Visual Thought User's Guide
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Using This Manual

Who Should Read This Manual?

This manual is meant for all users. It is divided into four parts which are named:

Introduction and Tutorial
Using Visual Thought (Concepts)
Reference
Appendices If you are a first-time user, you should work your way through the Tutorial to see a typical use of Visual Thought.
If you are an occasional user, you should find it helpful to use the Table of Contents and the Index to point you to specific concepts within the Concepts section. The Reference section will be useful for looking up specific menu items and dialogs. Browsing the Tips and Techniques appendix will provide a cross-section of time-saving features.
If you are an advanced user, and have mastered the material in the Concepts and Reference sections, the Appendices will provide information about special topics such as file formats.

Where To Go For Help

If you have a question that the manual cannot answer, feel free to use the Suggestion Box to send us a question through electronic mail. You can also send e-mail to vthought@confluent.com.

Browsing through the examples and palettes (with the Options Examples... and OptionsPalettes... menu items) may give you ideas for your own work.

The Guided Tour example, part of the on-line example suite, explains and illustrates most of Visual Thought's features and applications, and is very useful as a form of on-line help.

Assumptions

Before you use Visual Thought, you need to have installed Visual Thought and you should know how to use a graphical application on your system. That is, we assume that:

Visual Thought has been successfully installed and licensed. Please see the Visual Thought Installation and Licensing Guide for information about how to install and license Visual Thought.
You have some rudimentary knowledge of UNIX. You need to know how to change directories, copy a file, etc.
You know how to use your windowing system. You should know which windowing system you are using, how to open, iconify and close windows, which mouse buttons perform which functions, how to exit your windowing system, how to open a shell window, etc.
Visual Thought can support a variety of windowing systems. If you are unsure about which system you are using or want further information about how to modify your system, see your system administrator.

Conventions

The following conventions are used in this manual:

Keyboard & Menu
Conventions

Meaning

Individual Key Names

such as Delete and Return, are italicized.

Key Sequences

are italicized. Ctrl-Shift-P means to press the Control, Shift and P keys simultaneously. (Ctrl is the abbreviation used for the Control key.)

Window and Menu names

These items are also italicized. For example, in the Visual Thought Main window, open the File menu.

Submenus

These items are denoted by listing the main menu first, followed by an arrow ('), then the submenu. For example, the sequence "In the Arrange menu, choose the Align submenu, then choose the Align Dialog submenu" is shown as ArrangeAlignAlign Dialog.


Mouse Conventions	Action
click	Press down on the left mouse button and quickly release.
left-click	Press down on the mouse button on the left hand side of the mouse and release.
middle-click	Press down on the mouse button in the middle of the mouse and release.
right-click	Press down on the mouse button on the right hand side of the mouse. This action usually brings up a menu.
select	Click once on an object. When an object is selected, small rectangular selection handles appear around it.
click-and-drag	Click and hold the left mouse button down, move the cursor, then release the button.
drag-and-drop	Click on an object to select it in one window (usually a Palette), keep the left mouse button depressed, move the cursor to a new window and release the button. The selected object will be deposited in the new window.
double-click	Press the left mouse button quickly twice in a row while not moving the cursor.
triple-click	Press the left mouse button quickly three times in a row while not moving the cursor.

Notes

The Delete and Backspace keys almost always perform the same function. The exception is when you are editing text in an object. In that case, Delete deletes forward and Backspace deletes backward.

For a complete discussion of key bindings, see the appendix entitled "Tool Key and Button Bindings" on page 251.
The bindings listed in the tables above are fairly standard ones. Nonetheless, most window systems allow you to change mouse button and key bindings. Naturally, if you have changed your bindings (or someone has changed them for you), the bindings discussed in this section might function differently on your system.

Visual Thought User's Guide
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