of the EASY TEXT+ page as you want, and you may define these parameters from within the SET PAGE GUIDES dialog box. GDOS You must have GDOS present in an AUTO folder. EASY TEXT+ is not usable without GDOS. 2 EASY TEXT+ ------------ 2.1 Overview EASY TEXT+ provides a work-surface like a blank piece of paper onto which you can enter a variety of text styles and fonts all of your chosing. Clip art, and text from First Word may also easily be imported onto the screen. EASY TEXT+ differs from a paint program in that each block or frame of text is an entity unto itself, so that each frame and the text therein may be manipulated in a variety of ways. Each frame of text can be selected and reselected and the frame positioned where ever you want on the screen. As you select a frame the text inside it is automatically transferred with it. Each time a frame of text is selected the text inside the frame can be altered to the current text and font selections, or the text can left in its original state. Text can be entered in a frame each time a frame is drawn with the mouse the screen. However you cannot edit text directly in a frame like you would using a word-processor. To edit your text, fortunately is very easy and only involves a couple of menu selections. Your text, then, can be freely edited and quickly and simply placed back into the original frame with just one mouse button click. Because the screen is smaller than an the usual size of paper that you would normally print to EASY TEXT+ has a scroll bar which allows the screen to be moved (very fast too) so that you have, in effect, a full page in which to enter your work. The scroll bar is on the right hand side of the screen. Clicking on the scroll bar will take you either to the top or the bottom of the EASY TEXT+ page. To go to any other part of the EZT+ page place the mouse pointer over the white area and keeping the left mouse button pressed 'drag' an appropriate distance, and release the button. See also the section Screen/Page in 1.2 'Differences between EASY TEXT and EASY TEXT PLUS', for moving the screen left and right. 3 GETTING TEXT ONTO THE SCREEN ------------------------------ 3.1 Drawing a Frame To start: select the FRAME drop-down menu and select START FRAME. (If you look at the FRAME menu again you should notice that START FRAME has a tick to the immediate left. A tick on a menu selection shows that this is what you have selected and what is in effect.) Prior to selecting START FRAME you could have selected the particular text style, font height, and font style (if applicable) you wanted. Position the mouse pointer in the general area on the screen where you would like to position your text. Pressing the left mouse button drag the mouse until a rectangle of suitable size has been created for the font height you expect to be working with. Don't worry if the rectangle appears initially too small or too big to use, the size is easily altered. Release the left mouse button and a rectangle/frame will be drawn on the screen the same size as the one you have just outlined with the mouse. If you wish to move the rectangle/frame to any other position press the left mouse button and move the mouse - the rectangle /frame will follow the direction of your movements. You can now also select the font height, text style and font style (if applicable) by going to the drop-down menu and selecting what you want. Once you are happy about the position of the frame then again select EDIT and from the drop down menu. Select USE FRAME and the frame will alter in that it will now possess a larger frame around the previous rectangle and this rectangle will have smaller rectangles at each corner and half way along each side. These smaller rectangles are so that you can size the frame in any manner you wish. You can also move the frame to any position on the screen, including the lower half. Alternatively, click the right mouse button instead of selecting USE FRAME, or ALT-U. In the USE FRAME mode you can enter text but not edit the text you have entered. To do this you need to select the EDIT TEXT menu selection-but not yet! We're getting ahead of ourselves. 3.2 Placing Text in a Frame To enter text in the frame use the keyboard to type your letters onto the screen. If you make a mistake or want to change the size or style of text don't worry it's easy to correct. (This will be explained later on.) When you have finished press either Control-Return or ALT- Z, or go to the FRAME drop-down menu and click on END USE FRAME. This action will store whatever you have placed in the frame in the computer so that you can move and manipulate your text whenever you want to. When you leave USE FRAME mode the frame will disappear. ALTERNATIVELY press the RIGHT mouse button once to exit a frame. IMPORTANT NOTE: You can only enter text directly into a frame the first time you use that frame. Once you have finished with the frame by pressing ALT-Z, Control-Return or END USE FRAME you have to use the EDIT TEXT menu selection from the FRAME drop-down menu. See 3.3 3.3 Editing Text in a Frame To edit text within a frame chose SELECT FRAME from the FRAME menu and then EDIT TEXT... too. Then click the mouse pointer over the text/frame you want to edit. A large box containing your text will appear. You can now edit your text using the various editing keys on the keyboard, eg delete, backspace. Note pressing the escape key will clear the particular line where the cursor is positioned. Text may be altered and entered at will. More text can be used than was in the frame, or less. The frame can be altered afterwards to accommodate the extra or less text. Although the text in the edit box is always displayed in the (10 point) system font this does not affect the text within a frame. Alternatively, select SELECT FRAME & EDIT for the above. Select MORE to see another 8 lines of your text, and click on LESS to go back 8 lines. When you have finished editing select OK if you want the new text to replace the old text in the frame. SELECT Cancel if you have decided that you want to leave the text in the frame alone, or in the event of selecting the wrong frame to edit. Summary of selecting a frame of text to edit (a) Click on SELECT (b) Click on EDIT TEXT... (c) Click in vicinity of text want to edit (d) EDIT TEXT box will appear (e) Edit your text, and leave EDIT TEXT box ie click OK (f) Text will be automatically replaced in the frame. Note that even if you did not enter any text the first time you created a frame you still need to go through the above sequence in order to enter text in a frame. Obviously, (c) cannot apply - so you must click over the frame position, and then continue when (the empty) EDIT TEXT box appears. 3.4 Moving a Frame If you wish to reposition a frame on the screen go to SELECT menu option and position mouse pointer over text. Press left hand mouse button and keep pressed. The mouse pointer will change into a flat, open hand. Move the mouse and the frame will move with you, but not the text. Release the mouse button when you have positioned the frame where you want it. Don't forget to press Control-Return or ALT-Z to cease using that frame, or the right mouse button. 3.5 Altering Text To alter text within a frame, ie alter text style and/or font height and/or font style (where applicable), first chose the font height you require. Do the same for other options. Then select SELECT (and CHANGE) in the EDIT menu. Move the mouse pointer over the text you wish to alter and click the left mouse button. The frame will be selected and the text will be altered in the way you have requested. The frame can be resized to accommodate a larger font height in the SELECT and CHANGE mode. It can also be moved about. Press Control-Return or Alt-Z to finish with that frame, or select END USE FRAME from the EDIT drop-down menu, or press the right mouse button once. 3.6 Select & Copy Frame Selecting this allows a copy of a frame to be made. Note that you must have the approriate menu selections ticked or the resulting frame will have the characteristics of those menu selections ticked. Eg if you have Straight Line selected then the resulting copied frame will be a straight line. 4 EDIT TEXT... ----------------- 4.1 Using EDIT TEXT... There are three distinct ways that the EDIT TEXT... option may be used: (i) As described in Chapter 4.1 (ii) To prepare text for a frame before creating it. To do this select EDIT TEXT... from EDIT menu and enter text into EDIT TEXT box. Note that using the (carriage) Return key will move the cursor down a line. The mouse may be used to position the cursor on a particular line. After you have finished entering and if necessary, editing your text in the EDIT TEXT box click once in the small OK box and you will be returned to the main screen. Now select START FRAME from the EDIT drop down menu and continue as described in chapter 4.1. As soon as you select USE FRAME the text you entered in the EDIT TEXT box will be drawn in the frame. By adjusting the size of the frame you can ensure the precise 'look' of the text layout. Text will automatically be left justified. (iii) To import text; see next chapter. 4.2 Importing Text Importing text from First Word, or First Word Plus is easy. Text from First Word or First Word Plus can be in document mode or ASCII. Document mode refers to the fact that the control codes for text effects such as Bold, Italic etc are kept within the text file, for later use in the word processor to display these text effects, or for printing these text effects. EASY TEXT+ keeps these control codes which allows you to display text effects such as bold, italic, bold and italic within a left justified frame. Headings can keep text effects when Full justification is used. Note that EASY TEXT+ always initially places imported text left justified in a frame no matter what settings are on the justification menu. EASY TEXT+ can import any ASCII text file from any word processor. Select IMPORT TEXT from the FILE drop down menu and a GEM selection box will appear. From this box you may specify the disk drive you wish to load your text from and by using the scroll bar see what files you have on the disk. Double clicking over the actual name of the text document you wish to load will place your document 'into' the EASY TEXT+ EDIT TEXT box starting at the beginning of the document. Please note the maximum size document you can load into EASY TEXT is about 5000 bytes or approximately 5000 characters. If your document is larger than this it will be necessary to to separate your document into less than 5000 byte size sections so that EASY TEXT+ can eventually load all of your document. Note that the maximum amount of text that can be placed into a frame of text at any one time is the amount specified in the SET TEXT BUFFERS... A very useful feature is that no matter how small the size of the frame into which imported text is placed the frame will always contain the maximum amount of text as specified in the SET TEXT BUFFERS... This means that when you exit a frame all the text is retained even though you may not be able to see all of the text. This allows you to adjust the frame at any time and display exactly what text you require. To place your text ont the EASY TEXT+ page/screen the click OK. Click Cancel if you do not wish to do this. Cancel does not 'unload' your document. Cancel ensures that the next operation you do in EASY TEXT+ will not be affected by the previous operation of loading text into the EDIT TEXT box. Now select START FRAME from the FRAME drop down menu and draw the required size frame etc. Then continue as usual. Note selecting USE FRAME will place your text in the frame in the current selected text style, size and type. Press Control- Return, or ALT-Z or END USE FRAME to exit the frame, or press the right mouse button once. EASY TEXT+ CANNOT import ST Writer documents. Convert to an ASCII text file first. 4.3 Option Boxes within EDIT TEXT box The combinations of ALL and FROM HERE in the Edit Text box allow you to chose where you want to display text from (FROM HERE), and how much (ALL) after leaving the EDIT TEXT box. A tick registers whether the particular function is available after leaving the EDIT TEXT box, and either selecting a frame or creating one to place text into. Note Max. text displayed is determined by the amount specified in the SET TEXT BUFFERS dialog box, if the ALL box is ticked. ALL (TICK ON) All the available text will be placed in the frame created or selected. From what position in the Edit Text box the text will be displayed from (in the frame) depends on whether FROM HERE is ticked or not. ALL (TICK OFF) Only 8 lines of text can be displayed after exiting the EDIT TEXT box. From what EDIT TEXT box page the text will be displayed from depends on the staus of the FROM HERE box. FROM HERE (TICK ON) Text will be displayed in a frame from the position of the text in the EDIT TEXT box. How much, ie 8 lines or ALL the text available will depend on the staus of the ALL box. FROM HERE (TICK OFF) Text will automatically be displayed from the start position of the text in the EDIT TEXT box, no matter what position the text was in the EDIT TEXT box when exiting. Whether 8 lines ( an EDIT TEXT box page ) or all the available text will be displayed will depend on the ALL box status. SHOW IMPORTED TEXT Clicking on this box will replace any imported text back into the EDIT TEXT box. This means that you can edit other text whilst retaining your imported text. NOTE: that these selections can only function correctly if a large enough frame is either created or selected to hold the text. When placing a lot of text into a small frame expanding it with the small side boxes (in USE FRAME mode) will ensure more text can be displayed. 4.4 Control Codes EASY TEXT+ uses special codes to specify particular text effects within a left justified text file (some are allowed in fully justified text). The text effects that are recognized are BOLD, ITALIC, BOLD and ITALIC. These are the same effects that are recognized in an imported First Word text file. Some other control codes are used to determine other effects, eg Control-E means do not display this line to a frame or print to a printer. All these codes are entered via the EDIT TEXT box, or are brought into the EDIT TEXT box when importing a First Word text file (that has been Saved in document mode). These control codes are stripped out when saving a text file as a pure ASCII text file. Through the use of these special control codes it is possible to specify whether a frame of text will display these text effects. CONTROL-E To specify that a line of text will not be placed into a frame, place CONTROL-E before each line of text. The line of text will not be placed inside the frame, but will not be lost. It will not be printed either, but will be saved along with all the rest of the text if you Save the EASY TEXT+ page. This is signified by the symbol that is used to exit a window, top left. CONTROL-F CONTROL-F before a line of text means do not full justify this line. This is useful for headings of fully justified text. This code is signified by the window symbol at the bottom right. It should be placed before the other codes. The following codes appertain to bold and italic text effects. They must all be preceded by the control code CONTROL-; or CONTROL-[. This is signified by a small ES. CONTROL-A This switches bold on until switched off by Control-H. This control code is signified by an up-arrow. CONTROL-B This switches italic on until switched off by Control-H. Signified by a down arrow. CONTROL-C This switches bold and italic on until switched off by Control-H. Signified by a right arrow. CONTROL-G Replace CONTROL-; or CONTROL-[ with Control-G in fully justified text to retain text effects. Do this at the start and end. 5 CLIP ART ------------- 5.1 Importing Clip Art To import clip art or even full-size (ie screen-sized) pictures select IMPORT CLIP ART from the FILE drop down menu. A selection box will allow you to chose the disk drive to load from and the art file you wish to load into EASY TEXT+. All art files must be in the DEGAS file format ie a .PI3 type of file, eg PICT.PI3. There are many PD conversion programs if the art file you wish to load into EASY TEXT+ is not in DEGAS format. Uncompressed DEGAS file format must be used, ie the size of a .PI3 file must be 32066 bytes approx. Med Res users substitute .PI2 for .PI3. Medium res users can import hi res clip art directly into EASY TEXT+. You cannot load .EZ1 or .EZM pages from the LOAD CLIP ART selection. Note that although frames of art can be manipulated in Easy Text it is not possible to proportionately resize art frames, so that it is important to import into EASY TEXT+ the size of the frame of art you require. EASY TEXT+ can, however, move frames of art, similar to moving text about. NOTE: it is important for printing purposes to ensure that frame snap is set to a 16 pixel snap, horizontally, and vertically. Failure to do this may result in your clip art being positioned in a slightly different place than you might have expected when printing. Once you have selected the file you wish to load into EASY TEXT+ the screen will be overdrawn by the picture or clip art. To continue press Alternate-C - the keyboard START FRAME method of telling EASY TEXT+ that you wish to begin. Using the mouse pointer select an area that you wish to place onto the Easy Text page. If you make a mistake in the positioning of the frame or wish to select a different area to to 'cut out' then press the right mouse button to start again. Note that there is no need to press ALT-C again. When you are ready to place the piece of clip art onto the EAST TEXT+ page then press the left mouse button, and the area of clip art you have drawn a frame around will immediately be placed onto the EASY TEXT+ page. Reposition the clip art frame, if necessary by usual method of moving a frame about. 6 LOADING & SAVING --------------------- 6.1 Loading and Saving EASY TEXT+ pages A high res EASY TEXT+ page is Saved and Loaded with the extension .EZ1 A med res EASY TEXT+ page is Saved and Loaded with the extension .EZM Loading an EASY TEXT+ page clears all other previous text and clip art from the screen. If you load an EASY TEXT+ page into EASY TEXT+ when there is a conflict between what fonts you originally used and the fonts you have booted with, EASY TEXT will let you know, and give you the choice of either exiting EASY TEXT so that you can boot with the correct fonts, or to continue with the incorrect fonts. If you decide to exit EASY TEXT+ will present you with a list of the fonts you used with that file. Please note that EASY TEXT pages cannot be loaded into EASY TEXT+. 6.2 Save Screen This allows you to save the screen in DEGAS format in case you wish to load it into DEGAS or DEGAS ELITE. You may have the screen displaying any part of your EASY TEXT+ page. Save hi res screens with the extension .PI3 and med res screens as .PI2 7 OPTIONS ------------ A tick will appear when you select some of these options. To deselect click again on the selection and the option will be deselected, and the tick will disappear. 7.1 Clear All This option clears the screen and resets the program from the beginning so that you will lose all text, imported text, clip art, and all the current text and font settings. 7.2 Parameters This shows the amount of free RAM available. This is useful for calculating how much RAM is left for loading more GDOS screen fonts later. Unfortunately GEM insists on loading all fonts all at once, so that fonts cannot be loaded selectively from within EASY TEXT+. This is common to most GDOS DTP software eg Timeworks DTP, EASY DRAW etc. 7.3 Guides SET PAGE GUIDES dialog box presents a method of dividing the EASY TEXT+ page into equal divisions so that it is easy to find your way around an EASY TEXT+ page. It does so by placing lines onto the EASY TEXT+ page to form a grid. Initially the page guide lines are set to divide an area the size of 11.55 inches long and 8 inches wide. This is alterable to whatever size you wish. However, setting a page size greater than 8" * 11.55" is not practicable. Whatever size you decide upon EAST TEXT+ will divide the page into equal segments and lines forming a grid will be shown on the screen if the selection boxes for that particular line are 'turned on'. This allows you to position your frames at any particular place with considerable accuracy. To see the lines on the screen select SHOW PAGE GUIDES. 7.4 Set Buffers This must be altered at the beginning of an EAST TEXT+ session if wish to adjust the default text buffer parameters. As soon as a frame is exited, SET TEXT BUFFERS is not usable. Click on 'update' with the mouse pointer to recalculate the amount of text available in each frame after you have entered the required frame amount. This will also show the number of frames you are allowed. Do not set the text buffers to more than 5000 characters per frame. Always enter amounts with preceding zeros. Eg for 500 chars per frame, enter as 0500. The default settings are 66 frames per EASY TEXT+ page, and 750 characters per frame. 7.5 Bring to Front This allows you to select a frame that is positioned behind another frame without disturbing the other frame. After using the frame it is placed back to the same position as before, unless you reposition it. 7.6 Justification Text within a frame may be justified in 4 distinct ways: left, centred, right, and full. EG: | | | | |Left just | | Right just| | | | | | | | | | Centred just | |F u l l j u s t| | | | | 8 GRAPHICS ------------- 8.1 Fills There are 36 different graphic fills available. Selecting the first one ensures that there will be no fill placed in a box. Note: to use a fill you must select a rounded rectangle, or square cornered rectangle. Text can be placed in a rectangle with a fill. 8.2 Restore Colours This is for med res users. It allows colours to be restored after importing clip art. 8.3 Fill Outlining This is on by default. This ensures that a contour is placed around all fills, which 'outlines' the fill. Deselecting will ensure that no oulining of fills takes place. 8.4 Lines SET LINE WIDTH, SET LINE ENDS, and SET LINE STYLES are dialog boxes that allow a variety of effects to be set for lines and/or rectangles. To actually draw a line you must click on STRAIGHT LINE in the GRAPHICS menu, and then draw a frame as usual. A straight line will be immediately drawn in the USE FRAME mode. The line will either be vertical or horizontal depending on whether the frame is long or wide. You cannot enter text into a frame containing a line, or edit a frame containing a line. Note that there are 6 different line styles, 3 different line endings, and 4 different line widths. The 6 different line styles can only be used in the narrowest line width. 8.5 Draw A tick will appear when you select any of these options. To deselect click again on the selection and the tick will disappear. Which ever one of the 3 choices you click on will result in the other two being 'greyed out', ie not selectable. To get them back to normal click on the one with the tick, and the other two will revert back to normal, and you will be able to select any of the three once again. To create a box continue as usual by drawing a frame on screen. Text can be entered into any box. 9 OPTIONS2 ------------- 9.1 Set Snap frame This allows frames to be 'snapped' to the nearest amount that is selected in the SET SNAP FRAME. This particular option ensures that frames of text can be alligned perfectly, either horizontally or vertically, or both. The default setting is snap off, ie settings are zero horizontal and vertical snap. See 5.1 for ensuring correct printing of clip art. 9.2 Justification Spacing These settings are for FULL justified text only, and allows microjustification to be set to word and/or character adjust- ment. Setting both off will result in left justified text. This could also be called global kerning. 9.3 Set Line Spacing This user definable, and is measured in pixels for fine adjustment. This is also known as leading (pronounced ledding), from the printing industry. 9.4 Set Frame Margins This is user definable, and is also measured in pixels for fine adjustment. Margins that can be set are left, right, and top. Note that right margin is measured from the right, rather than the usual method of measuring a right margin from the left. 9.5 Print Routine Selecting this option presents you with various messages, so that you can save your work before printing it, if you haven't already. Also, so that you can prepare to have your printer fonts ready in your disk drive. Note that to print an EASY TEXT+ page you must have previously saved it. Turn your printer off-line to abort printing. A wait of about 1 minute is to be expected. 9.6 Print Some frames Clicking on this menu option will result in a tick appearing, and any frame 'Selected and Changed' or created until it is switched off will not be printed out. This allows you to 'post notes' on your page, ie leave messages for reference purposes. Also it allows you to selectively print out only those frames that haven't been Selected and Changed or created with this menu selection switched on. 9.7 Trash a frame. Does what it says but allows you to change your mind after pressing Control-Return, or clicking right mouse button. 10 KEYBOARD -------------- 10.1 Keyboard Selections Sometimes it is easier to use the keyboard to make a menu selection rather than go to the actual menu and select something. Those menu options that are followed by a funny- looking character and then by a letter of the alphabet are the menu selctions that can be selected from the keyboard. To select a particular menu option press the ALTERNATE key and the particular key at the same time. The following menu selections are available from the keyboard: FILE LOAD... ALT-L QUIT ALT-Q FRAME START FRAME ALT-C SELECT FRAME ALT-S SELECT & CHANGE ALT-X USE FRAME ALT-U END USE FRAME ALT-Z EDIT TEXT... ALT-E SELECT & COPY FRAME ALT-Y OPTIONS CLEAR ALL ALT-A PARAMETERS ALT-M BRING TO FRONT ALT-B LEFT F1 CENTRE F2 RIGHT F3 FULL F10 FONT FONT STYLES... ALT-T GRAHICS FILLS... ALT-F UNDO With this keyboard selection you can erase any actions you have done prior to pressing ALT-Z or Control-Return or selecting END USE FRAME. Note that if you have selected SELECT or SELECT and CHANGE then UNDO is not available. CONTROL- left arrow This shifts the screen either to the left or right exposing or covering the extra section of the EASY TEXT+ page on the extreme right. In doing this a similar sized section of the page on the left will be covered or exposed. 11 HINTS To trash frames that you no longer want, make the frame as small as you can and exit. 12 MESSAGES and WARNINGS -------------------------- From time to time you may be faced with an 'error message', or a helpful warning. Some warnings may be issued by GEM and are therefore not listed here. The next section lists the messages you might get with comments what to do, unless the message is self explanatory. 12.1 Various Messages (1) Are you sure you want to leave EASY TEXT+? Click Cancel if you don't. (2) Some of the EZT files have not been loaded which will affect frame movement. To be able to move the frames of text/art about after you have loaded an EASY TEXT page EASY TEXT+ needs to load quite a few files, and if some are missing then this warning message will be issued. (3) There is not enough room on this disk to save all the files needed. This message is issued if all the files that EASY TEXT+ neeeds are not saved. This means that when you load the EASY TEXT file(s) you will get message (2). (4) Are you sure you want to clear out everything? Click Cancel if you don't. This warns you that you will lose eveything on the screen and will be unable to get it back unless you have saved it. It effectively puts you back at the start of an EASY TEXT session and 'wipes the slate clean'. (5) Please ensure your printer is connected and on-line. Press Control-C to abort. On-line refers to the fact that your printer may be connected and plug in but not actually on-line. There is often a switch or something similar to place your printer on-line. (6) No fonts have been loaded. Place your fonts disk in the disk drive. This message is issued because you have failed to place a disk with the appropriate fonts in to your computer at start up. Try again. You may need to do this twice. (7) An error has occurred... CAN'T OPEN / READ A FILE. OR OPEN FOLDER You may have a faulty disk or corrupt file if you get this message. Shouldn't see this one too often I hope. (8) Sorry, but there is no more room to store this type or size of frame. Please consult your user manual. This refers to the fact that the clip art buffer is full, and that there is no more room to store any more clip art. There are other messages that may be reported from time to time. 13 EXPANATION OF SOME TERMS USED ----------------------------------- CLICK: Press and release the left mouse button once DOUBLE CLICK: Quickly press and release the left once button twice in succession DRAG: After positioning the mouse pointer (initially an arrow or pointing finger) over the required object hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse to where you want the object moved to. The mouse pointer will change to a flat hand when an object is successfully selected. FRAME: A rectangular box drawn by the user and into which text, art or graphics are placed. The corners and centre of the frame contain smaller rectangles which can be used to 'size' the frame by placing the mouse-pointer into one of them and then altering the size of the frame by dragging the mouse. (It looks like a plan view of a snooker table!) JUSTIFIED TEXT: As an example of left and right justified text- look at this paragrph. Most text is left justified as this is, but often text is not right justified, ie it is ragged at the right-hand side. Text that is right and left justified is also called 'fully' justified. Eg, this is not right justified text. This in an example of text that is not right justified. Using a word-processor like First Word makes it easy to justify text. Text is just- ified in First Word by placing extra spaces in the text. This paragraph would be known as left justified (only) text. DTP= Desktop Publisher Dialog Box: a box which is displayed, usually as the result of selecting a menu selection. eg SET PAGE GUIDES... NOTE: Three full stops after a menu selection as in SET PAGE GUIDES... indicates that a dialog box will be displayed and further action is necessary to continue. A lack of three dots indicates that either the action will be immediate or that no dialog box will be displayed or that an arrow will be placed next to the menu choice selected.