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Chapter 34
Your Very Own Interface
Featuring
CorelDRAWs
control room
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Flying tools
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You say tomato...
| 834
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Building your own interface
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Menu mania
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The keys to happiness
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Managing workspaces
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This chapter wont teach you about any new special
effects or drawing commands, and it wont show you how to wrap text
around a graphic or create a parallel extrusion. In fact, the last chapter
of this rather large book does not contain any tips and tricks at all,
at least in the conventional sense. Well even go so far as to suggest
that if you are satisfied with the way DRAW presents itself to you and
with the overall design of the interface, you can skip this chapter and
start reading the Index, line for line.
But if you want to customize DRAW to make it more efficient for what
you do, youll want to read every word of this chapter. Corel
has given DRAW 9 an interface that is almost completely customizable,
and it takes center stage here.
This chapter includes step-by-step instructions, and we start with the
basics. But the ramp is short and steep, because we presume that most
of you who want to customize the interface are already familiar with it
in the first place.
Tool Terminology 101
This chapter will be easier to digest if you start by learning
a few terms.
Microsofts definition of a tool is very specific,
and Corel has done its best to comply. DRAW has always had a toolbox
(the one on the left of the work area), and all of the icons on
it (Pick, Shape, Zoom, and so on) are referred to as tools. But
what used to be known as the Ribbon Bar is now called the Standard
toolbaralthough youll discover in this chapter that
there is nothing standard about it. Also at your command are the
property bar and various other toolbarsincluding ones
that you can make up to suit yourself.
Flyouts emanate from the nine toolbox icons that have a
small triangle in the lower-right corner. When you click and hold
on one of these tools, several additional icons fly out
from there. Flyouts can be separated from the toolbox and floated
on the screen like toolbars, and as of DRAW 9, they too can be customized.
The status bar is still the status bar; ditto for the color
palette, the rulers, and the scroll bars.
To best understand the starting point for customizing DRAW, you
should try to keep the following straight in your mind:
- The toolbox Its default home has always been on the left
of the screen.
- The Standard toolbar By default it lives below the menu
bar and contains the icons for the Open, Save, Print, Cut, Copy,
Paste, and other fundamental commands.
- The property bar This is a special type of toolbar whose
controls change depending on the tool and object(s) selected.
By default, it is located below the Standard toolbar.
- Toolbars These ship with DRAW in a certain arrangement,
but you can change them and create new ones.
- Flyouts Display these by clicking and holding on one
of the nine toolbox icons that have the triangle. These flyouts
should not be confused with the menus that are available from
some dialog boxes, which are also called flyouts.
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CorelDRAWs Control
Room
Before we begin any conversation at all about customization, you need
to understand the architecture that supports this. We wish that Corel
were more clear about the relationship between designing the interface
and the place where those design changes are kept; well clarify
it here.
Corel calls this reservoir of interface design a workspace, and
its job is to store and make available for future recall all of its elements:
the size of the CorelDRAW application window...the status of dockers and
toolbars (floating or docked)...the folders last used for opening, saving,
importing, and exporting work...the value of such items as Nudge, Duplicate,
and Constrain Angle...all the way down to when and where to make backup
copies of drawings. Finallyand the topic central to this chaptera
workspace tracks any changes you make to the interface from the Customization
tools. Figure 34.1 shows the tree structure in Options of all of the elements
within the Workspace heading, and we have expanded Customize.
FIGURE
34.1 All of the elements under the jurisdiction
of Workspace
It looks perfectly logical here in the dialog, but in practice, there
is little that is intuitive about this, especially when you think back
through recent versions to all the disparate ways these settings have
been stored and recalled.
Workspace is one of three organizational constructs designed to house
DRAWs settings. They are described as follows, in the order in which
they appear in Options:
- Workspace identifies a collection of settings and conditions
that creates the environment (the interface) in which you work. These
settings do not change from one drawing to the next.
- Document identifies those settings that do potentially
change from one drawing to the next. In this grouping are elements such
as whether to show the page border, the color of guidelines, and the
status of the snaps, styles, and HTML settings.
- Global settings are on the other side of the spectrumthey
are outside of the reach of Document or Workspace settings. So such
controls as color correction, preflight controls for printers, and file
extensions recognized by DRAW are as sticky as they come: change them
once and they will not change again unless you do it.
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