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The Hirsute One
Hairy but harmless


Joined: 20 Jul 2006
Posts: 17307
Location: Croydon, Surrey, UK

PostPosted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 11:31 am    Post subject: Section 4: Other manipulations Reply with quote

doesn't have a "find" function, but it's useful for marking words. Take this simple word search puzzle.



Paste it into and then use the “Line” (from the “Shapes” toolbar) to mark off the words you find – just the same as marking it on paper with a pen but more ecologically friendly. If you hold down the “Shift” key while drawing a line, the lines will be forced straight at 45° angles.



The unused letters give you an answer.

The example above uses the font Courier New, which is a monospaced font, meaning that each letter takes up the same width - an I uses as much space as a W for instance. Most fonts are TrueType and only use the space they need, an I being much thinner than a W. Puzzle setters sometimes use this to hide patterns.

As an example
tailjohnservesamilkwoodsternlyaround
doesn't immediately present an answer. However, copy and paste this into as a text selection, highlight the text and change the font to Courier New (choose a font size to suit) and then vary the width of the text box. Looking down the columns words will start to appear.



Not a brilliant example but you get the idea.

I also find very useful for completing crosswords. Using, for example, red as my pencil colour (any colour other than the crossword colours), it is easy to fill in the grid and quickly use "Fill" to delete any wrong letters. Saves paper in printing the grid and is less messy than rubbing out wrong letters on paper.

The same with Sudoku.



Here you can fill in the grid as required, showing the various options and replacing them when the options are eliminated until your Sudoku is complete.

  

To rotate all or part of an image, start by selecting the area that you want to manipulate. From the “Image” toolbar select the “Rotate” option and you can flip the image horizontally or vertically, or rotate by 90, 180 or 270 degrees (270 degrees is shown as 90 degrees left). There is no function to enable a rotation by a set number of degrees other than the three options listed – you’ll need a more advanced package to do this.



I have occasionally found that this version of doesn’t rotate rectangular selections very well, sometimes truncating the longer edges. If this happens, to ensure all of the chosen area is rotated, enlarge your selection to a square (this may need the canvas size to be enlarged to accommodate this new size).

At the bottom of the screen, displays some useful information. From left to right this information is; position of the cursor, the size of any current selection, the size of the current image (canvas size), the file size in kb and the current zoom level.



Individual pixels are so small that it's difficult to see them unless you enlarge the image. The left image below shows lines drawn with a vertical gap of one pixel between each and is displayed in its original size. To the right is the same image in a much larger view.



Enlarging an image doesn't alter the number of pixels in any way, but it obviously makes it a lot easier to see them clearly. If you select the “Pencil” tool, with the smallest size selected, a single dot is exactly one pixel and will always draw a 1-pixel square, no matter whether you are looking at your working area in a normal, medium or large view - it may look a lot bigger and clearer if the image is enlarged, but it's actually still the same size.

It sometimes becomes awkward to scroll up and down or left and right to display different parts of an image when it is so big - but the advantage of using this technique is that it is very accurate.
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