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Specification: 1 General Operation

• System Requirements
• The Package
• Toolbox
• Info Palette
• Button Bar
• Macros
• Undo/Redo
• View Options
• Colour Handling
• Expandability

1.1 System Requirements

Ovation Pro requires RISC OS 3.10 or later and 4Mb RAM.

1.2 The Package

The Ovation Pro package comprises:

• 300-page user guide

• Step-by-step tutorial

• Reference card

• Bubble Help utility

• Desktop Thesaurus

• 50 outline fonts

• Sample selection of Clipart

1.3 Toolbox

The toolbox provides the 8 tools and 4 drawing shapes:

Select tool - General text editing and object selection tool.
Frame tool - For drawing frames.
Line tool - For drawing lines.
Path Edit tool - For editing the shape of frames and lines.
Rotate tool - For rotating objects and pictures.
Link tool - For linking frames so that text flows between them.
Crop tool - For cropping pictures.
Zoom tool - For zooming the document.

The toolbox also provides for shapes that may be used when drawing frames or lines:

Rectangle - For rectangular or square frames.
Ellipse - For elliptical or circular frames.
Straight line - For drawing frames and lines using straight segments.
Curved line - For drawing frames and lines using curved segments.

The toolbox is normally attached to the left edge of the document window, but may be attached elsewhere or completely detached. The shape of the toolbox and order of tools may be changed.

1.4 Info Palette

The info palette is a context sensitive palette that provides information and options according to the selected tool or object.

The info palette has essentially 6 modes of operation:

Text frame - When a text frame is active the info palette gives information about the frame and options for altering the attributes of selected text.
Picture frame - When a picture frame is active the info palette gives information about the frame and options for manipulating the picture.
Line - When a line is active the info palette gives information about the line and options for altering the attributes of the line.
Path Edit mode - In path edit mode the info palette gives options for adding, deleting and manipulating segments of the frame of line.
Rotate tool - When the rotate tool is selected the info palette allows the angle of rotation to be entered and the centre of rotation to be moved.
Zoom tool - When the zoom tool is selected the info palette allows the required zoom to be entered or a preset zoom to be selected.

The info palette is normally attached to the bottom edge of the document window, but may be attached elsewhere or completely detached.

1.5 Button Bar

The button bar is displayed across the top of the document and contains buttons to access many general purpose functions, such as Save, Print, Undo etc. The button bar scrolls if you move the pointer over either end, and you can re-order the buttons as required.

1.6 Macros

This facility allows you to define button macros, key macros and user macros.

Button macros represent buttons that appear on the button bar. You can add buttons to the button bar that type in strings, execute keypresses for common options or call functions directly in Ovation Pro.
Key macros represent keys on the keyboard allowing them to be redefined. Virtually all the keys may be redefined including special key combinations using Ctrl, Shift etc.
User macros allow common constants to be given simple textual names. They are useful for defining constants that you may wish to use several times in other macro definitions.
Macros may be saved as default or in named files which can be loaded when required by double-clicking.

1.7 Undo/Redo

Ovation Pro supports multiple undo/redo operations.

Undo cancels the last operation, restoring the document to its previous state. All operations that modify the content of the document can be undone.
Redo cancels the last undo operation.

The number of undo operations that can be performed, depends upon the size of the undo buffer, which may be increased or decreased in size as required.

By default the undo buffer is flushed when documents are saved, thus recovering all memory used by deleted objects. Alternatively, the undo buffer may be retained and saved with documents. In this case you can undo operations that were performed in a previous session.

Min. memory allows you to flush the undo buffer at any time, recovering the memory used by deleted objects.

1.8 View Options

The View menu provides options which control how documents are viewed on-screen.

New view allows you to have any number of windows open on the same document. Each window can have its own independ zoom and view options.

Options opens a dialogue box providing a range of view options:
Toolbox - Open/close the toolbox.
Button bar - Open/close the button bar.
Info palette - Open/close the info palette.
Rulers - Show/hide vertical and horizontal page rulers.
Pasteboard - Show/hide the document pasteboard. This is a margin around the page that is not printed, and may be used to temporarily store objects.
Pictures - Show/hide pictures. Pictures may be hidden if they are slow to redraw and cause delays.
Guidelines - Show/hide guidelines.
Print margins - Show/hide print margins.
Facing pages - Enable/disable facing pages.
Invisibles - Show/hide invisbles.

Grid allows you to superimpose a rectangular grid on the document.
Grid lock - causes new objects to align to the grid as they are created, and existing objects to move in steps of the grid spacing. Grid spacing and colour may be specified.

Zoom allows you to view and edit documents at any scale. A range of preset zooms and a variable zoom are available:
50% - Set zoom to 50%.
75% - Set zoom to 75%.
100% - Set zoom to 100% i.e. normal zoom.
150% - Set zoom to 150%.
200% - Set zoom to 200%.
400% - Set zoom to 400%.

Variable - Set zoom to any value. Range: 10% - 1000%.
Fit window - Set zoom so that an entire page fits in window
Fit screen - Set zoom so that an entire page fits on screen

1.9 Colour Handling

The Colour Picker displays the names of all the currently defined colours, and allows any of these colours to be chosen. In addition to solid colours, tints in the range 1% to 100% may also be chosen.

The Colour Editor allows named colours to be created, edited and deleted. New colours that are created are added to the standard colour picker. Colours that are edited, are automatically updated wherever they occur in the document.

When creating or editing named colours, two systems are available for for specifying colours:

The standard RISC OS Colour Choice dialogue box allows you to specify colours using RGB, HSV or CMYK colour models.

The Ovation Pro Colour Chart allows you to choose colours directly from pre-defined colour charts. New colour charts may be defined and added to the system.

1.10 Expandability

Ovation Pro may be expanded without the need for updating the main application using Applets.

Applets allow developers to write extensions that add major new features, accessed via new tools, menu options, key presses, buttons or dialogue boxes.

Applets may also be written using the integrated script language, allowing anyone with basic programming skills to write simple extensions.

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