Open Window Software News Winter 2007/8 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash v10.10.03 Update 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - All About Fonts 3) 30% Off Holiday Gifts of WinFlash! 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 5) Study Tip - Be Ruthless with Your Leitner Answers 6) How To - Work with Fonts When Importing Material 7) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash v10.10.03 Update Usually we don't highlight a release noted only by a change in the right-most of the six digit version number. However, we think that v10.10.03, released on November 28, has enough fixes and additions to warrant a newsletter mention. Some of the noteworthy changes (these include changes first introduced in v10.10.02, released a week earlier): * Incorrect printing of right-to-left text has been corrected * For those folks frustrated with trying to use the outline format in their Q&A's, the necessary Increase and Decrease Indent buttons have been added to the editor * When you click (rather than tab) into an editor box that contains default text, double-click on any one of the words - the editor will now select the default text in its entirety. A small change, but handy * The annoying warning about directly pasting graphics that was generated on EVERY paste from Microsoft Word has been corrected so that it really only flags pastes containing graphics * For heavy users of the Subject Outline, there's now an option that will only open the tree to the first level down when opening the outline dialog. This allows most outline organizations to fit without scrolling * We've added the overlooked "Insert Symbol" button on the multi-answer FIB panel as well as a new spin-edit to change between Glossary Button groups on the fly * Paste Special (Ctrl-Alt-v), for pasting copied text without its original formatting, has been added to the .rtf editor * Problems with the interaction of the Copy, Move and Insert operations have been corrected * A Cancel button and Previous Tip button have been added to the Tips dialog --------------------------------------------------- 2) WinFlash Feature Highlight - All About Fonts Note: This information is also available in the updated Help file included with v10.10.03. WinFlash supports a complete range of font effects as well as Unicode fonts, with both global and character-level control. Except for the Global Control settings, all other font control options are available only in the standard .flu source file format (introduced in v10.0). The older-style .fls source file format does not support these capabilities. Global Control WinFlash maintains a default font setting for both the question and the answer text. These are initially set to Arial 12-point Black for the questions and Tahoma 12-point Black for the answers. These two settings control which font is used when you enter or edit a pair in the WinFlash Editor. You can change these settings in Options|Colors and Fonts. Important Note: The default fonts for the Q's and A's are intentionally set to two different typefaces initially. This allows them to be modified independently. If they are ever set to the SAME typeface, the distinction between the fonts for the Q's and the A's is lost (for that particular study file) and you cannot then change them independently. If you attempt to set them to the same typeface, WinFlash will show a warning, but will allow you to proceed if you wish. If you are SURE you never wish to have the default font for the Q's be different in any way (including color, size, bolding, etc.) from the default font for the A's it is alright to go ahead and make them the same. Right-To-Left Default Control For study files where either the questions or answers (or both) will be entered in a right-to-left language, set the default text order for the Q's and/or A's to right-to-left by checking the appropriate options in Options|View|Alignment & Q/A Dialog Control. Character-level Control WinFlash allows you to adjust the font settings for sections of text in a number of ways. In all cases you'll need to first select the portion of text for which you wish to adjust the font characteristics. Once you have a section of text selected you can use the editor's vertical row of font effect and alignment buttons to make changes to the text's appearance or, for more exacting control, use the right-click-invoked popup menu. Character-level Control Using Font Effect Buttons The small buttons located in a vertical row in the WinFlash editor can be used to quickly add or remove an effect from the currently-selected text string. They are, in order from top to bottom: Toggle Bold Toggle Italic Toggle Underline Toggle Overline Toggle Strikethrough Shrink One Point Enlarge One Point Change Font Color (select from palette that appears) Change Font Background Color (select from palette that appears) Left Justify Center Right Justify Increase Indent (when using an outline style) Decrease Indent (when using an outline style) Insert Symbol Character-level Control Using Popup Menu Right-clicking with the mouse on a selected text string will bring up a popup menu. Selecting the Font... item will, in turn, bring up the font dialog. This dialog's font tab allows setting many of the most common font attributes. The layout tab will allow more advanced manipulations of the selected text - including adjustment of the vertical offset - used to generate sub and superscript effects. Take a few minutes and experiment with all of the variations that you can achieve using multiple fonts and font effects. Then draw on these possibilities when you're looking for ways to enliven the content of your study files! --------------------------------------------------- 3) 30% Off Holiday Gifts of WinFlash! Here's a gift that can really make a difference for the students on your shopping list! Go here for instructions for obtaining the discount http://www.openwindow.com/pages/xmas.htm --------------------------------------------------- 4) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you earned free upgrades to v10 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v10 if you haven't upgraded yet or v11 when it comes along if you're already at v10). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 5) Study Tip - Be Ruthless with Your Leitner Answers It's nice to see your pairs climbing into ever-higher bins when you check your Leitner study file's stats. When using standard pair format or when the Allow Manual Override of Demotion option is set, it's sometimes tempting to tell yourself "Awww - I really knew that - I was just wrong about this or that little detail..." Just "say no" to this temptation and mark it incorrect! If you're running through all the due pairs in the deck, this will give you a chance before you finish to review the pair again, reenforcing the missing piece of info you forgot on the first pass. Assuming you get it on this 'second chance' the pair will hop up into bin two and be on its way back up the ladder - with its content doubly refreshed in your memory. --------------------------------------------------- 6) How To - Work with Fonts When Importing Material It can be a bit confusing to understand the variables affecting how fonts are handled when importing content from other formats. The most important fact to remember is that when content is imported from ANSI text format files the Q's will use the Question Default Font and the A's will use the Answer Default Font. These are set in Options|Colors and Fonts. This covers all cases of importing content except for importing .hc files downloaded from Flashcard Exchange and importing content from the Windows clipboard. When importing .hc file from Flashcard Exchange, the font used will be the Question default font - for both the questions and the answers. Importing from the Windows Clipboard poses the most complex considerations. Since the incoming Q's and A's will maintain the font and font effects settings that they have in the table from which they are copied, this is the best method for importing formatted content. In order to be able to control the fonts in the imported Q's and A's with the WinFlash option settings for the Q and A Default Fonts, you must be certain to set the font face (e.g. Arial) of the column of Q's in the source table to be DIFFERENT from the font face for the column of A's in the source table (e.g. Tahoma). Arial and Tahoma are the initial settings for the default fonts used by WinFlash - see the discussion in 2) above. If you also wish to be able to globally change the color of either the Q or the A fonts, you'll need to be sure the settings for the source font colors are NOT "Automatic" but rather black or some other color. After importing the content, you must 'synchronize' the settings for WinFlash's Q and A default fonts with those of the imported content. Let's say the content has Arial, 12 pt, bold, red for most of the text in the Q's and Times New Roman, 10 pt, black for most of the text in the A's. You'll first need to set the default fonts in Options|Colors & Fonts to these settings and OK the dialog. This will 'synchronize' the content fonts with the WinFlash default fonts. You can then use the settings to make global changes to the Q and A fonts in the material that you have imported. A caution - if you import content by appending to an existing deck and the new content has different 'default' fonts from the ones in the other pairs already in the deck, there's no way to get them in synch with each other short of manually changing all the pairs in the imported section of the deck to match those in the preexisting portion or vice versa. The moral of the story? Don't be too fancy with fonts when you're planning to frequently import material. --------------------------------------------------- 7) Latest In-line Program Updates The 10.10.03 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Added Previous Tip button on Tips dialog 2. Fixed incorrect targeting of Browse button pick in Comments editor page 3. Corrected issues regarding Insert operations following a Move operation 4. Added Glossary Button Group selector spin-edit to the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel 5. Cleaned up interaction between the button face fonts and the other fonts on the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel The 10.10.02 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Glossary Buttons are now NOT shown by default in the Editor and the FIB answer panel 2. The false "graphics warning" when pasting text from Word has been corrected 3. The missing Insert Symbol button has been added to the multi-answer FIB answer entry panel 4. The Subject Outline can now be set to only show the first sub-level of the tree on startup 5. Some Educator Menu item inconsistencies that occurred when the menu was password-protected have been corrected 6. Paste Special (Ctrl-Alt-v) capability has been added to the .rtf editor 7. A cancel button has been added to the tips dialog 8. Select entire 'default text' in Q and A edit boxes in the editor when double-clicking on any word with the mouse 9. Added indent and outdent toolbar buttons to editor allowing full outline functionality 10. Corrected misprinting of right-to-left text in all print operations 11. Fixed incongruity of numbering fonts used in Create Compiled Source File dialog 12. Added section on Font Control in the Help file and made several minor corrections and updates --------------------------------------------------- Need Help? Have A problem? Check out our online listings of the latest releases and the problems that they've solved: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfprobs.htm If your issue isn't covered there, please send e-mail to support@openwindow.com and we'll do our best to resolve your problem. --------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE: Send e-mail to service@openwindow.com with SUBSCRIBE as the Subject. UNSUBSCRIBE: Simply send an email to service@openwindow.com with REMOVE as the Subject. This newsletter is a free service of Open Window Software and is Copyright © 2007 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved.