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Exercise nine Multiple columns and Footnotes

This exercise will show you how to create a multiple column document containing a table, picture and footnote.

You will learn how to:

The text and pictures needed for this exercise can be found in the 'Tutorials' folder called 'DTP'.

  1. Open a directory viewer on the folder 'DTP'.
  2. Resize the window so that the icons are arranged vertically and drag it to the right of the Desktop.

Using Stationery

Next you are going to start a document from a Stationery pad.

  1. Double-click on the Stationery pad 'TwoColPad'.
    After a short while a new 'Untitled' document will be opened on the Desktop. This document is a copy of the Stationery pad it was created from. You will see that it has been zoomed down to 50% of full size.
  2. Click in the Toggle size icon in the top right of the window.
  3. The window will expand to occupy the Desktop.
  4. Drag the document window's Adjust size icon so that you can see the directory viewer. Check that your Desktop looks similar to this:

Document styles

One of the features unique to EasiWriter is the ability to have structure styles. This document's 'Document' style was changed to include a centred bold italic heading, before the Stationery pad was created.

Importing text

Text documents created by Edit, or other applications, can be inserted into an EasiWriter document by dragging them into the document's window.

  1. Move the pointer over the Edit document 'Paper' and drag it into the document.
    The text is inserted into the document.
  2. Press Home to ensure that the beginning of the document is in view.

You will see that EasiWriter has made the first paragraph into a centred heading.

Zooming

The view on the document will halve and the text will double in size.

Paragraph styles

Next you are going to apply a Paragraph style. Paragraph styles can control the font, font size, colour, margin positions, tab positions, justification, language and spacing of text in a paragraph. Such changes can be saved as a named style and then applied with a single command.

When the caret is in a paragraph, or a paragraph is selected, the Format menu contains a submenu Paragraph styles. Clicking Menu on the Style indicator shows the same menu. This document has two paragraph styles:

You will see that the text has been centred, changed to a bold font and that the space above and below it has been increased. These attributes are all part of the 'Author' style definition.

Creating a section from text

Next you are going to create two sections from the remaining text.

The exact position is unimportant as long as the selection starts in the first paragraph and ends in the last.

Using a section style

Next you are going to change the remaining text into a section and apply a section style at the same time.

You have already seen that when a paragraph (or nothing) is selected the Format menu and the Selection indicator have a submenu that shows Paragraph Styles.

In just the same way, when a section is selected the submenu shows Section Styles.

This document has a two column section style, in addition to the default single column section style that all documents have.

The new style was created before the Stationery pad was saved. (See the EasiWriter documentation for details on how to create your own styles).

You can apply a style at the same time as you create a structure.

  1. Press Select anywhere in the text 'Introduction' and drag down so that the selection extends into the last paragraph.
    The document will scroll automatically if you drag down into the bottom scroll bar.
  2. Move the pointer over the Section button in the button bar and click Menu.
    A menu will appear where you can choose which section style you want.
  3. Choose 2 Columns from the Section menu.

Zooming out

So that you can see the effect of this change you are going to zoom out from the document reducing its scaling back to 50%.

You can zoom out by clicking on the Zoom out icon which is to the left of the Percentage magnification indicator.

Click on the Zoom out icon to halve the magnification.

The Percentage magnification indicator changes to read 50%.

You will see that this single command has created a section with a heading and two columns of balanced, vertically justified text with a rule drawn between them.

Undo/Redo

Whenever you have made a change in an EasiWriter document you can usually undo it by clicking on the Undo button (F8).

  1. Press F8 to undo the changes.
    After choosing Undo the command changes to Redo to restore the changes.
  2. Press F8 to restore the changes.

The Undo and Redo commands can protect you from accidental errors and save a lot of time.

The Heading Position chosen is 'Above columns'.

The Number of columns has been set to 2.

Both the Balanced and Justified (vertical) option icons are turned on.

The half point Separation Rule is selected.

Click Cancel to return to the document without making any changes.

Inserting a picture

Next you are going to insert a Draw file after the paragraph following the heading 'Introduction' in column one.

  1. Click anywhere towards the end of the first paragraph in column one.
  2. Click on the Picture button.
    A picture frame will be drawn beneath the paragraph.
  3. Drag the Draw file 'Graph' into the document.

Picture styles

The file 'Graph' will be drawn in the picture frame and will be automatically scaled and centred in the column. This is another of EasiWriter's styles in action. Before creating the Stationery pad the default Picture style was changed to 30% full size and then saved again using the same name so that all pictures would now default to 30% size.

Creating a table from a CSV file

Next you are going to create a table from a CSV file.

CSV (Comma Separated Value) files can be used to interchange information between applications. Often they are created by a spreadsheet.

This is what the File 'Results' looks like:

,"Perrier","Moët","Theakstons"

"Normal","61","11","11"

"Inebriated","18","52","20"

"Paralytic","6","10","55"

"Comatose","0","9","31"

You will see that the contents of each column are separated by a comma.

It would be very time consuming to have to type each of these values into a table; fortunately EasiWriter does this for you automatically.

Whenever you drag a CSV file into an EasiWriter document it is converted into a table.

  1. Zoom the document out to 100%.
  2. Scroll the document to bring the second column into view and click after the full stop following the word 'goldfish' at the end of the first paragraph.
  3. Drag the file 'ResultsCSV' into the document.

A table will be created automatically:

Perrier Moët Theakstons
Normal 61 11 11
Inebriated 18 52 20
Paralytic 6 10 55
Comatose 0 9 31

It needs a small amount of reformatting.

  1. Drag across the headings 'Perrier', 'Moët' and 'Theakstons' to select them.
  2. Click on the Centre alignment icon.
  3. Drag over the numbers to select them. (Press select on '61' and drag down and to the right of '31').
  4. Click on the Right alignment icon.

The numbers will be right aligned and centred under the headings.

Adding Borders

Next use the Borders command to make your table look like this.

Perrier Moët Theakstons
Normal 61 11 11
Inebriated 18 52 20
Paralytic 6 10 55
Comatose 0 9 31
  1. Select the first Row and add a Bottom border. (Click the Borders button and click on the Bottom option icon).
  2. Select from 'Normal' to '9' (click in Normal, drag down and to the right of 9) and add a Right border.

Multi-lingual hyphenation

If you look in the paragraph above the table you will see the text:

'levels of the lagers sold in the bierkeller at Hochheim.'

The word bierkeller has been hyphenated as 'bi-erkeller' which is perfectly correct if it were an English word. However, it is German and so different hyphenation rules apply.

EasiWriter is capable of hyphenating in most of the European languages and, with optional dictionaries, spell checking too.

  1. Double-click on the word 'bierkeller' to select it.
  2. Choose German from the Country menu in the Text menu.

You will see that the hyphenation has changed.

Inserting a Greek character
TechWriter users only

If you look in the 'Abstract' of this document you will see a reference to 'x2'. This is because it originated as a text only document. It really should be 'c2' but can be easily changed.

Select the 'x' and click on 'c' in the Greek palette or press Shift-F7 c. (Make sure you use a Lowercase 'c').

Note: You do not have to delete a character in order to replace it. Whenever you select something and type, or paste, the selection is replaced. You can use Undo to recover if you do this by mistake.

Footnotes and endnotes

EasiWriter lets you add notes to documents using the command Footnote from the Structure menu. By default they are added to the bottom of the page - footnotes. The Misc menu has a submenu Footnotes which allows you to place them at the end of the chapter or document when they become endnotes.

You are going to add the footnote 'non-vintage' to 'Moët Chandon'.

  1. Scroll to bring the 'Abstract' of the document into view.
    (You will find the word 'Chandon' on the penultimate line.)
  2. Click to the right of it so that the caret is between the 'n' and the full stop.
  3. Click on the Footnote button (Ctrl-Shift-F10).
    The caret will move to the bottom of the document to the right of the '*' which EasiWriter has inserted automatically.
  4. Type 'Non-vintage'.
  5. Click on the End structure button (Ctrl-]).

The footnote reference '*' will be inserted as a superscript after the word 'Chandon' and the caret will be positioned after it.

Changing the footnote reference style

Footnote references can be numbers or symbols and can be changed using the Footnotes command in the Misc menu.

The footnote reference changes to a number. That concludes this part of the tutorial. In it you have learnt how to:


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