"named" sizes, can't delete from bitmap gallery, etc.

...well Ive had a good few days looking at the features in xara and I'm like a little kid in a candy store. I can live with the "limitations" :D

I seem to have hit a midnight brick wall on some things/workflow/how-to....

1. I know about names colors... Just a wild stab- there's nothing like named sizes, eh? Where you can make portions of a project linked in size, and then when you change that size... oh forget it, you can already probably do this by just scaling after selecting all the items, no?

2. I'm following

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...=picture+frame

and I made a 4x5 square to hold a picture, I then made a picture frame around it, I dragged like a dozen photos into the canvase, then deleted them all and they are in the bitmap gallery. I filled one picture from the biymap gallery into my original rectangle and used the fill tool to resize the picture to fit the recangle. I then selected all that and duplicated it as the post instructed. along the way, I happend to grab couple of eps files from the web and they were silly so I deleted them off the screen. But there are now manilla colored folders in my bitmap gallery under all the pictures with the filenames of the (deleted?) eps contents. Theres an * next to the folder name, and when opened, theres a grey Xara logo only, no opther contents. How do I delete these folders with no meaningful content in them? I r-click on the folder and delete is dimmed. I r-click on the xara grey logo thing, and delete is ALSO dimmed. There are 3 of these. I cant delete them.

Lastly, the little scroll bar in the RHS of the bitmap gallery is mighty thin, how can that be made a bit wider to more easily control with the mouse?

Extra lastly, why, when I fill an item from the dozen photos in my bitmap galery does a duplicate of that fill appear at the bottom of the bitmap gallery in a folder? It's kind of distracting as the focus of the gallry changes to it at the bottom as soon as it is filled into a square on the canvas, and to fill a next photo, I have to go back up to the top of the BM gallery... I wonder why it seems to be keeping a tally of what I fill...

Oh, and is there a keyboard/menu command for the fill box atop the bitmap gallery? I looked and cant find in the shortcuts section in help..

Thanks!

There is something exxactly like "named sizes". The name gallery can be used to apply names to objects and a named object can be made to automatically stretch when the size of another named object changes. Look in the help for the "Linked Stretching" topic.

The bitmap gallery has a "folder" corresponding to each document you have open. Each folder contains all the bitmaps that are, or have been used in, that document. When you save a document as a Xar file, the unused bitmaps will be not be saved so on reloading, only the bitmaps used in the file will be present. The grey Xara bitmap is the default bitmap that must always be present and so can not be deleted.

The gallery scroll bars are deliberately small to save screen space though they are a little small for some people. They are currently half the width of standard scroll bars and should change if the global scroll bar size is changed but they currently can't be changed from being half the size.

You are presumably using a bitmap from another document to fill an object in this one. This causes the bitmap to be displayed in the folder for both documents.

There are no keyboard shortcuts for the buttons at the top of the gallery. However, double clicking a bitmap in the gallery applies the bitmap as a fill to the selected object(s).

Gerry

Thanks for the answers, sorry for such a run-on question...

Never knew about "Linked Stretching"... SOunds like I'm back in physics class...:rolleyes:

The weird thing is I can not use the selector tool like it says in help and then ( i guess right click ) to choose 'create name'...

====== from help-
Naming objects

Both the button and the text must be named objects. So the first step is to give separate names to the text and the button.

1. Select the first object you want to name (for this example either the text or the button). For more information see Selecting objects.

2. You can use either the Selector Tool or the Name Gallery.

In the Selector Tool click Create new name. Enter the name you want and click Apply.

In the Name Gallery click New. Enter the name you want and click Apply.
===========

I don't know what " In the Selector Tool click Create new name" means, really. I make a shape with the elipse tool, select it, right click, and nowhere does it say "Create new name"... The only way I found was to have to open the name gallery and click new...

Anyway, super, thank you again!

This may help you...

Linked stretching is cool, especially for website toolbar buttons.

Thanks. Wow.

Created two elipses, named them e1 and e2, then i chose stretches from the dropdown box in the name gallery. i tried checking the items, then a warning dialog came up about some objects already having stretching or whatnot, and that maybe i should convert to editable objects.. so I clicked ok on the warning, and converted the elipses to editable objects ( why, i dont know, i was just following directions... ). So now I have both checked, and theres no dialog that lets me assign the relationship or linking to stretch. And when I select one and shrink it, the other does not shrink..

I assume because I did not properly set the link, Im not sure. I cant even find out why I dont see any live image stretching checkbox in one of my bars, like they have in the help file.

Hi Tallis,

I don't recall ever knowing about this stretch ability that Gerry mentioned.

It works a charm.

A picture and the .xar file are attached. I hope this clears up any confusion you may have. Open the .xar file and select the text of either button with the Text Tool. Change the wording and the button will shrink or stretch to accomodate the text.

You are a gentleman and a scholar. I shall take a look later, after my scotch.

HELLO ORG CHART TEMPLATES!

Just group the text with the object it stretches so if you decide later on to move either, they stay together.

Hmmm .... I wonder if you can link groups so the you could create an effect of columns in a table; ie, when one column is stretched width wise when its left-justified text heading changes the other columns are shift to their right. ... Nope, wont work. .... now if there was a MOVE property for linked objects :-}

Very important! Many of use have complained that you can't stretch a rectangle with round corners and without distorting the round corners. Well now you can!
Convert the round-cornered rectangle to an editable shape.
Draw a 2nd object within the round-cornered shape and make the 2nd object invisible (no outline and no fill).
Make the round-cornered shape stretch-linked (so it will EXTEND) to the invisible 2nd object when it changes.
Group the round-cornered shape and the 2nd object.
To resize the round-cornered shape and maintain its corner radii, select the 2nd object and resize it.

I believe there is an easier way to stretch a rounded rectangle without affecting the rounded corners:

Granted, Frank. That's my usual method. :)

But ..... you could use one object to scale mulitple rounded rectangles.

And if you really want to get some wierd results, make COPIES of objects already associated with a stretch object and place them where else on the page. When you expand the controlling object, the copies can move rather than stretch.