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
When the page itself is clicked, the page halos appear. They look like this:
At the bottom right corner is the book resize handle; this can be dragged back and forth to change the size of the book page. (This can also be accomplished by choosing Edit > Set Page Dimensions from the menu bars.) At the top right corner are three halos: the border & fill halo, show template frames halo, and the save page as template halo.
The border & fill halo opens the page's border & fill HUD. It looks like this:
These controls allow you to set the page's border and fill properties. If you choose to Lock the border or Lock the background, you will not be able to edit those properties. If you check the Border template or Background template, the settings for the border or the background will be taken from the saved page template.
Clicking on the color squares will open up the color picker, allowing you to choose a color for the border or fill:
Clicking on the image fill or pattern fill squares will prompt you to choose a location to use as your background. In image fill mode, the image is stretched to fit the size of the page; in pattern fill mode, it is repeated as many times as can fit in the page.
Show template frames will show all the frames on the current page that are saved on the current page template. Save page as template will save the current page as a page template.
Frame halos
When a frame is added to a Sophie page and the frame is selected, frame halos are visible. They look like this:
Directly above the frame appear the drag handle, which can be dragged to move the frame around the page, and the delete halo, which can be used to delete the frame. If you click the delete halo, you'll be asked if you're sure that you want to delete the frame.
Above the frame's top right corner appear three rotate handles. From left to right, they shift the frame 45 degrees counterclockwise, rotate the frame an arbitrary angle, and shift the frame 45 degrees clockwise. If you click the center rotate handle, a window will appear asking you to enter a rotation value:
A value in degrees can be entered in the text field; selecting one of the points in the grid will change the center of rotation.
Nine halos appear directly above the frame's upper left corner. From left to right, these are the border & fill halo, the size & position halo, the margins & padding halo, margins and padding halo, the move forward button, the move backward button, the drop shadow halo, the use template content button, the save frame as template button, and the link halo.
The border & fill halo opens the frame's border & fill HUD, which looks very similar to the page's border & fill HUD:
The frame border & fill HUD also includes a checkbox labeled Frame visible. This is checked by default; if this is unchecked, the frame will be hidden in preview mode and the reader application. In authoring mode, it will appear semi-transparent, but it can still be manipulated.
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 the template controls are checked, the values from the saved frame template will be used. If the lock controls are checked, the values will not be editable.
If you click on the margins & padding halo, the margins & 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. The template and lock controls work the same way the other frame HUD template and lock controls work.
The move forward and move backward buttons move the frame forward or backward relative to other frames on the page. For example, if a frame appears to be beneath another frame, you could select the first frame and click its move forward button to move it in front of the second frame.
The drop shadow halo doesn't actually function in this release of Sophie.
The use template content button and the save frame as template buttons involve frame templates. Clicking use template content will use frame properties from whatever saved frame template the frame uses; clicking save frame as template will save the frame properties as a template.
Clicking the link halo will open the link HUD, which looks like this:
The link HUD allows you to set actions related to the frame - actions that will be performed when the frame is hidden or shown or when the reader's mouse clicks on it or moves over it. See the section on working with links for more details on how links in Sophie work.
Text halos
In this release of Sophie, a single text halo appears in the upper left corner of a frame when a text frame is inserted. This halo can be clicked on to reveal the text HUD, which looks like this:
This HUD allows you to change the font, size, and font settings for all the text in the current frame. This is not the way this will work in the finished version of Sophie.
