Some inks can make strokes invisible. If the pen ink is set to “no ink,” the stroke won’t be visible. Also, if the pen ink is set to white or a color that matches the background, the stroke could disappear against the background. Applying strokes The Strokes palette is the control center for all aspects of strokes. You can use the Strokes palette to apply strokes to objects, create custom strokes, add strokes to the palette, and save strokes in files that you can later load into the palette. Preset strokes and controls for customizing strokes are on the Pen, Parallel, and Neon tabs in the Strokes palette. Presets and controls for customizing arrows and dashes are on the Arrow and Dash tabs. Current stroke The strokes icon in the Toolbox shows a sample of the current stroke, the stroke that Canvas applies to new vector objects you create. For example, if the current pen stroke is 3 points wide, new objects you draw will have a 3-point pen stroke. Canvas does not apply the cur- rent stroke to text; see “Applying strokes to text,” next. To change the current stroke, deselect all objects and apply the stroke you want; the stroke icon in the Toolbox shows the new current stroke. If you select an object and change its stroke, however, the cur- rent stroke for new objects does not change. When you first install Canvas, the current stroke defaults to a 1-point pen stroke without dashes or arrowheads. Applying strokes to text You can apply strokes to text the same as to vector objects, in most cases. For information about selecting text objects and text charac- ters, refer to the Text and Typography chapters. When you first type or import text into a document, Canvas applies a 1-point pen stroke to the text, but does not assign a pen ink, so the text is not visible. To make text strokes visible:  Select the text or text objects and apply a visible pen ink using the Inks palette. If you select a text object, Canvas applies a stroke to all the text it contains. If you select specific characters within a text object, Canvas applies the stroke to those characters only. Strokes icon
Canvas 8 Help: Strokes: outline effects (2 of 22)                                                   Page #334