TEXT CONTROLS

INDEX

CONTROLING TEXT

For putting some text on a drawing the first thing to do is to write this text. The place reserved by MG to write text is the small text field in the upper left of the screen. Althought small, it accepts any length of written text. If longer than the small window, the words will scroll to the left. Once done, to place the text in due place, the button with the big "T" at left must be clicked and then clicking and dragging the mouse on the screen a red line will appear. This is the support line for text. When selected, only a red line will be visible. If unselected, the text will appear. The length of the line has no influence of any kind. The "critical" point of the line is the origin, as the text will be placed in the final drawing around this point in such a way as to make the point the center of the theoretical box containing this text. So, it will be center-justified horizontally and vertically. When selected, the support line can be manipulated as a simple straight line. It can be translated or rotated in the same way, and the text will follow exactly this movement. When not selected and if the line is not horizontal, it can be seen sometimes a certain difference between the angle of the line and that of the text. In the final drawing it will be positioned exactly acording to the line-support position.

By default MG uses LaTeX as the "standard language", so, care must be taken in creating the needed environment for using MetaPost with LaTeX. If some user prefer to use TeX, the button at right with the title "La/TeX" must be pressed so as to read "TeX" in the small window below. When writing math expressions, these must be enclosed between dollar signs "$", as usual. Also the standar expressions can (and must) be used; for example "\displaystyle" if high glyphs or not reduced fractions are wanted.

If postscript fonts are used the process is the same with just one step more to be done. Once the line drawn and selected, the button with the three letters "A,B,C" must be clicked. A window will appear where the type of font can be chosen in the usual way. All modifications in scaling, shearing (slanting) and rotating will be done in the same way for any kind of font.

For the more precise control of text when scaling it, the big slider used to choose the scale, works in a different way as usually. The difference is that the "neutral" point, that's mean, no scaling, is obtained for a value of 100. If the size wanted is double the standard, the slider must be placed over number 20 and then the small right button with "x10", clicked, so as to read 200 in the small "SCALE" window at right.

More graphical details will be given in the last, general chapter.

INDEX