File and Pict handling

The following paragraphs give information on how to manipulate GXWaterfall test documents which have been, or will be, filed for later use.

New Test Documents

To create a new Waterfall test document click on the File menu option and select the New menu item. A blank and untitled test document will then be displayed ready for new tests to be run.

 

Opening and Closing old test documents

There are several ways of opening GXWaterfall test documents.GXWaterfall now supports drag and drop file launching .To open a document in this way drag a Waterfall document(s) onto the application icon and release to launch the application (if not already active) and automatically open the document(s).Alternatively you can simply double click on the documents icon to launch GXWaterfall and open the document. GXWaterfall also supports the conventional file dialog box which is accessed by clicking on the File menu option then selecting the Open menu item.A standard file manipulation window will then be displayed allowing the file path and name to be chosen in the normal manner.

Test documents can be closed either by clicking on the close button on the documents title bar or by choosing the Close menu item from the file menu.The user will be prompted to save any new work should they try to close a window without having saved any changes to the test document.

 

Desktop Launcher

The GXWaterfall Desktop Launcher is a drag launchable script that allows multiple GXWaterfall documents to be opened at the same time.This has the advantage of enabling the user to open a suite of test documents instead of opening each document one at a time.This might prove usefull to font developers who want to see the effects that changing a fonts design will have on a suite of test documents .Once the font is altered the font developer can use the Desktop Launcher to open the test suite without the need to redo all of the tests.The Desktop Launcher works as follows...

The GXWaterfall Desktop Launcher icon looks like this ->

Note : The folder should contain nothing but GXWaterfall documents.

This has the effect of launching the GXWaterfall application and opening all the documents that are in the folder, which is the functional equivalent of selecting all the documents with the mouse and dropping them on the GXWaterfall application icon.

 

Converting GXWaterfall test documents to Picts

Now you can convert GXWaterfall document pages to PICTs for insertion into wordprocessing documents, attachments to e-mail, etc. First select the page you want to get a PICT of (scroll up down the document). Now you have two options (Edit and File Menus respectively):

Copying the page to the clipboard as a PICT: Having done this you can for example go into a word processor, select the Paste option and you should then have the page as a PICT.

Exporting the page as a PICT saves the PICT as a SimpleText-PICT file (which you specify in a dialog). Double clicking on the file will load up SimpleText to display the PICT. The file can be drag/dropped onto, opened with and imported into applications that support PICTs. PICT files make useful e-mail attachments as PICTs are widely supported by other applications.

NOTE: When you export a PICT, you can not reopen it in GXWaterfall. If you wish to save work to open later, use the standard Save menu option as before.

 

Saving GXWaterfall Test Documents

The file menu now has Save and Save As... options. Save As.. works as before, allowing you to save to a new (or existing) file. It also changes the window title bar to the selected document name. The Save option is only available if the current document has a name i.e. it has been previously saved with Save As... or opened with Open. Documents with 'untitled' in the title bar have not yet been saved and you must therefore use Save As... before Save.If you close an amended GXWaterfall document without having saved it first then a save reminder dialog will be displayed with the standard Save, Don't Save and Cancel options. When you save a Waterfall document, the text, text colors, background color, window size and window position are saved.

 

Backwards File Compatibility

Because this version of GX Waterfall (2.0a7) saves background color, window positions/sizes etc. it was necessary to change the file format to accomodate this extra data. Therefore, documents saved with earlier versions of GX Waterfall can NOT be used with this version. (attempting to open same will result in program failure).