OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox, and Thunderbird for Windows All in One [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.

Display the Gallery

Select

Tools, Gallery or click the

Drawing toolbar's

Gallery button to display the Gallery. Click to select the appropriate theme you want from those listed on the left. Items in the selected theme appear on the right. If you need to, scroll down to see more items.

TIP

Click the

Detail View button to view Gallery items by filename. Click the

Icon View button to display Gallery items as large thumbnails.

2.

Insert an Object

To simply insert an item from the Gallery into the current drawing, click and drag the object you want, and then drop it into your drawing area. When the image is in your drawing, you can move and resize it as desired. If changes are made to the Gallery object, those changes are not passed to the inserted object, so the object is as you left it in the drawing.

3.

Insert a Linked Object

To insert a linked object instead of copying an object into your drawing, hold the

Shift and

Ctrl keys while you drag the object to your drawing.

NOTE

As you can see, linked objects behave just as copied objects when you insert themin other words, you can move and resize the linked objects as you like. Linked objects will change, however, if their original Gallery objects change.

4.

Insert a Fill

If you want to use a Gallery object to fill a drawing object, press

Ctrl+Shift and drag the object into the drawing, and then drop it on an object. This time, pressing

Ctrl+Shift does not create a linked objectinstead the Gallery object is tiled until it fills the drawing object's background. And in case you were wondering, changes to the Gallery object

do not affect the fill.

TIP

You can use the same technique described in step 4 to fill the background of a text object if you like. If you fill a text object with a background and it's too dark for you to read the text clearly, lighten the color of the text or make the fill more transparent. Click the

Area button on the

Line and Filling toolbar, click the

Transparency tab, and adjust the transparency as desired. Typically, a light transparency such as 15% allows you to see the background texture clearly while making the text more readable.

5.

Insert a Background

To use one of the Gallery's background objects as the background for your drawing, you basically create a rectangle shape to act as the background, then fill it with something from the Gallery.

Click the

Rectangle tool on the

Drawing toolbar and drag to create a rectangle that's as large as your drawing. Don't worry that you'll cover up all the objects in your drawing; we'll take care of that in the next step.

Click to select the

Backgrounds theme. Background objects appear on the right. Select a suitable background object from this list. (Actually, any Gallery object can serve as a drawing background, but the ones listed in the

Backgrounds theme are designed to be background patterns and are not really suitable as standalone objects in drawings.)

Press

Ctrl+Shift and drag the background object onto the large rectangle and drop it. The background is tiled to fill the rectangle.

6.

Send the Background to the Back

Click the background rectangle and select

Modify, Arrange, Send to Back or click the

Arrange button on the

Drawing toolbar and select

Send to Back to move the background image to the very back of your drawing so that all the other objects and text can be seen. Adjust the background if needed to completely fill your drawing area. Be careful that your background is not so busy that it detracts from your drawing's primary elements.