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Exercise four Importing pictures and text

Next you are going to copy a picture into the document and also import some text. You will learn how to:

Draw files, Sprites, JPEGs (RISC OS 3.6 on), Edit files and 1st Word Plus documents can all be incorporated into an EasiWriter document. EasiWriter can also read HTML, Word 6, 7, 8 and 9 (Office 2000) documents as well as import RTF documents.

Pictures

EasiWriter has three ways of including pictures into a document:

In all cases the picture can be scaled and cropped.

You are going to add a bar graph to the document which will have a caption, so a Figure is the most suitable structure to use.

Figures

A Figure is a picture with a caption attached to it. By making it a structure EasiWriter knows that both the picture and its caption must stay together and not be split across columns or page breaks. A graph has been saved in the Tutorial directory which you are going to incorporate into an EasiWriter figure.

  1. Click on the Figure button in the button bar (Ctrl-Shift-F7 ).
    EasiWriter draws a picture rectangle with a caption area beneath.
  2. Click in the caption area under the picture, to set the caret and type:
    Bar chart showing the result of our experiment

Next open a display on the directory containing the bar chart.

  1. Click on the Back icon to bring the EasiWriter directory into view.
  2. Double-click on the Tutorial directory to open it.

Inserting a draw file

You can now move a copy of the bar chart draw file into the picture frame.

  1. Click in the picture frame to select it. A red border indicates it is selected. (If you don't select a picture frame the picture will be inserted at the caret position).
  2. Drag the 'BarChart' icon into the EasiWriter document.
  3. Release the mouse button.

A copy of the bar graph will be inserted into the picture frame.

Moving the caption

Figure captions can be placed above, below, to the left or to the right of the picture and can be moved at any time by selecting the figure and clicking Select on the Style button in the top right of the button bar or by choosing Change from the Format menu.

Selecting a figure

Before modifying a figure you must first select it.

  1. Click Select either on the picture or in the caption.
  2. Click Menu on the Selection indicator and choose Figure from the Select menu.

The figure will become highlighted and the Style indicator at the top right of the window will change to Figure style.

Format attributes

All structures have format attributes which can be modified and, if required, saved for future use. The actual attributes that can be changed vary depending on what type of structure is selected. Lists, for example, can have a different bullet character. Figures on the other hand can have a different caption position.

  1. Click on the Style indicator to open the Figure Format dialogue.

  2. Click on the Caption right icon.
  3. Click OK to confirm the choice.

The caption will have moved to the right of the picture and will have been reformatted.

Adjusting the margins

The appearance of this figure can be improved by adjusting the positions of the picture and text.

When the figure is selected the ruler shows you the margin positions for both the picture and its caption. You are going to move the picture's right hand margin marker and both the captions' markers to the left.

Markers on the ruler can be moved one at a time, or you can move all or some of the markers at the same time.

  1. Move the mouse pointer between the first and second margin markers (under the 4" marker on the ruler).
  2. Press Select and drag, to the right, across the three margin markers to select them.

  3. Release Select.
  4. Move the pointer over the left of the three markers, press select and drag them left to the 4" mark.

All three markers will have moved to the left.

Horizontal alignment

At the moment both the picture and caption are centre aligned. Next you are going to align the picture to the right and its caption to the left.

  1. Click in the picture to select it.
    The ruler will now show the picture's margin settings. The Centre alignment icon becomes indented to show that the picture is centre aligned.
  2. Click on the Right alignment icon.
    The picture will align with its right margin.
  3. Now click in the caption and click the Left Alignment icon.
    The text will align to the left.

Vertical alignment

The final change to be made is to move the caption down. This can be done using the Spacing command.

The spacing command can be used on any structure to change the space before and after it. Where appropriate it can also be used to change the spacing between lines of text.

  1. Choose Figure Caption from the Select menu.
  2. Choose Spacing from the Format menu.
  3. Edit the value for Space before to 24 points and click OK.

The caption will move down.

Importing text

Text written by 1st Word Plus, Edit or other applications that can write text files, can be copied into EasiWriter. You are going to create a new section and then import some text into it.

  1. Click on the End Structure button or choose End Figure (Ctrl-]) from the Structure menu.
  2. Click on the Section button .

The caret will move to the next line ready to start a section heading.

Next you need to bring the 'Tutorial' directory to the front.

  1. Click in 'Exercise2's' Back icon.
    'Exercise2' will go behind the 'Tutorial' directory display.
  2. Drag the Edit file 'Conclusion' into your project.

The text will be inserted into the project document at the caret position, the first paragraph will have become the section heading.

Close and save

Next you are going to close the document and save the changes.

  1. Click on the Close icon.
    A dialogue box will appear where you can choose to save the changes, discard them or return to the document.
  2. Click Save.
    The Save as dialogue box will appear.
  3. Click OK to save the document with the same name.
    The changes will be saved, replacing the previous copy, and the window will be closed.

Summary

In this exercise you have learnt how to:


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