annotation menu
In the Annotation menu, you can add text, lines, and simple shapes to your clipboard. The
procedure works as follows:
- You set up drawing parameters on the menu. More about this below.
- You select a drawing option from the little icon box at the top of the display.
- The system prompts you to position the thing you are drawing.
- The system draws the thing into the clipboard and waits for you to position another one.
Most of the things you draw just require two clicks to position them. The exceptions are:
- Text
- To draw text, first enter the text string in the Text string menu field, then
click on the TEXT icon. The system asks you to indicate the position of the text
string. Click with button one to put the text in the clipboard.
- Scale Bars
- To draw a scale bar, you must first paste at least one image into the
clipboard. When you click on the SCALE BAR icon, the system asks you to indicate
which pasted-in image you are labelling. It then requires one additional click to
position the scale bar.
- Text files
- You can include the contents of entire text files just as you can place
individual text strings. First enter the name of the text file in the Text file menu
field, then click on INCLUDE TEXT FILE. The system prompts you to position the text
with another click.
Before you create any annotations, you may want to set some of the following menu fields:
- Text font
- Before you draw text, you must select a font. You do this by entering
the foundry, font, style and size in the menu. You should enter them in that order,
because the choices for each depend on what you selected for the previous one. You can control
whether the system attempts to use 'scalable' fonts (which take longer to process) by setting
the Use scalable fonts menu toggle. Set this to No if you want to use only fixed-size fonts (which are faster).
- Color
- Sets the color of the text, lines, or whatever.
- Background Color
- This color is used as a background when placing text or scale bars.
- Line width
- Determines the thickness of lines, arrows, boxes, and circles.
- Line style
- Lets you do dashed lines, arrows, boxes, and circles.
- Paste text background
- Determines whether the text is overlaid on the image, or the entire
region around the text is loaded with the background color first.
- Scale bar distance
- Sets the distance for the scale bar, if you create one.
- Scale bar units
- Sets the units for the scale bar.
- Paste scale bar background
- Determines whether the scale bar is overlaid on the image, or the entire region around the
scale bar is loaded with the background color first.
- Blowup image width
- Sets the physical width of blowups of the clipboard (in cm).