2.2. Halos and HUDs
Interacting with Sophie is done with halos and HUDs. Halos are little icons that show up around things in Sophie when you select them. They stay on the screen until you click somewhere else in Sophie. Generally, these halos can be clicked to open a HUD; a few work slightly differently. HUD is short for head-up display. It’s a little window that opens up showing you different things that you can do with whatever you have selected. You can drag a HUD around by clicking on its background and dragging.
Different things in Sophie have different kids of halos. If you select an image on a Sophie page, you’ll see a frame appearance halo, which lets you put images, backgrounds, or drop shadows on the image; a frame properties halo, which lets you control where and how big the image is; a link halo, which lets you turn the image into a link; and an anchor halo, which lets you attach the image to a text flow. If you select a word of text, you’ll see the character halo, which lets you set the font settings for just that word; the paragraph halo, which lets you control how the paragraph that word is in appears; and the link halo, which lets you make that word into a link. Some halos are very specific: you won’t see the link color halo unless you’ve selected a frame that’s a link or text that’s part of a link.
The halo and HUD functionality in this release of Sophie 2 is not complete: more halos and HUDs will appear in the finished version of the application, and many of them will be implemented in different ways. Some halos and HUDs can be seen, however. They are:
Page halos and HUDs
In previous releases of Sophie 2, there have been page halos and HUDs. These have been disabled in this release of Sophie; they will return in the next release of Sophie.
Frame halos
When a frame is added to a Sophie page and the frame is selected, frame halos are visible. They look like this:
Above the frame appear the drag halo, which can be used to move the frame, and the delete halo, which can be used to delete the frame.
Four halos appear directly above the frame's upper left corner. From left to right, these are the frame size and position halo, frame appearance halo, margins and padding halo, and the drop shadow halo halo.
If you click on the frame size and position halo, the frame size and position HUD appears, which looks like this:
The top settings allow you to set the width and height of the frame; the bottom settings allow you to set the position of the frame relative to the top left corner of the page. Note that currently all frames in Sophie start out at the same size, 360 x 240; this can be changed in the frame size and position HUD.
If you click on the frame appearance halo, the frame appearance HUD appears, which looks like this:
This HUD allows you to set the border and fill on the frame. The top, left, right, and bottom border widths can be adjusted separately. If you click on the color squares for the border color or fill color, the color picker will be opened, which looks like this:
If you click on the margins and padding halo, the margins and padding HUD appears, which looks like this:
The top half of this HUD sets the margins values for the frame. Margins are extra space added around the frame so that text will wrap around it. The bottom half sets the padding values for the frame. Padding is extra space added inside the frame between the frame and any text within the frame. Margins and padding can be adjusted on any side of the frame. Margins and padding are visible when the user selects Outline Frames in the status bar of the book window.
One further HUD appears, the drop shadow HUD. It looks like this:
The drop shadow HUD doesn't actually function in this release of Sophie.
Text halos
In previous releases of Sophie 2, text could be edited; when the cursor was inserted in a text frame, text halos appeared. Text halos and HUDs have been disabled in this release of Sophie; when a text frame is inserted, it comes with default text. If the content of the frame is clicked, a window appears where new text can be entered in the frame. This behavior will change after this release.
