Re: [artworks] Extra AW tools
- From: rickman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: artworks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:40:18 +0100
<290fe00550.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Martin Wuerthner wrote:
>> To make a mat for a new year I shuffle the existing shapes about to
>> allow for the days moving on.
>> The alignment tool provides some help but most of the work is done by
>> "sliding" numbers up and down columns or from side to side using the
>> arrow keys. This way they keep their alignment in one dimension at
>> least.
> That sounds like you are creating a huge amount of unnecessary work
> for yourself. It can be done far more quickly.
It may be possible to do the work more quickly but I doubt it. I have
been working on this particular item since the year 1999 and produced
it in numerous variants and have always been interested in doing it
efficiently.
As explained in another note I prefer to work with few simple tools.
In this case - left hand stays on the mouse and right hand over the
arrow keys and adjacent modifiers of shift and control. Eyes fixed on
screen. Doing it this way I can get a good working rhythm and the
introduction of other tools is distracting. It takes me about 20
minutes to reformat the calendar for a change of year.
The numbers are kept as shapes for my convenience as much as for the
font issues. The day and month abbreviations have to be shapes anyway
as they may be kanji or Hebrew characters so it is more convenient to
keep everything as shapes. New "characters" are created by selects and
ctrl-K then moved with the arrow keys.
I do use the alignment tool for some of the work but the alignment
requirement for the day and month names which are interspersed between
blocks of numbers is different and limits its usefulness;
For this work I have mostly used Xara, which as you know supports 5
levels of Nudge from quick movements down to the the pixel level.
John
--
MUG RISC OS Christmas Show Saturday 6 December 2008 -
http://mug.riscos.org
Was Saint Paul a MUG? (1Cor.1)
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