METAGRAF has been thought to help with much important
information on the screen to be viewed at any moment with no need to
click any button or launch any auxiliary panel.
All this information is given continously in the column at right
where some buttons are allocated, as EDIT, HELP and others. In what
follows we will make a detailed explanation of this column and the way
everything in it works.
To begin with, we will say that the buttons in this column, and
also the titles, have two kind of color, one being a kind of blue and
another redish. The blue ones correspond with actions-buttons, so the
usual ones. The redish are not really buttons but labels and there are
no external actions to be done with them. They are there to inform
us. Lets see the whole column to understand all its items:
- At top we see the HELP button. which is there to launch the Java
visualizer and let us read this chapters.
- Then it comes the EDIT button. We know enough about this button
from chapter before.
- The third button is the Correct one, that is used to modify the text written on the screen.
- The fourth title is not a button but a label. We see on it
JAVA. Under this label, two small windows show all the time the
coordinates (or what is the same, the pixels) where is placed the
pointer of the mouse according with the axis used by java: center of
coordinates in the top-left part of the screen.
- Label META that shows exactly the same as the window above it but
now the coordinates correspond with the ones writen in the MetaPost
files produced by METAGRAF. This data are very important to add
any writen part to the drawing, or some kind of macro. The way of
doing is by placing the pointer over the reference point that we want
to use, and read the coordinates in the small window.
- Label SCALE. Under this label we find the real value taken into
account by the application in relation with the positioning and
buttons clicked of the principal slider. We can see this value change
if we move the slider, but also if we click the "+/-" or any other of
the buttons at right of the slider.
- Labels "vSlide" and "hSlide". Not present in the 800x600 version, they show the situation of the
smaller vertical and horizontal sliders.
- Double button "+" and "-". This double button substitutes the two
buttons in the left column in versions olders than this 1.1.0. Their
function is related with the thickness of lines: once an object is
selected, its thickness appear on the smal window under the
buttons. Clicking the "+" or "-" part of the double button, the change
in thickness can be seen in the window. It is important to note that
this actions (in the same way as it can be done with the arrows)
are acomplish over ALL the objects or group of objects SELECTED when
the buttons are clicked. This means a big economy in time and work.
- Button with the title "La/TeX". The effect of this button is to
determine the way in which the final metapost file will be writen by
METAGRAF. The default mode is LaTeX, that is what can be seen in the
small window under the button. If we click the button, this will
change to "TeX" and the metapost file will be written as a standard
metapost-tex file. In this case, all the text -math or standard-
included in the figure must be writen according with the TeX (and not
LaTeX) rules.
- GV-PS button. This button serves to choose the way of postprocessing the last file created after saving it, when we want to see the drawing through Ghostview. By default the very simple scripts included in the distribution at this moment works in Linux and Windows 9*/2000. The default position of this button lets us see in the small window below, "gv-tex". If we see "gv-ps" than the last file graf_*.mp saved will be processed with just the instruction "mpost" and then viewed with "gv". This can be used with any drawing without LaTeX/TeX text. So any figure without text can be viewed in this way. Not so if we include some simple text or math text or if we use the capability to write curved text. In all those situations, we must and read in the small window below "gv-tex" to be able to launch "gv". The file will be processed trough "mpost" and then "latex" and after "dvips". For the user is little difference. The only one is that when processing just with MPOST the drawing will be placed in the same position as it was in the screen. Processing with "latex" will put the figure in the upper left corner. If we do not want this, the simple solution is to place two points objects in the upper corners and make their thickness small. Doing that, the figure will appear in the same place in both cases.
- "TxPth" button. This button is used when writing curved text or text over a line and we will explain its way of working in the chapters related with text.
- "TxPar" button. We can say the same as in the case before. This button will launch a small screen to choose all the parameters related with writing text on the path.
- Next button is the one with the title "CurvEq". This is a new button in distribution 1.1.2 and is used to draw lines which mathematical formulae are written on the Text Field. Below are two small text fields where the minimum and maximum value of the variable used in the formula (always a big "X") must be written.
- The three final buttons are "Attach", "Un-Gr" and "Image". They are well explained in the file Introduction.html
With that we will finish what we have call help and control on screen and also the first group of chapters.