How-To
Graphics

How-To

Graphics

Importing Graphics - Procedure

First, insert a Graphics frame about where you want it; you can fine tune it later.

Once you draw the frame, WSWin will automatically switch you to Edit Mode; you must be in Edit Mode in order to import a graphic (or a text file, for that matter).

With graphic frame selected and in Edit Mode, do a File menu, Import Graphic. Import File as Type: in the dialog box has to be set to the file extension of whatever you want to import (wmf, pcx, tif). You also need to have the graphic's path listed under Directories: in the Import dialog box.

Highlight the file name and click OK. The graphic should appear in your graphic frame. If it doesn't, check Modify Frame Style - Scaling for the selected frame. Have Scale to Fit Frame and Maintain Aspect Ratio selected.

Precise Placement for Graphics

>> I'd use WSW 2 more if I spent the time to get comfortable with it (and to figure out how to add and place graphics. <<

It's much easier to get precise placement with WSWin than it is with Word. First Insert a graphics frame. You just draw it with your cursor approximately where you want it to be; you can fine-tune it later. After you release your cursor when you've dragged out the frame, you will switch automatically to Edit Mode with the graphics frame selected. Now do File menu, Import Graphic. You need to get the directory where your graphic is stored listed under Directories:. You need to have Import File as Type set to whatever kind of graphic type you are importing. Click on the little down arrow to see what's available on the dropdown list. Now click on the filename you want to import and click on OK. Your graphic will appear in the frame.

Right click your mouse button with the frame selected and switch to Frame Mode in the context menu. Now resize the frame and drag it where you want it. You might also want to modify the frame style for the graphics frame. You can also get that by right clicking when the frame is selected in Frame Mode. Note the Scaling screen, where you can scale and position the graphic in the frame.

You can size and position the graphics frame very precisely, make it transparent or not, make text wrap around it or not, put a border around it, add margins, and so forth.

>> If the page borders are essential for your work know that WSW2 is limited to single and double border lines of various thicknesses with curved corners. <<

Partially true. "Curved corners" is misleading. You can have either square corners or rounded corners. Rounded corners is checked by default. However, by default it is also set to a radius of 0, which gives you a square corner. In order to get rounded corners, you have to make the frame margins large enough to accommodate the radius you desire.

You are not limited to the lines that come with the program. You can make your own single and double lines of just about any thickness you want. You can also change the color. Making your own lines is somewhat tricky, but can be very useful. What WSWin can't do with frame borders that I wish it could is make a dashed or dotted border. Dashed borders are handy when you are making a coupon that people are going to cut out. What you have to do to get that is make a graphic frame and draw a rectangle to the edges of the frame, selecting one of the dashed line styles that are available for drawings you create. You should always have Crop Image selected with no scaling when you are using WSWin drawing tools in a graphic frame. That way things will be exactly where you put them.

>> There are four border templates included with WSW2 but you would have to learn how to reset their size so they cover only the portion of the page as you wish it to. <<

None of them are the style she was looking for, either. I've never found those borders useful at all. If they get distorted when you resize, they get really ugly.

WSWin can easily make a border that repeats on every page if you use a custom header. It's super easy, you don't have to mess with copying frames to every page or linking text frames, and you can turn off the border simply by inserting a new header. See page for more information about using a custom header for a repeating border.

How to Make a Contoured Text Wraparound for a Graphic

When you select Text Wraps around Frame for a graphic frame in WSWin, the wraparound will always conform to the rectangular edges of the graphic frame. Frequently, however, you may want your text to follow the contours of the graphic itself. Though WSWin has no automatic way to do this, you can use the following procedure to create a nicely contoured wraparound. Though automatic wraps are nice, they usually need some manual tweaking. With WSWin you can have complete control over the way your text wraps around the edges of your graphic.

Insert a graphics frame and import your graphic. Position the graphic so it's exactly the size and in the position you want. Fit the edges of the graphic frame as close to the graphic as you can without forcing a change in the size of the graphic. Modify the frame style for that graphic frame so that Transparent Frame is selected and Text Wraps around Frame is NOT selected. Pull one edge of the graphic frame so it extends considerably past the edge of the graphic itself; you should have Scale to Fit Frame and Maintain Aspect Ratio selected in the Modify Frame Style Scaling dialog. Pull an edge of the frame that will not change the size of the graphic. If necessary, you can change the graphic frame margins to force the graphic to be a certain size if pulling an edge of the frame makes the graphic too large.

Next, do Frame menu, Snap to, and select Margins. Now insert a small text frame inside the graphic frame. Switch to Frame Mode (when you insert a frame you are automatically switched to Edit Mode once you have finished drawing the frame). Now stretch the text frame inside the graphic frame so it touches at least two of the graphic frame's borders; one of the borders it touches should be the top border, but be sure to leave part of the graphic frame uncovered by the text frame. Also be sure this text frame is a child frame of the graphic frame. The way you can tell is by checking the measurement readout in the Frame Bar, which should be turned on. The top position should read 0 if the text frame touches the top border of the graphic frame. With a child frame, the position readouts are given from the edge of the parent frame. If the measurements give the position on the PageText frame, the frame is not a child frame of the graphic frame. Modify the current text frame so that Transparent Frame is selected and Text Wraps around Frame is not selected. You should see your graphic with text going under the graphic without interruption. You should also have two frames - a graphic frame and a child text frame - that are considerably larger than the graphic itself.

Now you'll do the contoured wraparound. Insert a small text frame INSIDE the text frame you just placed inside the graphic frame. Switch back to Frame Mode and move the new small text frame to the top of the graphic while keeping it inside the parent text frame. In Modify Frame Style make sure that you have both Transparent Frame and Text Wraps around Frame selected for this frame. Now drag the edges (probably right and bottom) of the new small text frame so that it forces a line of the text under it to the position you want the line to be in. Do Frame menu, Snap To, uncheck Margins and check Frames. Now, while still in Frame Mode and with the same small text frame selected, press the Control key while you drag the copy of the frame down. The top of the new copied frame should snap to the bottom of the frame you copied it from. Release the mouse button. Click on the copied frame, hold Control, and make another copy of the frame directly under the frame you clicked on. Release. Do this until you have enough child frames to cover the graphic. Now adjust the edge of each of these touching frames to get the contoured text wrap you want. You should see a graphic around which text runs in a contour to match the edge of the graphic itself.

Why Use Parent and Child Frames?

The reason for making the graphic frame larger than the first text frame you inserted is so that you can easily select the graphic frame again, without having to go through procedures to select a frame that is completely covered by another frame. The reason for making the first child text frame large enough to hold all those wraparound child text frames is so that you can select the entire lot of them by clicking on just one frame, the larger parent text frame. If you move the graphic, it is much easier to move your entire group of contouring frames by moving the larger parent text frame than by clicking on and moving each of the small contouring frames. That is also why you must be sure the parent text frame is not completely covered by the child contouring frames. You always want to be able to easily select frames that are holding other frames.

The advantage of putting the child contouring frames inside a larger parent text frame that is itself the child of the graphic frame is that you get more control over those small contouring frames. You could, for example, move the parent text frame outside the graphic frame (it would now no longer be a child frame to the graphic frame) if you wanted to contour on more than one edge of the graphic. You could move the entire contour slightly to the right, left, top, or bottom without needing to adjust each small frame individually. You could copy to parent text frame and paste it onto another page or into another graphic frame and thus would not have to go through the work of drawing all the small frames again.

However, you can also insert the small contouring text frames as child frames within the graphic frame, without bothering with a larger parent text frame. Though this seems easier at first, I have found that all too often I wind up fussing with contouring frames while making adjustments that could have been done more easily by moving a parent text frame that would contain all the contouring frames.

There are many ways to adjust the size and position of a graphic with WSWin. You can make the frame fit the edges of the graphic tightly. You can pull one edge, and if you keep the other edges tightly around the graphic, the graphic's size won't change if you have Maintain Aspect Ratio selected. You can make the frame larger than the graphic and use the frame's Margin settings to size and position the graphic inside the frame. Don't overlook the Position in Frame: Horizontal and Vertical in the Scaling screens of Modify Frame Style.

Ideally, you should size the vertical measurement of your contouring text frames so that each frame controls one line of text, or a multiple of one line. In order to do this, you need to find the "sweet spot" where a contouring frame will not affect the text line above or below the desired line. The best way to get control over lines of text is to use a leading grid (see page for an explanation of how to do this). If you have a properly set up leading grid, you can draw your contouring frames so that they Snap To Grid. In the Snap To dialog, you should have both Snap To: Page Grid and Display: Page Grid selected. You must also switch the Units: to Points and type in the Line Ht. measurement of your leading grid in the Size: Vertical box.

Once you have Snap To set up properly, draw your contouring frames with Snap To Grid active and nothing else. Each frame should control the position of one line of text. If you want a frame to control more than one line of text, drag the bottom of the contouring frame down until it controls the desired number of text lines.

What to Remember:

Make the graphic frame Transparent and turn off Text Wraps around Frame.

Make contouring text frames Transparent and be sure Text Wraps around Frame is turned on.

If you use a text frame as a container for the entire group of contouring child frames, have the frame Transparent and turn off Text Wraps around Frame.

You want only the contouring frames to force text to wrap.

How to Get a Smaller File with Repeating Graphics

If you want to have a smaller file size for a file with repeating graphics, this is how you do it:

Create your first graphics frame. Import a copy of the graphic you want into the frame. Drag while holding down Control to create another graphics frame. Switch to Edit Mode, click on the graphic, and hit Delete. This is so you will have an *empty* frame of the proper size to copy. Now Control-Drag the empty graphics frame to create as many frames as you need. In Frame Mode, click on the first frame that contains the desired graphic. Now click on the Link icon or go to the Frame menu, Link frame. Now click on the next graphics frame. The graphic will now appear in the original frame and the linked frame. Click on the frame you just linked, click on Link icon, click on the next empty frame. Graphic will appear in three frames. Repeat the linking until all the frames are filled with the graphic. If you have two graphics, do the same thing with the second graphic. Save your document.

This gives you the smallest possible file size. You actually have just ONE copy of the graphic in your document, but it appears in all linked frames.

I ran some experiments. I set up a one-page document with ten graphics frames, all the same size and all to hold the same graphic (a 14K WMF created in CorelDraw). I got a file of over 175K when I copied the graphic into one frame and then made nine copies of that frame. When I set up separate graphics frames and individually established a one-way link to the graphics file through the Import Graphic dialog box, Reference One-Way Link, I got a file of over 166K. When I used Insert Copy of Document in the Import Graphic dialog box to import the graphic into one frame and then did the linking to the 9 remaining frames as I described above, the file size was less than 60K. It was a little bigger if I used Reference One-Way Link and then linked subsequent frames. When I used Insert Object, started CorelDraw, and embedded the graphic through OLE, I got a file of 275K - the biggest of all!

I know from many, many projects involving repeated graphics that putting ONE copy of the graphic into a frame and linking all the subsequent frames that should display that graphic is by far the most economical way to do it, plus it avoids the performance overhead that OLE causes.

The time you want to use OLE is when you are creating a drawing in CorelDraw or another drawing program that includes effects like blends and masks that do not export reliably except into the EPS format. WMF is a problematic format suitable for fairly straightforward graphics.

I find this statement confusing:

>> Do a graphics frame on each ticket and import the saved Corel file into the frames. <<

You *can't* import a saved Corel file into a graphics frame because WSWin does not have a CDR filter. You have to export your Corel file into a different format and then import that. File sizes of various formats can vary quite a bit, so the scenario you describe might be dependent on the format into which you exported your Corel graphic. If you're talking about OLEing a Corel object into each frame (an Object frame, not a graphics frame), well - that would be a bit insane!<ggg> Let me state explicitly that this is a joke, not an insult.

Seriously, from now on link your repeating graphics as I described. It is by far the most efficient and least troublesome way to do it.

Bitmaps and WSWin

>> This afternoon I got a 2 page fax that I needed to copy and send on with additional notes to another fax machine. I saved the incoming fax as 2 (single page each) PCX files from my fax software.

Here is the hitch: The PCX images were in the vicinity of 1200x1200, size-wise. They were black and white. WSWin really struggled big-time with screen redraws such that it was agonizing to try to manipulate and resize them. It took literally minutes just to scroll half a page, never mind resize 'em both. <<

When I had a 486/33 with ISA video card, using large bitmaps with WSWin was agonizing. The line-by-line build seemed to take forever. When I upgraded to a 586/133 with PCI video card, things got better but big bitmaps were still pretty slow to work with in WSWin. With my Pentium II and Rage Pro video, bitmaps aren't slow anymore.

I converted a full-page fax to PCX so I could see what would happen if I duplicated your situation. I placed a graphics frame then imported the PCX file into it. I then stretched the graphics frame to the page edges. I had the Scale to Fit Frame and Maintain Aspect Ratio options active in the graphics frame.

It was definitely fast enough to make annotations - basically, no waiting. I also tried viewing the PCX file with Quick View Plus, selecting it and copying to the clipboard, and pasting into WSWin. This way was noticeably slower.

I think the problem is your hardware isn't up to this. The files are big and WSWin does have a laborious way of dealing with bitmaps.

>> I suspect I have done something in a less-than-optimal way with WSWin to cause such sluggish performance. <<

I doubt it. The hardware just can't handle it.

>> I know I can set WSW to not draw the images for speeding up navigation, but if I do that, I can't see how I could resize 'em. <<

I don't think you mean resize. You'd have a hard time putting in annotations if you couldn't see the graphic, so turning off the graphics doesn't seem to be an option here.

>> Because the PCX files came into WSW2 too big for the frame by quite a bit, it was then necessary to adjust the frame size. <<

You don't need to adjust the frame. You should make your frame the size you want the page to be and have Scale to Fit Frame and Maintain Aspect Ratio selected. But this won't make WSWin redraw the screen any faster.

Getting JPG into WSWin

WSWin doesn't come with a filter for importing JPG graphics. If you want to insert a JPG into your document, you can use one of these methods:

1. Open the JPG in a program that is an OLE server; many graphics programs are. Copy it to the clipboard. In WSWin, Paste Special, as OLE object; or

2. Use a bitmap editor to save the JPG as a PCX, TIF, or BMP. Or use a graphics conversion program for this. Import the PCX, TIF, or BMP into WSWin using the filter included with WSWin; or

3. Copy the JPG to the Clipboard and paste it into WSWin without OLEing it. I don't think you can do this with a file so large that it exceeds the clipboard's capacity (especially in Win 3.1).

I have put JPGs into WSWin using all of these methods. I prefer to use OLE.

"Paste Special" Options

>> If you use "paste special" a graphic into WSW2 and it creates its own graphic frame then you have a STATIC graphic. If you open a graphic frame first, then "paste special" into the WSW2 graphic frame you have a NON static graphic. <<

Well, not quite. Whenever you use "paste special" on a clipboard graphic of the kind you describe, you can wind up with a static object - there's no such thing as a "static graphic." If you've copied a graphic from a currently running OLE-capable program into the clipboard, Paste Special will give you the option of pasting the graphic as an Object - actually invoking OLE. In that case, you do not have a static object.

If you have a graphic on the clipboard that did not come from an OLE program, no frame inserted in WSWin, and you choose Paste Special or Paste Object from the Edit menu, you'll wind up with a static object. Chances are high that it will be a bitmap, even if what you copied was a vector WMF graphic. It gets turned into a bitmap when it goes to the clipboard, as far as WSWin is concerned. (The WMF format can have either vector or bitmap data, or both.)

If you insert a graphic frame first, switch to Frame Mode, and choose Paste Special or Paste Object from the Edit menu or Paste Object by right-clicking with the graphics frame selected, you'll get the clipboard object pasted into the graphics frame. If it was put on the clipboard by an OLE-capable program, it will be placed as an Embedded Object. It is *not* strictly a part of the graphics frame, but is a child frame within the graphics frame. You can drag it outside the graphics frame and it will no longer be a child frame but will stand alone. If the graphic on the clipboard was not from an OLE-capable program and you right-click Paste Object, it will be a separate Static Object frame, as you can demonstrate by clicking on it and dragging, and will probably be a bitmap.

If you insert a graphic frame first and right click in Edit Mode and select Paste Object, you'll wind up with the clipboard object pasted as an item in the graphics frame; it is not an embedded object connected through OLE. However, it remains an object, though entirely within the graphics frame. You can't ungroup it or make any changes to it, though you can move it around and resize it or change its front-to-back order in relation to other objects in the graphics frame (for example, you could put graphics text on top of it). The clipboard object will most likely be pasted as a bitmap, even if the copied graphic was a vector metafile. Note that bitmaps cannot be edited in WSWin graphic frames.

Thus, if you Paste Object while you have a graphic frame selected and are in Edit Mode, you'll wind up with an object in the graphics frame; it will have no connection with anything else. If you are in Frame Mode, have a graphic frame selected and Paste Object or Paste Special and select the Object option, you'll wind up with an embedded object. However, you can also get a static object, if you prefer. You do have that option when you paste in Frame Mode.

If you insert a graphics frame and import a graphic through the File menu and the graphic is a vector format like WMF or DRW, you will be able to edit that graphic within the graphics frame. You can ungroup it (select the graphic frame, change to Edit Mode, select the imported graphic and right-click, Ungroup Objects, and then change colors of the ungrouped elements, delete elements, move them around, and so forth). You can also rotate vector graphics you import into a graphics frame. Note that you cannot rotate bitmaps, nor is there any way to fool WSWin into thinking a bitmap is something else. You have to use a bitmap editing program in order to rotate bitmaps.

People who do desktop publishing in a professional manner generally recommend against using the clipboard to get graphics into a program. The reason is primarily that the clipboard can do strange things to a graphic (such as turning a vector graphic into a bitmap and messing up the color information). However, I find that the graphics filters in WSWin are so unreliable that the clipboard often works better. WSWin's filters have even been known to mess up WMFs, which is Windows' own format.

OLE is, of course, another option. However, not all applications work reliably with OLE. Therefore, all you can do is try it and see what happens. WSWin has worked better than some others I've used, but it also depends on what application you're OLEing with. OLE also adds quite a bit of file overhead and can seriously impact performance, especially with less powerful computers.

Rotating Graphics in WSWin

>> You can rotate any graphic or text in the same WSW graphic frame. You do NOT need another program to do that for you. <<

No you *can't* rotate any graphic. The only graphics you can rotate are those in an importable vector format: DRW, CGM, WMF, and Lotus PIC. Also, of course, WSWin objects you draw yourself with the graphics tools. See page 108 of the WSWin manual.

Nor can you fool WSWin into thinking a bitmap is a vector graphics and rotating it that way. Hijaak, for example, will convert a bitmap PCX into a WMF. However, the WMF format can contain either vector or bitmap data or both. Hijaak cannot turn a bitmap graphic into a vector graphic. (At least, Hijaak for Windows 3.1.) If you want to rotate a bitmap you have to do it in a bitmap editor, such as PhotoFinish, Photoshop, Picture Publisher, PhotoDeluxe, etc.

>> What you can do is rotate each graphical element in a graphic frame individually. Placing one text character at a time in a graphic frame allows you to move around separately each alphabetical character at a time for some neat text effects. <<

Yes, but this is a lot of work and if you have a program that can automatically put text on a path, it is much easier to use another program and import the resulting graphic into WSWin. Also, be careful not to get too cutesy with these text effects. They are often a dead giveaway that an amateur just couldn't resist playing with his computer and add nothing of value to the document design. Sort of like pink flamingo lawn ornaments don't really do much to beautify the neighborhood.<g>

Rotating Text

I suspect your graphics toolbar was grayed out because you were in Frame Mode when you selected the frame. The toolbar can't become active until you switch to Edit Mode (same as Text mode).

The advice that was posted to this list failed to mention a couple of crucial points when you want to rotate text. The manual and Help are pretty deficient on this topic. I sweat quite a bit of blood before I figured out how to work with graphic elements. Once it clicks in your mind, though, it's easy.

The Most Important Thing to Do When You're Working with Graphic Elements in a Graphic Frame:

Modify the Frame Style under Scaling so that Crop Image is selected, NOT Scale to Fit Frame!!!!!!!

Be sure you modify the Current Frame if you don't want the change to apply to all Graphic Frames in your document.

Here are the reasons you should turn of Scale to Fit Frame when you are working with graphics text or other graphics tools. When you're importing a graphic into a graphics frame, you usually will want the graphic to Scale to Fit Frame and also to Maintain Aspect Ratio. When you are using the graphics tools to draw lines and shapes or add text, however, you DON'T want those to scale. You want to work at the exact size you want those objects to be and you want to know exactly where they are going to appear in the frame. Crop Image means whatever is in the graphics frame stays at its actual size. This is absolutely essential when you're working with text in a graphics frame. That text will get ugly and be the wrong size if you have Scale to Fit Frame selected. So again, modify the frame style so that CROP IMAGE is selected!

Now - to backtrack a bit. Here is what I would do:

If I were going to have both scaled graphics and graphic objects I added in a document and more than one frame of each, I would Create a Frame Style for my graphic objects frames that would have the Crop Image scaling option selected, margins of 0 all around, Transparent frame, and whatever else I wanted. I might call the style GraphicDraw. If I didn't want to displace document text, I would uncheck Text Wraps Around Frame, and vice versa.

Now Insert Frame, Graphic. Draw the frame to about the size you want and then apply the GraphicDraw frame style or Modify the Frame Style for the current frame so that Crop Image is selected, plus whatever other options you want. Now be sure you are in Edit Mode so the graphics toolbar becomes active. Click on the A (text tool), click in the frame about where you want the text to appear, and write what you want. When you are finished, click on the Selection Tool (big arrow). Be sure the text is selected (8 big dots appear around it). The text will be in BodyText font and point size, so if you want something different, you can change the font, size, and attributes (bold, italic, etc.) in two ways. You can either select the font, size and attributes from the Style Bar or you can select Frame menu, Graphics, Graphic Text Style, and get the precise size, font, attributes you want. Hit Enter and your choices will be applied to the selected text in the graphics frame.

There is no Undo function available for graphics frame operations, by the way, so save right before you do an operation, and if you don't like the results, you can go back to where you were by choosing File menu, Revert. Remember - save right before you do an operation of whose results you aren't sure.

Once you have the font, size, and attributes you want, you can rotate the text. NOTE: once you rotate the text, it is best to change the rotation angle back to 0 if you want to make changes in or add to the text.

Now, to rotate. With text, the best way is to go to Frame menu, Graphics, Rotate Object. That will bring up a dialogue box that gives you complete control. If you simply want the text to be turned upside down, uncheck At Mouse Pivot Point (Center, Center should be active as rotation points) and type 180 in the rotation angle box. Hit Enter and your text should now be nicely rotated. Use the same procedure with the Frame menu, Graphics, Rotate Object box to rotate to a different angle. When you type in the angle of rotation and tab, the little drawing will show the position of your rotated text. You can change the position if it's not what you want. If you hit Enter and decide you don't like the way your rotated text looks, you can change the rotation by selecting the text with the Pointer tool, doing Frame menu, Graphic, Rotate Object, and typing in your desired angle, even 0 if you want the text to be straight again. The angle of rotation should be highlighted in the dialogue box if you select rotated text. It's a good idea to Save before rotating if you're not sure you know what you want to do or how to do it, but it's not an irrevocable decision.

The last step is to get the rotated text object exactly where you want it. For this, select Frame menu, Graphics, Object Size (also available by selecting the text object and clicking the right mouse button). The dialogue box will list the size and position of the text object. If you want it in the upper left corner, select 0 for Left and 0 for Top. That should put your text right at the upper left of the frame. When you're done, select Frame Mode and you can resize the graphics frame with text. The text size and position won't change because you have Crop Image as your scaling option. If some of the text is clipped off, resize your frame and then go into Edit Mode, select the text object, click the right mouse button to get to Object Size, and be sure Top and Left aren't negative numbers. You can position any graphic object anywhere you want it in a frame through the Object Size dialogues. You can also move the object with the mouse if you want to eyeball it. Also be sure your right and bottom graphic frame scroll bars are at the top and the left positions in order for the object to be positioned properly.

WSWin graphic text objects are always one line in length. What if you want to rotate several lines, such as a paragraph? You can do this, too. Type in the text you want line by line. Text will not wrap, so when you reach what you want to be the end of the line, you have to hit Return to get text into the next line. Text will come in in BodyText font and point size and you can change that by selecting one line of text at a time and applying different fonts or sizes through the Graphics Text Style dialogue box or the Style bar. When you have entered several lines of text and they're the way you want them, select a line, then hold down Shift and select the rest of the lines, then hit the right mouse button, then Group Objects. Your "paragraph" will now hang together. Now do the Rotate Object dialogues as you did for a single line. Reposition the paragraph, if necessary. Note: WSWin will always apply Autoleading (120% of point size) when you type text objects and hit Enter to move to another line. If you want different leading, you'll have to apply it line by line. Decide on the leading you want in points, select the top line of text, select Points for your measurement units, note the top position, leave the dialogue, highlight the next line, select Points for units, move the Top position to your desired points from the top line, hit OK, and so on for each line. A pain, but if you really need to do it, you can.

>> Main thing is that you can ONLY rotate GRAPHIC FRAMES. <<

We need to correct the terminology here. You cannot rotate any frame in WSWin. All you can rotate are certain objects within graphics frames. Being able to rotate the actual frame would make a lot of things easier, but you can't do it.

>> If you do NOT have the scaling and other options as Judy instructs, the text will flow and change shape and size as you screw with the frame, but that's o.k...just keep dorking with the handles until it is the shape and size and location you want it. <<

No, no, no - DON'T dork with the handles of the frame if you have text in there and Scale to Fit Frame selected. Just change the darn thing to Crop Image and do it right!

The reason I am insistent on this is that the text gets ugly if it's allowed to resize according to the frame or if you mess with the text object itself within the frame in the attempt to make it bigger or smaller. I know - I did this more than a few times when I was struggling with graphics objects operations. When I printed the thing out, I noticed how crappy the text looked -it was NOT true to the typeface I was using. I thought, "Am I stuck with this mess? Is this the best it can do?" That's when I discovered if I used no scaling for the frame and got that text sized right to begin with, it would stay true to the typeface even after I rotated it.

I realize I may seem excessively picky on this. I admit that if it's just a letter to Uncle Fred, it probably doesn't matter. But if it's a brochure about your business or a communication from your company or organization, it DOES make a difference. People form impressions based on whether your work looks professional or amateur.

When I get a letter attempting to sell me software or hardware, if I find typos, misspellings, and grammar mistakes I usually toss the letter in the trash. I figure if they're too careless to go over what they wrote or too ignorant to know they've made mistakes, they may well be careless or ignorant with the software and hardware they produce. I feel the same about brochures and ads. If they're obviously amateur productions, I wonder if the business is so near the edge of financial disaster that it couldn't afford to have a qualified person produce its promotional stuff. Or maybe they just don't care, which doesn't fill me with confidence either.

It's about caring about the quality of my work.

More on Rotating Text in WSWin

Here are a few comments on rotating text. We are talking about text inside a graphics frame; you get it in there with the text tool that comes up with the graphics toolbox.

Note: You need to be in Edit Mode (same as Text mode) in order to get the graphics toolbox. You'll see scroll bars on the right and bottom of your graphics frame when you have it selected in Edit Mode. If you don't see the graphics toolbox and you're sure you have the graphics frame selected and are in Edit Mode, not Frame Mode, you probably have your graphics toolbox set up to be floating. Sometimes it might be in a part of your screen that is not currently visible. Zoom out to full page view and see if you can find the toolbox now. Generally, though, I suspect that you don't see the toolbox because you're in Frame Mode and you need to be in Edit Mode in order to work with the graphics tools. If you tend to have trouble finding the toolbox when it's floating, you should probably drag it over to the left or right edge of the screen and dock it. Then you'll always see it but it won't be active unless you are working in a graphics frame in Edit Mode.

Here is something VERY important that no one mentioned. When you want to work with graphics tools (including rotating text and drawing lines or shapes), you should modify your graphics frame style under Scaling and select Crop Image for the current frame. DO NOT USE SCALING or scale to fit frame. When you are drawing in a graphics frame, you need to see things at exactly the size and position they will actually be in. Therefore, you need to modify the frame style so that Crop, not Scale, is selected. Crop Image means that everything in the graphics frame will be at its actual size all the time.

I don't agree with some of the advice on text and rotating text that some people posted because I feel the methods frequently lead to sloppy-looking results. For example, when you click with the graphics text tool inside the graphics frame to add your text, DON'T resize it by dragging the handles on the frame. You'll most likely get jaggy characters that distort the typeface. Instead, have your graphic text selected (black square handles show up around it) and click your right mouse button. Click on Graphic Text Style in the popup menu. In the dialog box that comes up, select the typeface you want, the point size, and the attributes (plain, bold, italic, underline); then click OK. Your text will change to take on the characteristics you just selected. If you're not happy with the results, right-click again and repeat until you are satisfied.

When your text size, font, and color are set, you are ready to rotate. I don't like the rotate tool because it's not precise enough. Instead, have the text selected (black handles again), go up to the Frame menu near the top of the screen, select Graphics, select Rotate Object. In the dialog box, unselect At Mouse Click Location and select your desired pivot point in the Horizontal and Vertical boxes. I usually pick Left and Top. Under Rotate pick the desired angle of rotation. You probably want 180 degrees if you're doing a card, but you can type in anything up to 360. It moves counterclockwise from the pivot point. If you tab out of the Rotate box, the little sample will move to show you how the text will rotate. If it's not what you want, you can change it before you leave the dialog box. If you think you're happy with it, click OK. Your text will now rotate exactly as you directed - compared with the haphazard results of simply eyeballing it with the rotate tool. If you don't like the results when you see them in the frame, just select the text again and repeat Frame, Graphics, Rotate, and switch the angle back to 0 to go back where you were originally, or change it to another angle. Note: these approaches are not mutually exclusive. You can rotate with the rotate tool and adjust your rotation more precisely with Frame menu, Graphic, Rotate. The text object's angle of rotation will be listed in the dialog box. It's always in relation to the original position of the object. You can adjust the position in the graphics frame by dragging the text object around or you can place the text precisely by having it selected, right-clicking your mouse, and selecting Object Size from the popup menu. Type in the exact position From Left and From Top that you want.

If you have Crop Image selected and you don't mess up by enlarging text through dragging handles, you should have nice crisp text with smooth outlines. You can also use any color you want if you're printing in color.

WSWin's text rotation works very well and it's quite easy once you get the hang of it. You can make the graphic frame smaller to fit the text after you rotate it. If you have Crop Image selected in the Frame Style, your text will not resize if you resize the frame. You may need to adjust its position, however, if you resize the frame.

The other idea for making a folded card - making a mockup and writing a dummy message on each surface, then making two pages for the top and the bottom - works very well and is easier because you can see what you're doing more naturally. You do have to send the pages through the printer twice, which can sometimes give you feeding or smearing problems, but in general it works well.

As for the BMP graphic not importing correctly, WSWin's graphics import filters are shaky at best. They are about the worst graphics filters I have ever worked with. You could try opening the BMP in Windows Paintbrush and saving it as a PCX. Perhaps WSWin will be happier with that for a while. Or you could convert it to PCX or TIF with a graphics conversion program like Hijaak or Paintshop Pro, if you have one. Or open it in Paintbrush and Save As the same name in BMP format and have the file overwritten. Perhaps it got a slight bit of corruption or something else funny that WSWin's filter rebelled at. Remember that most graphics formats actually come in many "flavors" and a program may be quite happy with one but totally choke on another. That's why these conversions can often help.

Gray Shades and Line Screens

The formula for shades of gray is this: Number of shades = (printer resolution divided by lines per inch) squared plus 1

So if your printer used a rather coarse linescreen of 60 lines per inch, the highest number of gray shades it could produce would be about 101. If you used an 80 lines-per-inch screen (much like a newspaper photo), you could print about 58 shades of gray.

I can't explain the difference between dots per inch and lines per inch here, but it has to do with the way a black and white printer approximates gray shades.

You can't control the line screen in anything but a PostScript printer, unless you have a more powerful printer driver. HP PCL drivers have not included user control over the line screen.

>> The HP 6P manual states it can print 128+ shades of gray. That is what I was going by. <<

The HP manual is a bit misleading and correct at the same time. I guess an explanation of gray printing and halftones is in order. That should clear up all the issues.

When you look at a black and white photo, you are seeing continuous tone produced by varying amounts of silver in a photographic emulsion. When a photo is going to be printed on an offset press, varying amounts of ink cannot be applied; the ink is solid and the same. So a different process, called halftoning, is used to reproduce the gray shades of a photograph. Halftoning converts the gray shades into a pattern of dots. Small dots or few dots in an area let more of the paper show through and give the appearance of light shades of gray. Large dots or many dots give the appearance of dark shades of gray. When the dots are small enough, our eye is fooled into thinking we see a solid shade of gray. Before digital methods became widespread, printers used a stat camera to create a halftone of a photograph. These halftones could vary the size of the dot. When a photo is put into digital form (as when it is scanned and saved in a photoediting program), however, the available resolution of the output device affects the number of shades of gray that can appear in the digital photo.

If you're going to print a photo on a 600 dpi laser printer, your printer places dots on a grid of 600 dots per inch across and 600 dots per inch down. If a position on the grid receives toner, it is black. It cannot be anything but black - it can't be light gray or dark gray or almost white. Because a laser printer cannot produce continuous tone or real grays, it has to simulate shades of gray by grouping the 600 dots per inch into a larger unit, called a halftone dot. How many of the 600 dpi printer dots will make up a halftone dot is determined by the line screen - which has nothing to do with lines that you draw.

It's easier to understand if I give some examples. Say you decide to use a line screen of 60 lpi (lines per inch) for a photo you're printing on your 600 dpi printer. 600 divided by 60 equals 10 - you'll have a halftone dot size of 10 printer dots across and ten printer dots down, for a total of 100 printer dot positions per halftone dot. Within that line screen grid 1 dot printed black will represent one shade of gray; 2 dots would represent another shade of gray; 100 dots printed black would represent solid black; no dots printed would let the paper show through and would represent white if the paper was white. As you can see, on a grid of 100 dots you can represent 100 shades of gray plus one more, which would be white or completely transparent. This is what the gray shades formula means: Number of available grays=(printer resolution in dpi divided by line screen in lpi)squared + 1.

A line screen of 60 lpi will give a photo a coarse appearance; it will photocopy well but will not look much like a real photo. So say you wanted to use a finer line screen of 100 lpi. Look what happens to the available shades of gray: 600/100=6; 6 squared is 36, + 1 = 37.

If you applied a finer line screen of 100 lpi to your photo in order to avoid the coarse appearance, you would reduce your available shades of gray to 37. This would give the photo a strange appearance with blocks of gray shades rather than a fine gradation of tone.

Look what happens with a higher resolution printer - Say you had one of the Lexmark or new HP 1200 dpi printers. If you used a 100 lpi linescreen, you would have 145 shades of gray available. If you used a 60 lpi linescreen, you'd have 401 shades of gray available. However, the maximum number of grays currently available for a digital halftone is 256, so your 60 lpi screen would reproduce all shades of gray available within the digital gray spectrum if your printer could print 1200 dpi. If you used a newspaper-type line screen of 75 lpi with your 1200 dpi printer, you could produce all 256 shades of gray. The 600 dpi printer could produce just 65 shades of gray with a 75 lpi line screen.

So you see that the question of how many shades of gray your printer can print depends on a number of factors, in particular, what line screen would be used? If you use a coarse line screen, you can print more shades of gray but the photo looks bad because the dots are prominent. If you use a fine line screen, you get fewer shades of gray, which can also make the photo look bad.

Printers May Do It Another Way

But you're saying, "my photos look good when my HP 6 prints them." And you can't tell your HP printer what line screen to use. So how does that work?

The answer is that your HP printer uses a different approach to halftoning than the straightforward line-screen/halftoning grid that I just described. Another way for a black and white device to give the illusion of shades of gray is to use an error-diffusion method or to use stochastic screening, which use more random patterns of dots to simulate more shades of gray. The printer's built-in method of printing shades of gray will often give nicer, smoother output than the line-screen method, but it doesn't photocopy well and can't produce the same results if you were to send your file to an imagesetter for high-resolution output. The user has very little control over how the printer prints grayscale. This isn't of much concern if the photo prints reasonably well, but some photos don't. If you are using the PCL printer halftoning, you're stuck; if you were using PostScript, which lets you assign a line screen, you could adjust the line screen to get the best results possible for that photo. So the PCL halftoning method has advantages and disadvantages.

JPG Caution

>> I use JPEG for photos and all I have to do is lighten them a certain amount and I can print a fairly decent (to me, not you) printout. I use JPG for photos in WSW2 with OLE from a graphics program. <<

Let me explain the situation with JPEG. JPEG is a fine format for storing a photo. A color photo is, by nature, a *very* large file (30 megabytes would not be unusual) and JPEG can compress that greatly. However, JPEG is a "lossy" format. That means that JPEGs achieve this high compression by throwing away some of the image data every time you save them. The more compression you select for a JPEG, the more data gets thrown away. It so happens that 24-bit color photos have a lot more data than a printer can reproduce, so throwing away some of it will not be noticeable. But since the JPEG continues to discard data every time it's saved, you will fairly soon reach a point where the image will be noticeably degraded. Also, once any data is discarded, you can't get it back. So your JPEG image could be degraded and there would be nothing you could do about it.

The solution is simple, however. If you need to edit a JPEG graphic, once you've loaded it into your photo editing program Save As a different format. If you're using PhotoMagic, for example, load the JPEG and immediately Save As a PhotoMagic PPF file. Then you can edit and save the graphic until it's the way you want it. When you're completely finished with it and have saved it in PPF or TIF or BMP or some other non-lossy bitmap format, save it again as a JPG. Then you can use that JPG in your document. If you decide to do more editing on the image, open the "twin" that's saved in PPF or another format. Edit that and do your final save as both the PPF and JPG. If you do this, your JPEG will never noticeably degrade because you won't be working with the JPEG and its lossy format, you'll work with another format that doesn't discard data and simply save it as JPG when you're finished working with it.

Placing a JPG in a WSWin or other document or on a Web page does not result in any degradation. The JPG is converted to WSWin's internal graphics format once it's placed, so saving your WSWin document with a JPG graphic does not cause loss of quality with the JPG. Likewise, referencing a JPG on your hard drive when you import the graphic will not degrade the JPG because you're not touching it; it's just being imaged in the document. And on a Web page, the JPG doesn't get opened and resaved when someone visits the Web site.

So *using* a JPG is fine. It's editing and saving it that can cause a problem. But if you follow what I suggested about saving as another format while you're working on the graphic and saving as JPG only when you're finished with editing, your JPG will be fine and not degraded so you can notice it.

>>>>Now I'm getting scared!<g> I've rarely seen this done [stretching and distorting graphics and type] in a way that looks anything but ugly. Sorry. <<<

> >True, but I am only writing for several computer club newsletters now so they do not expect commercial quality. <<

I'm not talking about commercial quality but the aesthetic appeal of distorted graphics and type. For your computer clubs, I suppose it's okay to use a "see what I can do with my computer" approach. Unfortunately, many people get so enamored with the tricks their computer can do that they use them on their newsletters, brochures, and greeting cards, where these effects make no sense and add nothing to the design of the piece. Just because your computer *can* do it doesn't mean you *should* do it.

>> Haven't you ever seen a font distorted for a special effect? <<

Of course! There is certainly a place for that in graphic design. But it takes a good design sense and trained eye to use distorted type effectively. Also, these distortions quickly become clichés and then detract from the piece.

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