This is a Release version of Dock'Em™ for the Macintosh. Dock'Em™ will run on the PowerPC and on the 680x0 machines. Please contact MetaMind for a copy of the correct Editor, if you have the wrong one.
A Dock'Em™ Viewer is available on the MetaMind Web site for you to give your friends who wish to read, but not edit, Dock'Em™ documents. You will also find a Demonstration version of Dock'Em™ there.
IF IT DOESN'T LAUNCH:
Sometimes OpenDoc will indicate that it cannot find or launch Dock'Em™ even though it is correctly placed in the Editors folder. This may be due to several reasons:
(1) This version of Dock'Em™ requires at least the ODFLibrary version 1.2. If you are using an earlier version, or if there are several versions of ODFLibrary in your Editors folder, remove all other versions and install version 1.2 or later. As of this writing, version 1.2.2 is the current version.
(2) In versions earlier than 1.0.3, Dock'Em experienced some problems when the computer was a new one, or had a recently installed System in which the older version was completely removed before the new one was installed. In these cases, printer drivers and specifications may not have been available. This caused Dock'Em to abort launch. The current version rectifies this problem. The solution on the older versions is to choose a printer in the Chooser control panel.
(3) Be sure to remove older versions of "Page Composer" and of "Dock'Em" from your Editors folder. Dock'Em™ is a replacement for Page Composer, the name which was used during development.
WARNING:
In November 1996, Apple announced that the Code Fragment Manager Enabler for the 68k machines (the "CFM 68k Enabler") causes intermittent crashes of the operating system, leading possibly to loss of data. This means that on 68k machines any shared library will have difficulty maintaining as high a level of stability as it might have on the PowerPC. Consequently, since OpenDoc parts make use of this enabler, Dock'Em™ for 68k may not be as stable as it is on the PowerPC. The cause is in the CFM Enabler, not in the 68k version of Dock'Em™. This problem will continue until Apple publishes a fix for the problem. MetaMind will keep its users advised of progress on its web site.
The Manual.
Dock'Em™ comes with an Apple Guide, called "Dock’Em Guide For Version1.0". Drop the Guide nto the Extensions folder of your System Folder. Be sure the Apple Guide Extension, which should have come with your MacOS System, is in the same folder. Sometimes it is helpful to put all of your guides altogether into a "Global Guide files" folder.
How To Install this Part
Drag the "MetaMind's Dock'Em™ PPC 1.0.3" editor and the "ODF Library 1.2.2" to the Editors folder of your hard drive. Drag the stationery document, "Fresh Dock'Em™ Stationery" to the Stationery folder on your hard drive. Read the "Dock'Em™ ReadMe!!" file. Actually the Stationery may be placed anywhere on your hard drive or desktop.
How to Use this part
Double click on the Fresh Dock'Em Stationery to open a fresh, blank Dock'Em! document. Or drag the Fresh Dock'Em Stationery or any other Dock'Em! document into any OpenDoc compliant container document.
Canvas, Pages and the Content Items
Making and Deleting Pages. You may create an infinite number of pages anywhere anytime within the document. Do this by clicking on the "+" button in the Navigator which is located in the bottom left hand corner of the frame, to the left of the horizontal scrollbar. The page will be inserted in place after the currently displayed page. Pages may be also be deleted by clicking on the "-" button, though there will always be two pages, a Master Page and a "normal" page. Only two pages, at the most, use RAM memory at any given time. Each page is read out to file as the pages are turned.
Content items placed on the Master Page will propagate to all of the other pages. These items will appear on those pages, but will only be editable on the Master Page.
Locking +/- : The page creation and deletion buttons can be locked to prevent radical changes to the document. Use the menu item to lock.
Navigating Pages. The arrows in the page turner will take you from page to page. The Navigator, and the srollbars can hidden from view using menu items. this is particularly useful for embedded Dock'Em™ documents.
Canvas and Paper. The page actually consists of a canvas on which "paper" is drawn to show what would be printed when printing occurs. The paper outline is shown as a solid rectangle with a shadow on the right side. A dotted rectangle just inside the paper boundaries specifies the region within which content items will be printed. Items outside of the dotted line will not print. The canvas extends considerably beyond the paper bounds as scratch area and is a different scratch area on every page.
The paper area color and the canvas area color can be changed by opening the toolbox, selecting the fill color desired (see Toolbox, below), then choosing the appropriate menu item, either "Set Paper Color" or "Set Canvas Color".
The paper may be hidden on each page individually using a menu item. Each page carries its own set of "content items", so when you turn the page these items will appear and disappear appropriately. If you drop a part on a page, it too will stay with its page.
Zoom. The page will zoom to three sizes, 50%, 100%, and 200% using this menu item, but you will find that many parts which embed will not scale properly to zoom factors other than 100%. This is due not to Dock'Em!, but to the embedded part itself. Many parts currently do not support such scaling.
Show Ruler, Show Gridlines , Show Guidelines: A ruler and a grid are available for use in positioning items on the page. They may can be hidden and reshown using these menu items. When you click in either of the rulers, a guideline appears on the page, crossing the entire canvas. These guides are local to the page and will be saved with the page. They are deleted by dragging off of the visible content area.
Content Items: Items which can appear on the pages are called "Content Items", namely shapes, pictures, and embedded documents. Shape items are made using tools in the toolbox which is opened using a menu item. Picture items and files may be dragged into Dock'Em! from the scrapbook, or they may be pasted in using the menu items from the clipboard. OpenDoc compliant parts, seen as stationery pad icons or as document icons on the desktop, may also be dragged and dropped anywhere in the document.
A selected group of items dragged to the desktop makes its own unqiue file, a "Dock'Em Shapelist", readable by an Dock'Em™ document, and in the futre, by many other containers.
Toolbox
The Toolbox is opened using a item in the "Contents" menu. It carries tools for the construction of shapes and for setting the global properties of parts, such a fill and frame color.
Selection Tool: Moving from left to right then top to bottom, the first tool is the standard selection tool.
Render Property. The second tool sets a property of shapes, indicating whether the shape will have only a frame around it, be filled with color without a frame, or have both a frame and fill color.
Fill Color and Stroke Color Properties. The third tool actually sets the fill color of shapes and of the page and paper. It also sets the color of shape frames and of lines. Clicking and holding in the center rectangle will popup a color palette. If you then choose a color and release the mouse the inner rectangle will change color to indicate the new fill color for future shapes. If a shape is selected when the choice is made, the choice will also apply to the shape.
Menu items will set the page color and the paper color to the current fill color showing in the inner rectangle.
Clicking and holding in the outer region will popup the same color palette, but a choice here will set the frame color of shapes, or the line color. As before, the choice will apply to any shape which is currently selected.
Shapes. The next three tools draw rectangles, rounded rectangles and ovals. Simply click on the tool to set it. There are no popups associated with these tools. If you hold down the shift key while creating the shape, it will size itself proportionally. That is, a rectangle will be created as a square and an oval as a circle.
FreeDraw Tool: The Pencil shaped tool will draw freestyle lines. They can be thick or thin and have arrows on them. They can be colored using the Stroke Color Property tool. They cannot however, be dashed.
Label Shape. The next tool is a "Label" tool and is recognizable as a yellow colored "stickie" being torn from a notepad. They may have up to 32000 characters. They too can be proportionally resized when created. They always carry letters on a white background and cannot be inverted. The color of the text can be changed using the "Fill Color" property tool in the Toolbox.
Lines and Line properties: The properties of frames and of lines may be set by the popup associated with this tool. Lines can be solid or dashed, thick or thin, and can have arrows on the ends and in the middle. Draw a line by clicking on the tool, then clicking and dragging in the document. Holding the shift key while creating the line will cause it to become either horizontal or vertical.
PICTs and Bitmaps. You may drag and drop PICT files, created in a draw program, from the desktop, or PICT data from the scrapbook, or you may paste PICT data from the clipboard into Dock'Em!
The PICT will appear natively as a regular shape, unless you choose to embed it (see "Embedding Objects" below). A PICT is currently implemented, not as a picture, but as a bitmap. If in resizing a bitmap you lose its original proportions, they may be regained by holding down the shift key while resizing. You can regain the original boundaries of the pitcure by holding down the control key while clicking on the picture. Currently this effect cannot be undone.
If you click on a picture while holding down the option key, the picture will become transparent; that is, the background will show through the picture. Doing this again will again make it opaque. Currently this effect cannot be undone.
Behavior of Items
Duplicating items. Items can be duplicated by using the standard copy/paste menu items, or by holding down the option key when clicking and dragging on an item. Items can be dragged and dropped from any Dock'Em! document into any other Dock'Em! document. You can drag selected shapes into the scrapbook or to the desktop, where they will be saved as a list of Dock'Em shapes. Currently the icon for the shapelist on the desktop is a generic document icon.
Deleting Items. Items can be deleted by selecting the items, then pressing the delete or backspace key on the keyboard. They can also be deleted by choosing the "Clear" menu item.
Ordering Items. Items can be placed in a top to bottom ordering on the page. Those placed on the page first are automatically on the bottom of the stack and are drawn first to the screen, so that shapes added later, sit on top. This ordering can be changed using the popup menu "Move" in the "Contents" menu.
Grouping of Items. Items may be grouped and ungrouped by first selecting them individually while holding down the shift key, then using menu items. When grouped, the handles on each item disappears, replaced by only four handles around the entire group. The group may be moved by dragging, and deleted by pressing delete or backspace or by choosing the "Clear" menu item. All members of a group will resize if a group is resized.
Locking Items. Items are locked by using a menu item. The handles in the corners become little "locks" to let you know that the item cannot be resized, moved, or otherwise changed. This is true for embedded items as well.
If locked items are added to a group, they remain locked, which immediately prevents the entire group from being dragged or otherwise edited. The group's handles will blink with locks, if the user attempts to drag or resize a group in which one or more items are locked.
The locks may be hidden using a menu item. This is particularly useful if you have a picture or embedded part over which you would like to draw some shapes with the tools. The locked item will not move "by accident" when the tool is used. This is also useful if you want to have a picture in the background of a page. There will, of course, be no indication that it is locked, until the user chooses "Shows Locks" in the menu.
Printing Items: Items placed on the paper will, in general, print. If the paper is invisible, no item on the page will be printed. The paper is hidden using a menu item. If you still do not want an item on the paper to print, you can selectively prevent it from printing by choosing the "Don't Print Item" menu item.
Resizing Items: Items can be resized at will. Holding the shift key while resizing causes different behavior depending upon the item. Lines will become either horizontal or vertical; rectangles, labels, and ovals will become squares or circles; pictures will resize proportionate to their original "best-look" size.
Embedding Objects
You may embed pictures or any component object by holding down the command key, while dragging the object into your document. OpenDoc will find an appropriate Editor to image the object.
You may drag a Dock'Em! document into any OpenDoc container, such as WAV or Nisus Writer and it will embed. The Dock'Em! document will appear within its own frame in the container. This is particularly useful if you want to embed a frame which carries several pages of pictures; you can create an embedded slide presentation on a single page of the containing document! If you focus the the frame and choose"View In Window", the Dock'Em! document will appear in its own window.
If you select an embedded component or document, the "PartInfo..." menu item becomes available. Choosing it will give you information concerning the embedded object. The dialog will also allow you to choose a frame or an iconic presentation of the embedded object. This is a way to save window space. If you double click on an iconic presentation of an embedded object, the object will open into its own window for viewing and editing; this is an alternative to choosing the "View In Window" menu item.
To embed a Dock'Em document, you need first to activate the target window, then hold down the command key while dropping the document. You will then be given the PasteAs... dialog in which you can choose "Embed". Although it is suggested that Merging is available, it is not currently supported, so nothing will happen to the document if you choose the "Merge" option.
If the target window is not activated, the PasteAs... dialog will not appear; the window will only become active.
You can continue to embed Dock'Em! documents inside of themselves rather deeply. This nesting is an interesting festure of OpenDoc.
General Document Behavior:
Saving. Everything you put in the document saves properly as long as embedded objects themseleves save correctly.
View In Window: When you drop a part on a page, give it the focus and choose the "View In Window" menu item. This opens the embedded document into its own window. You will be able to edit the document there or in the frame. This is particularly useful if you wish to view the content of a document in two different ways.
Insert: Besides dragging any OpenDoc document into a Dock'Em! document, you can use the "Insert" menu item to do the same thing. Choose the "Insert" menu item in the containing document, find the document you want to embed in the dialog box which appears, then push the OK button. You can also drag and drop or you may "Insert" a Dock'Em! document into a containing Dock'Em! document.
What can you do to help?
We would appreciate any comments on the human interface and on features. which you find interesting, left out, or broken. Please contact us through our web site.
