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-
-
- Portfolio v1.00
- ===============
-
- A utility for viewing Clip-Art files
- ====================================
-
-
- Introduction
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- Portfolio is a utility which can be used to view small versions of clip-art
- files, called 'thumbnails'. The advantage of viewing these rather than the
- actual clip-art files is that they are usually much smaller, and hence
- quicker to load, especially from slow systems such as CD-ROM or networks.
-
- Portfolio allows you to flick through a collection of thumbnails, and search
- for particular images on a keyword basis. Once you have found the file you
- are interested in, you can drag a file icon from Portfolio's window to
- another application such as ArtWorks or Impression.
-
- Important note for RISC OS 2 users:
- This application will work under RISC OS 2, but you must be in a 256 colour
- mode (e.g. mode 15 or 21), or the thumbnails will not be displayed.
-
- Clip Art directories
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- Portfolio expects clip-art to be stored in a certain way. It expects a
- clip-art directory to have any of the 3 directories 'ArtWorks', 'TIFF' or
- 'Sprites'. If you have a clip-art directory such as this, you may drag it to
- Portfolio's icon, or its main window, and it will attempt to scan it.
- Portfolio is intelligent, in that you can drag either the 'ArtWorks', 'TIFF'
- or 'Sprites' directory, or the directory that contains them - it will sort
- out what you want.
-
- The ArtWorks Clip Art CD, of course, contains directories that are already
- correctly structured, and Portfolio will read these directly with no
- problems.
-
- If you are using more than one Clipart CD Portfolio will always use the first
- one accessed. To view the clipart files on another Clipart disc, drag the
- ArtWorks, TIFF and Sprites directories of the new disc onto Portfolio.
-
- Use
- ~~~
-
- To load Portfolio, double click on it, and after a short pause its icon will
- appear on the icon bar. Clicking on the icon will open the main Portfolio
- window. If you are running the application from the ArtWorks Clip-Art CD,
- then it will attempt to scan the ArtWorks Clip-Art directory when the window
- opens. When the scan is complete, the first thumbnail should be displayed,
- along with various information about it. (If for some reason, Portfolio does
- not scan a directory when you open the main window, then drag the directory
- "ArtWorks" from the CD onto the Portfolio icon, or onto its main window).
-
-
- Navigation
-
- The six buttons at the top of the window are used to flick through the
- thumbnails (which are sorted alphabetically). The buttons have the following
- functions, proceeding from left to right:
-
- Move to the first thumbnail in this set.
- Move back 10 thumbnails.
- Move to the previous thumbnail.
- Nove to the next thumbnail.
- Move forward 10 thumbnails.
- Move to the last thumbnail in this set.
-
-
- Status field
-
- Underneath these buttons is the status field - this indicates when Portfolio
- is scanning, or how many files it has found. Usually it will say something
- like "File 1 of 704" which means there are 704 files, and you are looking at
- the first one.
-
-
- File information
-
- The field beneath the thumbnail itself is the name of the file, and below
- that is displayed the type of the file, and its size. If the clip-art file
- is not found, or it is of an unknown type, this is reported in this field.
-
-
- Directory information
-
- The field at the very bottom of the window tells you the name of the
- clip-art directory you are looking at. This directory will usually contain
- the 'ArtWorks', 'TIFF' and 'Sprites' subdirectories. You can only view one
- type of file at a time - that is, you cannot, for instance, look at both
- TIFF and ArtWorks files at the same time. The field above the directory name
- on the right tells you which subdirectory you are looking at - by default it
- will choose ArtWorks (if there is an ArtWorks directory). To the right of
- this field is a small button. Clicking on this will bring up a menu of the
- subdirectories that Portfolio has found that it thinks contain clip-art.
- Choosing a directory from this menu will cause Portfolio to scan this
- directory for clip-art. If no clip-art is found, then Portfolio reports an
- error, and you will have to select another directory to view via the menu (or
- you can drag a directory onto Portfolio, as described above).
-
-
- The File icon
-
- In the lower right of the main window is a file icon - it represents what
- type of file you are looking at. This icon behaves like an icon in a RISC OS
- Filer window. This means you can drag it to an application you want to load
- it (for example, !AWViewer), or double click on it to force an application to
- start up and load it if one is not already running. If you double click with
- adjust, then the file will be loaded, and the Portfolio window will close,
- just like the Filer.
-
-
- Goto Dialog
-
- Clicking on the button labelled 'Goto...' will bring up a dialog box under
- the mouse pointer. This will contain a list of all the clip-art files in the
- current directory. When you click on a filename, the dialog will disappear,
- and the main window will update to show the file you have chosen. This
- enables you to move around the files quickly, or perhaps just browse through
- the filenames (as this is quicker than flicking through all the thumbnails).
-
-
- Searching
-
- Clicking on the 'Search...' button will bring up the search dialog box. You
- can type a keyword into this dialog which you would like to search for. The
- files on the Clip-Art CD have a simple keyword database associated with them,
- and searching for 'car' for example, will find all pictures related to cars.
- When you have typed in your keyword, press Return or click on OK, and
- Portfolio will search for your keyword in the current list of clip-art files.
- When the search has completed, the main window will show the results of the
- search - the status field will change to show a message such as:
- "File 1 of 22 (selection)"
-
- The 'selection' means that you are not looking at all the files in the
- directory, but at a selection. To return to looking at all files, choose the
- 'View All' button. This button is only available when you have a selection
- of files - at other times it serves a different purpose, and is labelled
- 'Make Index' (see technical section for details). So, when you click on View
- All, the selection is cleared, and the viewer shows the first file in the
- list, and the button changes to read 'Make Index'. In normal use, you will
- probably not need to press 'Make Index', but it is useful if you make your
- own clip-art directories.
-
- If you have performed a search which has resulted in a lot of matches, and
- you would like to refine it, click on the 'Refine search' icon in the search
- dialog box. This will restrict the search to only those files found as a
- result of the previous search. So, for example, if you searched for
- 'animals' and found the number of matches too great, you could then refine
- the search for a particular animal.
-
- If you want to perform a partial search, you can put the '*' character at
- the end of the search. For example, 'car*' will match 'car', 'card', and
- 'cartoon', amongst others.
-
- The search system remembers the last 10 keywords you entered - they are
- available on the pop-up menu button to the right of the keyword entry field
- in the search dialog.
-
- Here are some examples of keywords used in the ClipArt CD database:
-
- object - material 'things' (this is a large group)
- design - posters, pages, complicated drawings of things that are
- not objects
- cartoon - cartoon-style drawings
- people - Pictures containing people
- clip - borders and similar useful things that are not objects;
- arrows etc
- border - subset of the clip group
- sport - sport related pictures
- transport - cars, planes, etc.
- text - pictures containing special or unusual text effects
- landscape - landscape views, sunsets etc.
- plant - plants (trees, flowers, etc)
- logo - logos
- flower - flowers
-
- and also: animal, people, food, computer, music, cat, building...
-
- The groups described above are not strict and many have very fuzzy
- boundaries, so experiment to find the best groups for your work.
-
- The !Help file inside !Portfolio contains a more detailed technical description
- of the operation of !Portfolio.
-