5 Further steps in word processing

This chapter is intended to introduce you to some of Fireworkz' powerful and advanced features. You should find that they are no harder to use than the basic features you learned in the last chapter.

Topics covered include:

• Adding new styles and update existing styles;
• Layering styles to provide a combination of changes, including colour, emphasis and typeface;
• Using effects to provide one-off changes;
• Using the ruler and markers to update styles;
• Creating and editing tables;
• Resizing columns in tables;
• Adding colour and borders to tables.

The example documents in this chapter were designed to work on A4 paper. If the printer which you will be using does not print on A4 but a different length or width of paper, you will need to tell Fireworkz this before you start.

1. Ensure that your printer driver has been installed correctly.
2. Choose Paper from the Page menu.
3. Click the Read printer button, then click the Apply button.

This process will ensure that the document is formatted correctly for your printer, using the information stored in your printer driver.

See the chapter in the User Guide on Printing for further details of setting up your printer driver.

Using the Style editor

The Style editor is one of Fireworkz' most powerful features. It is well worth learning to use how to use the Style editor to get the best out of the program. Styles are a powerful tool for formatting your text and documents. They enable you to tag similar things such as all the headings in your document, and apply the same typeface, size, and margins and so on to them.

This makes designing your document quicker, because you only have to set up a style once and then it can be quickly applied to any text. It also ensures that your documents are consistent, because when you change a style Fireworkz automatically changes all text which appears in that style.

Before you start to edit styles and create new styles, you should familiarise yourself with the Style editor by looking at some of the styles in the document you will be working on.

1. Load the example document Newsletter from the Tutorials directory.
2. Click the Style tool button on the toolbar. The Styles dialogue box will appear, containing a list of styles.
3. Click the BaseLetter entry (this is the base style for this document) in the list to select it and then click the Change button. The Editing Style dialogue box (referred to as the Style editor) will appear.
   The Style editor is divided into a number of different sections which you can reach by clicking on the radio button next to their title. The green button next to each radio button simply indicates that something has been selected in that section of the Style editor. They do not do anything except help you find out what attributes a style has. The first green button is always on as every style has a name.
   You will see that in this case all the green buttons at the left-hand edge of the Style editor are illuminated. This is because you are editing a base style that provides default values for all style attributes in this document.
   If a style which does not have all the settings active is applied to a section of text, the text will retain the existing settings for those attributes which are not set in the style which you are applying.
4. Click the Cancel button.
5. Click the Style tool button on the toolbar again, but this time choose Bold from the list of styles.
   You will see that this style has only one active section, Text, and that this has only one option, the bold typeface option, set.
   The left-hand button of this option indicates whether the style affects the boldness of the text - in this case the option is set so the boldness is affected. The right-hand button of this option indicates what the effect is - in this case the button is in the on position and so text to which this style is applied would be made bold. (If the right-hand button had been in the off position, the effect of applying the style would be to remove any occurrence of bold text which it encountered.

You should spend some time looking at the options in the Style dialogue box.

If you do not understand any of the terms used, they are all defined in the Glossary at the end of the User Guide.

Adding a new style

The newsletter does not have a style for headings. Headings currently appear in the same style as the main text (referred to as the body text).

To add a new style:

1. Click the Style tool button on the toolbar, then click the New button. The Define new style dialogue box will appear:
   
2. Type Heading in the space for the style name.
3. Choose BaseLetter from the list of styles. It is usual to base new styles on attributes from an existing one.
4. Click the Create button. A new dialogue box will appear with the title Defining new style - Heading.
5. If necessary, click the Text button to go to the part of the Style dialogue box where you can alter aspects of the text style.
6. You will be making the type bold and increasing its size. So you need to click the option button next to the Bold button to switch it on. Both it and the Bold button will be pressed in. Next, click the Height option button to switch it on as well. Use the arrows to increase the size to 16 points.
   
7. Click the Apply button.

The new style, Heading, is now added to the list of styles in this document.

If you click the Style tool button on the toolbar you will see that Heading is now included in the list of styles.

Applying your new style to existing text

There are several headings already in the document to which you need to apply the Heading style. To do this:

1. Go to the first heading, ‘Latest news from your youth club and community centre.’, and select it.
2. Click the Style tool button on the toolbar.
3. Choose Heading from the list of styles and then click the Apply button. The heading will appear in bold and in larger text.
4. Go through the other headings in the document and do the same to them.

Note that the best way to create your document is to enter the text and then to add the styles to it afterwards, as described above.

You can, if you wish, set up a style to be applied to text which you are about to enter at the current caret position by choosing a style from the list and clicking the Apply button when no text is selected.

Changing styles without using the dialogue box

There are some aspects of style which are much more easily set up or changed by working on the page with the buttons and ruler markers than by going through the Style dialogue box and typing in numbers. Setting margins and tabs are the main example.

The list of points at the bottom of the page need to be indented (moved towards the centre of the page) further than they are already. To change the style:

1. Place the caret in the line beginning ‘Junior disco’. But make sure that you do not select any text; you can check this by looking at the Selection tool button on the toolbar, which should be white.
2. Point at the left margin marker, and drag it one centimetre to the right. The paragraph margin marker and tabs will follow it. Note that the status line will tell you which style you are altering, in this case Points. All three paragraphs which are in this style will be reformatted.

If you attempt to change a style while there is a selection, your changes will be applied as an effect to the selected area. An effect is like a one-off occurrence of a style, but no record of it is stored in the Style list so it is harder for you to keep control of your document and go back and make consistent stylistic changes.

Layering styles

One of the most powerful things you can do with styles is to combine them with each other to add further dimensions of style to your documents.

To make this easy, you should define as little as possible in each style. For example, styles changing the colour of text should not also change the typeface or text size. This makes it easy to build combinations of styles, giving you added flexibility.

You have already applied one style, Heading, to the headings in the document. Now go back to them and layer another style over them to add colour.

1. Select a heading and click the Style tool button on the toolbar.
2. Choose Text colour from the list of styles and click the Apply button. The text will change to the new colour but remain in the same typeface.

Applying effects

If there is a change in appearance which you wish to make consistently throughout your document, for example changing all headings to be a larger size, then you should use a style for this. However, if there is a change which you know is only going to occur once, then it will be quicker to make the change by applying an effect.

To apply an effect:

1. Select the area of text you wish to change, in this case the words lighting system in the second paragraph.
2. Click the Effects tool button on the toolbar. The Apply effects dialogue box will appear. This is like the Style dialogue box.
3. Click the Text button, enable the Colour option and choose any colour from those available.
4. Click the Apply button.
5. The text selected will immediately be changed to the colour that you chose.

Like styles, effects created using the Apply effects dialogue box will be added to the selected region, if there is one. If there is no region selected, any attributes which you set will affect any new text which you enter at the current caret position.

Special effect buttons

Buttons are provided on the toolbar for the most commonly used effects; bold, italic, underline, superscript and subscript:

As usual, you can select a region and click one of these toolbar buttons to apply the corresponding effect to that region.

Alternatively, you can click one of these toolbar buttons when no region is selected to have the effect apply to new text at the current caret position. The button will appear to be pressed in, to remind you that any text which you enter will appear in the corresponding style. To revert back to normal type, simply click the toolbar button again to deselect it.

For example, you need to add another text paragraph to the newsletter:

1. Place the caret at the end of the paragraph which starts ‘Thanks to everyone…’ and press Return↵. The caret will now be at the start of a new paragraph.
2. Click the Bold tool button on the toolbar. You will see that bold is now selected.
3. Type in:

   Also thanks

4. Click the Bold tool button on the toolbar again. You will see that bold is no longer selected.
5. Type in:

   to the Parent and Toddler group for raising £145 with the sponsored tricycle ride.

You will see that the first two words appeared in bold and the rest in the ordinary base text style.

Adding tables

Tables are a useful way of setting out complicated information which would be hard to understand if it was written in sentences. But Fireworkz' table facilities offer much more than that. They allow you to create a wide range of custom forms and similar documents.

To being working with tables, open the document Form in the Tutorial directory.

Adding the table

To add a table to the end of the document:

1. Position the caret at the end of the text in the document and press Return↵ to start a new paragraph.
2. Click the Table tool button on the toolbar or choose the Table option from the Edit menu. The Insert table dialogue box will appear.
3. Enter 5 for the number of columns and 6 for the number of rows, then click the Insert button. The table will be added to the document. At this stage it will be very plain and not include much of the style detailing which you are going to add.

Each cell in the table can hold either text or a number. They are all initialised as though they will be holding numbers. However, in this example some will be holding text. This is not a problem, as Fireworkz will change the cell type depending on what you enter into it. But, it does mean that when you first move to a cell, the caret may not appear immediately.

To help keep track of where you are within a table, follow these instructions:

1. Click the View button at the far left of the toolbar. The View control dialogue box will appear.
2. Click the Column border and Row border options.
3. Click the Apply button. Borders will appear along the top and left-hand side of the document showing the positions of the individual columns and rows in your table. The current cell is indicated by which column and row appear highlighted in the borders. Initially, the current cell will be the top, left-hand cell of the table.

Adding text to the table

You will need to type the following text into your table.

• Use the arrow keys to move from cell to cell. As you do so, the currently highlighted column and row will change to indicate where you are.
• Notice how the rows increase in depth automatically to accommodate the text.

Resizing columns

To improve the appearance of your table looking just you need to change the width of some of the columns.

The last column, ‘Preferred date’, needs to be quite wide because people will be writing in it. To widen the column:

1. Position the caret somewhere within the column.
2. Point at the column width marker in the ruler (vertical bars). The mouse pointer will turn into the two-way horizontal arrows, and the status line will confirm that you are pointing at a column width marker and give you the current column width measurement.
3. Press down and hold the left mouse button and drag the marker to the right for about two centimetres.
4. Release the mouse button and the column will be resized.

In some cases you want to make sure that the column is just the right size for the text it contains. This feature is called Auto width. To resize the first column automatically:

1. Position the caret in the first column.
2. Point at the column width marker in the ruler. The mouse pointer will turn into the two-way horizontal arrows.
3. Double-click on the column width marker. The column will resize automatically to the correct width for the widest text which it contains.

Adding colour

Tables can sometimes be difficult to read. Adding colour is one way of making it easier for people to keep their eyes on a particular row or column.

To add colour to the table:

1. Click the Style tool button on the toolbar, create a new style, and give it the name Table colour
2. Go to the Colours section of the Defining new style dialogue box, and click on Background.
3. Choose a background colour for the table. Bear in mind that it will have text printed over it, so it should be a fairly pale colour.
4. Click the Apply button.
5. Now select all the cells in the first column of the table, and click the Style tool button on the toolbar.
6. Choose Table colour from the list of styles and then click the Apply button.
7. Repeat the two previous steps to add this style to the cells in the top row of the table.

One possibility is to add colour to alternate columns or rows, or to groups of rows or columns. This can be done using one of the supplied template styles such as ColStripe in the Styles directory - this would require you to consult the User Guide.

Adding a border

You can add further definition to your table by adding a heavier rule around its outer edge. To do this:

1. Select all the cells in the table.
2. Click the Box tool button on the toolbar, or choose the Box option from the Style menu.
3. Click the Outside button in the Box dialogue box.
4. Click the thick line button in the Line style section.
5. Click the Apply button. A thicker line will be drawn around the outside of the table.

You can also use the Box dialogue box to add thinner lines within tables, or to change the colour of lines in tables.

To remove lines from a table, choose the blank button in the Line style section of the Box dialogue box.

Saving your work

The final step in the tutorial is to save your work.

1. If you were to click the Save tool button on the toolbar this modified document would be saved to its current location. However, for this example, you should try to save your document in another directory.
2. Choose the Save as option from the File menu.
3. The standard Save dialogue box will appear.
4. Enter a name for the document, such as Form2021.
5. Drag the file icon to a directory where it can be saved.