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Xara X. Glossary — A

For the next several WebXealots, I will present a glossary of Xara terms and tool descriptions. While much of the text has been lifted directly from the Xara's Help menu, I have added additional information plus links to WebXealots were tools, functions, and features are covered in detail.

Alignment is the horizontal and vertical relationship of several objects to each other. For example, objects can be aligned so that their topmost edges all line up and they are distributed evenly horizontally.

By default, alignment aligns to the Selection Bounds, the area occupied by the selected objects.

When Page(s) is checked, objects are aligned within the bounds of the page.

Spread uses the bounds of the spread.

The four colored icons in the preview window change to show what will happen when each option is selected from the drop down lists. In addition, you can click in the preview window as a shortcut. See the tip below.

Using the Alignment menu Efficiently TIP: Clicking inside the preview window sets the alignment options as follows.

Top left: The nine basic alignment settings. Click in any of these positions to align as shown.

Bottom left: Hold down the Shift key and click to align vertically.

Top right: Hold down the Ctrl key and click to align horizontally.

Bottom right: Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys and click to distribute equally.

 

Alpha-channel: (alpha-channel transparency) Some bitmap formats can have transparent areas in them. (For example, the background might be transparent.) There are two types of bitmap transparency: 

  • Simple on-off transparency. This is the only type of transparency available in GIF bitmaps and in PNG bitmaps up to 256 colors.
  • "Alpha-channel" or graduated transparency. This is variable between fully transparent and fully opaque. (Similar to the Xara X's transparency effects.)  Alpha-channel is available for PNG true-color and TIFF bitmaps.

    • Xara X can import and export both simple and alpha-channel transparency.

    Animated Document Xara X has two types of document: Drawing and Animation. Animation documents are designed for creating Animated GIFs. Animation documents cannot contain layers. You cannot create Buttons and Bars using Animated documents (as these require layers). For an animation tutorial see WebXealot 22.

    Animated GIFs Xara X can export animated GIF files which contain several separate images rather than just one. Programs which support this type of file show each image one after the other with a set time delay between each. This means you can create animations using Xara X. Most browsers (Netscape Navigator Version 2 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3) support animated GIFs, so using Xara X it is very easy to create animations for your Internet pages. Remember, as Xara X displays images at a very high quality and has a wide range of dithering and palette options, your animations will look great!

    Anti-aliasing improves the quality of on-screen images by inserting extra pixels of calculated colors around the edges of objects on screen. This has the effect of smoothing the edges and of appearing to improve the resolution of the display. Anti-aliasing only occurs when the Xara X Quality (Window > Quality > Anti-aliased) setting is at its highest level, which is anti-aliased.

    Application Control Menu is displayed by clicking the application control button (the tiny Xara icon) at the top left of the main Xara X window or pressing Alt Spacebar. This menu contains application specific controls. For example Close and Minimize/Maximize.

    Apply Inside allows you to apply attributes to objects that are contained inside other objects such as different fill and outline colors, without affecting the other objects. To apply inside, hold down Ctrl when you drop the attribute onto the object. For example to apply a color to an object in a group (not the whole group) Ctrl drag the color from the Color Line onto the object.

    ArtWorks is a vector drawing software package developed by Computer Concepts Ltd in the UK. ArtWorks runs on Acorn RISC machines and is the forerunner to Xara.

    Aspect Ratio The aspect ratio of an object is the ratio between its width and the height. For example, if an object has an aspect ratio of 100%, its width and height are the same. If an object has an aspect ratio of 50%, it is twice as high as it is wide. Xara.

    The tiny padlock icon (Lock Aspect Ratio) on the Infobar determines is object ratio is locked or unlocked. When the icon is in the down position (right) objects when scaled will scale proportionately. When the icon is raised (left) objects will scale non-proportionately.

    ATM (Adobe Type Manager) ATM is a font management utility available from Adobe which allows Adobe Type 1 PostScript fonts to be rendered on screen and hence allows matching of PostScript printer fonts and screen fonts. Xara X supports Adobe Type 1 PostScript fonts and TrueType fonts which are supported as standard by Windows.

    Attributes are the properties of objects in your drawings. For example, color, type size and style, and line thickness are some examples of attributes. Many attributes may be copied from one object and applied to another. Copy (Ctrl C) the object containing the desired attributes to the clipboard. Select the target object and Paste Attributes (Edit > Paste Attributes or Shift Ctrl A).