Introduction	User's Guide	Concepts

Quick Overview

Since the User's Manual is quite incomplete and even a bit outdated, here is a quick guide to the main features of Sketch.

The Main Window

There's not much to say about the main window, since many of its components are fairly standard, like the menu and toolbar.

The status bar at the bottom indicates the current mode, the current magnification factor, the current position of the mouse pointer (you can change the unit from the context menu) and some information about the current selection.

The palette just above the status bar allows you to easily assign a fill color (click the left mouse button) or a line color (middle mouse button). It also has an experimental Drag&Drop facility: click on a color and drag the color to the pattern window in the fill dialog or onto a color button.

Toolbar/Menu

Here's a brief description of some menu commands. If the command is also available as a button in the toolbar, the icon is also shown.

Some commands are accessible via key strokes. The key sequence is indicated in the menu. The notation for key strokes is described in the section on key strokes.

File Operations

Open

Load a file into Sketch. Sketch tries to determine the file type automatically. It recognizes its own format, XFig, Adobe Illustrator, CMX (an exchange format defined by Corel), SVG (the upcoming web-standard for vector graphics) and WMF files.

The filters for the 'foreign' formats are not complete. The XFig filter for instance has some problems with the ordering of objects (because of that awful `depth' feature) and ignores arrow heads and dashing.

Insert Document

Insert the contents of a document as a group into the current document.

Save

Save the current file. If it was read from an SK-file (Sketch's own format) it is saved under the same name after Sketch has created a backup file. If it was not read from a file or the file was not an SK-file, you have to specify a filename. Sketch can currently save SK-files and Illustrator files.

Save As PostScript

Save the current drawing into a PostScript file. The file conforms to the EPS specification (I hope).

Edit Commands

Edit Mode
Selection Mode

Switch to one of Sketch's major modes, edit mode and selection mode.

Undo
Redo

Sketch allows you to undo every operation and maintains a virtually unlimited undo history. If you really want to limit the undo history, you can do so from the preferences dialog (File/Options...).