KidPad 0.8 User’s Guide

Gustav Taxén

March 2000

Main changes since KidPad 0.7

· Improved stability, and removed all known bugs

· Printing now prints the entire story - by printing one page for each hyperlink

· Pressing the delete key will delete the objects currently selected with the arrow tool

· Improved installation procedure

· New key shortcuts:

· Ctrl-Z will increase the size of selected objects

· Ctrl-X will decrease the size of selected objects

Installation

This section describes how to install KidPad on your computer. It assumes that you have at least 30 megabytes free disk space on your hard drive.

If you have a KidPad CD-ROM, insert the CD and it will automatically start the installation. If for some reason it doesn't, you can run the 'setup' program on the CD.

Otherwise, you can download KidPad by typing in the following address into your web browser, and then running the program that gets downloaded:

http://www.kidpad.org/download/KidPad-0.8-setup.exe

Then, double-click on KidPad-0.8-setup.exe and an installation Wizard will take you through the steps of installing KidPad.

Unlike previous versions of KidPad, this version will automatically install Java if necessary. You do not need to do anything outside of the installation program.

Using KidPad 0.8

To run KidPad, select the KidPad shortcut from the “Start/Program Files” menu or go to the folder you installed it in and double click on “kidpad”.

Starting KidPad

You can start KidPad either by double clicking on the “kidpad” icon or running the MS-DOS prompt program, and typing:

cd c:\Program Files\kidpad-0.7 (or the directory where you installed KidPad)

kidpad

Or, if you want to directly a load a previously created story, you can run

kidpad storyX

where X is the number of the story.

Closing KidPad

You can close KidPad it by using one of these methods:

· Hold the Ctrl key and press Q.

· Hold the Alt key and press F4.

Toolboxes

In KidPad, tools are organised in toolboxes and each tool belongs to a toolbox. There are three toolboxes. The toolboxes can be toggled on and off by holding the Ctrl key and then pressing one of the 1, 2 or 3 keys. If you click on a toolbox, the toolbox will open or close, depending on its current state. When a toolbox is opened, its tools are moved out onto the drawing surface. When a toolbox is closed, its tools are hidden inside.

Tools

Each mouse “holds” a tool. To pick up a new tool, move the current tool so that the tool you want to pick up becomes highlighted, then click. (The left and right mouse buttons work exactly the same way in KidPad so that it doesn’t matter if you’re left-handed or right-handed.)

Some tools are also “collaborative”. This means that they can be combined in different ways to produce additional functionality. The idea is that you can get added benefit from collaboration. Only tools of the same type can be collaborative. For example, crayons only combine with other crayons, not with other tools. When two tools are activated close to each other at the same time, the collaborative function replaces the standard functionality of the tools. Two small orange balls appear next to the tools to indicate that an opportunity for collaboration exists.

It is also possible to “trade” tools with other users. If you select a tool that someone else is holding, the tools are swapped.

Crayons

Crayons are used to draw lines. In the collaborative mode, a thick line will be drawn between the two crayons. The colour of this thick line will be the colour you get when blending the colours from the two participating crayons.

Hand

The hand has two functions: to pan the picture and to follow hyperlinks. When holding the hand, press and hold the mouse button and move the mouse to pan the picture. In collaborative mode, the hands will zoom out when they are moved together and zoom in when they are moved apart. A grey arrow appears to indicate that the hand is over a start point of a link. Click the mouse button to follow the link.

Eraser

The eraser removes parts of shapes and whole text entries. There is no collaborative mode for the eraser.

Magic wand

The magic wand draws hyperlinks. Each hyperlink requires a start point and an end point to be complete. To draw the link, move the wand onto a shape or a text entry (a magenta box will appear around it) and press the mouse button to select it as start point. Repeat for the end point. This creates a green arrow from the start point to the end point. You can now use the hand tool to follow the hyperlink. There is no collaborative mode for the magic wand.

Turn alive tool

The turn alive tool turns shapes alive. In collaborative mode, the distance between the turn alive tools controls how much alive the line should be. The greater the distance, the more lively the line becomes.

Clone tool

The clone tool creates copies of tools. The copies have exactly the same functionality as the originals. The bulletin board, the text tool and the clone tool cannot be copied. There is no tool to delete copied tools. Instead, when a toolbox is closed, all copied tools belonging to that toolbox are deleted. There is no collaborative mode for the clone tool.

Text tool

The text tool draws text characters. Click the mouse button to choose a start point for the text. A magenta box will appear. You can now type characters on the keyboard to add text, just as in any word processor. The red vertical line is the text cursor. It can be moved with the cursor keys on the keyboard.

Selection tool

The selection tool is used to select and move objects from one place to another. You can move individual objects or several objects at once. To move one object, move the selection tool onto it. Then press and hold the mouse button. Move the mouse to move the object and release the mouse button to drop it. To move several objects at once, move the tool away from the objects, then press and hold the left mouse button. Move the mouse button to draw a black box. Magenta boxes will appear around all the objects that are contained within the black box. Release the mouse button when all the objects you want to move are inside the black box. To move the objects, put the move tool into one of the magenta boxes, then press and hold the mouse button and drag. In collaboration mode, the selection tools stretch the selected lines. Text entries are not stretched.

Filler

The filler is used to fill line shapes with colour. To fill a shape, click on it with the mouse button. If you click on a filled shape, it will turn back into a line shape. Note that the filler only fills shapes – if you click on an empty area, nothing will happen.

Puller

The puller tool is used for pulling lines. To start pulling, click and hold the mouse button. Then move the mouse. Release the mouse button to drop the line.

Bulletin board

The bulletin board tool opens up the bulletin board where stories can be saved and loaded. There are two tools in the bulletin board that can be picked up and dropped in the same way as the other KidPad tools. The hand is used to make selections and the eraser is used to erase things. All previously saved stories are shown on the brown bulletin board area as thumbnails (small pictures). At the bottom center of the screen, the current story can be seen. To go back to the current story, click on it with the hand tool. To delete the current story (and get a clear screen), click on it with the eraser tool. To load a story from the bulletin board, click on it with the hand tool. To erase a previously saved story, click on it with the eraser. To save the current story, click on the bulletin board with the hand tool. Normally, stories are saved in a storage-efficient format. However, stories saved in that format will not load in future versions of KidPad. If you want to save the current story in KidPad-0.6 format, hold the Shift key when clicking on the brown thumbnail area. The eraser can be toggled on and off by holding Ctrl and pressing E. To save the current story as HTML, click on the Earth icon with the hand tool. HTML stories are kept in the folder

Folder where kidpad is installed\html-files\

To print the current story, click on the paper stack with the hand tool. The bulletin board has no collaborative mode.

Zooming and panning

To zoom out to display the entire picture, press the Home key. To zoom in at the place where the cursor is, press Page Up. To zoom out at the place where the cursor is, press Page Down. To pan the image, use the cursor keys. Note that you shouldn’t press and hold the keys – since KidPad is slow, it won’t have time to process all the zoom and pan commands, which means that the panning or zooming won’t stop immediately when you release the key.

Sometimes, you may want to zoom to a specific area of the image or to a specific level of detail. One way to do this is to “pre-program” views. When you’ve zoomed and panned to a specific view, hold the Shift key and press one of the twelve function keys at the top of the keyboard (F1 through F12). To get back to that view at a later time, press the function key again (without holding Shift). To remove the association between a view and a function key, hold Ctrl and press the function key.

It is also possible to “re-program” the Home key. By default, the Home key displays all objects, but if you hold Shift and then press Home, the Home key will now bring you back to the current view. To restore the default behaviour, hold Ctrl and press Home.

Logging

When KidPad is exited, two log files containing user actions is saved in the folder

Folder where kidpad is installed\log-files\

The files are named according to the date and time KidPad was exited. The file with the .txt extension can be imported in Microsoft Excel. The file with the .lld extension can be viewed in Lifelines, a HCIL product.

KidPad key summary

Key	Function
Home	Center all objects or go to a pre-defined view.
Shift + Home	Set the pre-defined view for the Home key.
Ctrl + Home	Reset the Home key so that it centers all objects.
F1 through F12	Go to a pre-defined view.
Shift + F1 through F12	Set the pre-defined view for a function key.
Ctrl + F1 through F12	Remove the association between a function key and a view.
Page Up	Zoom in.
Page Dn	Zoom out.
Cursor key left	Move image to the left.
Cursor key right	Move image to the right.
Cursor key up	Move image up.
Cursor key down	Move image down.
Ctrl + q	Quit KidPad.
Ctrl + 1	Toggle first toolbox.
Ctrl + 2	Toggle second toolbox.
Ctrl + 3	Toggle third toolbox.
Ctrl + e	Toggle bulletin board eraser.
Ctrl + c	Clear the screen and start a new story.
Ctrl + f	Bring the selected items in front of other items
Ctrl + b	Push the selected items below other items
Ctrl + z	Make the selected items a little bigger
Ctrl + x	Make the selected items a little smaller
Delete	Delete the selected items