!Help file for !QuickDraw version 1.51 - 27/06/05 - Freeware
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What is it?
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 !QuickDraw is a simple application to complement !Draw. 

 Its aim is to put lots of shapes at your fingertips, allowing them to be dragged straight into a Draw window, saving you the time and trouble of drawing them. Although it could be used as a clip-art dispenser, the shapes provided are intended to be templates or primitives, speeding up the drawing process by providing ready-drawn circles, polygons, arrows etc. which can then by altered as desired. For this reason all the shapes are black outlines with no fill.
 
Use
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 Double-click to load and an icon will appear on the iconbar. Click the menu button over the icon and you'll see the following four categories:
 
Geometric - Circles, squares, polygons etc.
Arrows - Arrows and more arrows
Stars - Stars in different styles and different numbers of points
Misc - Various shapes

Moving across from any of these categories will open a window displaying the shapes as icons. Clicking any shape icon puts the name of that shape into the window title. Dragging the shape to an open Draw window (or anything that will load drawfiles) will load it. If you Select-drag the shapes window will close afterwards; if you Adjust-drag it will stay open.

Colour coding
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 There is a loose system for colouring the icons in the windows to aid in picking the correct version of a shape. 
 
 * Green shapes are made of straight lines and have a corresponding yellow curved version. 
 * Yellow shapes in general contain curves.
 * Blue shapes either make the shape clearer or distinguish between shapes that look similar at the small size of the icons
 * Red lines indicate a long shape, only part of which is shown in the icon
 
Notes on Geometric category
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 Most of the shapes come in five versions: 
 
 1) Straight lines, solid shape
 2) Straight lines, open shape - like a stencil
 3) Bevelled - the facets are separate shapes that have been grouped
 4) Curved lines solid
 5) Curved lines open

Notes on Arrows category
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 Most of the arrows are fairly chunky block arrows, but those which aren't are indicated by having a thin blue line next to the arrowhead. These arrows are thinner and longer.
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Adding/changing shapes
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To make changing or adding shapes a bit less fiddly v1.5 has some new functionality. If you click on the shape category in the iconbar menu a window will open showing three buttons:

1) Draw button - Click this to open the directory containing the drawfiles of the shapes. 
2) Sprite button - Click this to open the spritefile containing all the icons of the shapes
3) Text button - Click this to open the list of shapes and the order they appear in the windows

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Procedure for changing an existing shape*
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a) Either double-click the shape in the Draw button directory, alter it and resave, or drag a drawfile of the same name into the Draw button directory.
b) If the icon needs changing too, alter or drag a replacement sprite into the "buttons" spritefile opened by the Sprite button. Save the file.
c) If you want to alter the position of the icon in the Geometric, Arrows etc. window move its position in the textfile opened by the Text button. Make sure you don't leave any blank lines in the process (including at the end of the list). Save the file. 
d) Quit and reload !QuickDraw

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Procedure for adding a new shape*
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a) First decide on a name and make sure the drawfile and the sprite icon have that name
b) Open the Draw button directory and drag your new shape into it. Note that on RISC OS versions less than 4 there's a limit of 75 shapes per category.
c) Open the Sprite button spritefile and add your icon sprite to it. This isn't essential, but your new shape will appear as a blank square if you don't add an icon to go with it. Save the file.
d) Open the Textfile button textfile and add your new shape's name to the list, wherever you'd like it. Make sure you don't leave any blank lines in the process (including at the end of the list).  Save the file.
e) Quit and reload !QuickDraw

Tips
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* The number at the very top of the shape list textfile is the number of buttons per row. Change this to change the layout of the windows.

* If you've added new sprite icons it may be necessary to increase the memory allocated to !QuickDraw. You can do this by loading the !Run file into a text editor and increasing the values of the Wimpslot.

* If you only want to change the drawfile version of a shape (and not the icon or position in the window) the quickest way to do it is to drag the shape into an empty "Untitled" Draw window, make your changes and save. It will then be immediately ready for use. Be careful you don't accidentally do this if you started off your drawing by dragging a shape in.

* After altering the "buttons" spritefile or the shape list textfile the easiest way to save them (if you're finished) is to close the window, choose Save from the window that pops up and then click OK. 

And finally
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Thanks to Rosemary Miskin for the ever-so-useful !DrawLots, which was used to create the stars and is far cleverer than this app.

mattlb2@lycos.com

New in 1.51 - Just some more shapes in the misc category