E. Glossary
Alignment The arrangement of the surplus space in a line of text. In Ovation paragraphs may be formatted with text aligned left (i.e. space at the right-hand end), centred (i.e. space equally divided between both ends of the line), aligned right (i.e. space at the left-hand end of the line) or fully justified, (i.e. space divided equally between all word spaces in the line).
Ascender The part of a lowercase letter which extends above the main body of the character such as the topmost part of the letter 'b'.
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which defines the alphanumeric characters that are used by most computers.
Aspect Ratio The ratio of an object's width to its height.
Baseline The imaginary line upon which characters sit.
Binding Margin An inside margin that is wider than the standard margin to allow for punching or binding.
Bold A text style in which characters are emphasised with thickerthanstandard black lines.
Border An outline drawn around a text or picture frame, used to highlight the contents of the frame or to distinguish it from its surroundings.
Caps An abbreviation for capitals i.e. upper case letters.
Caret The I-shaped cursor which indicates where text will appear when typed.
Case Alphabetic characters may be either lower case ('small letters') or UPPER CASE, i.e. capitals.
Centred Alignment of a paragraph so that text is centrally placed on each line, with any remaining space divided equally between the left and right margins.
Character Any printable letter, number or symbol.
Child A nested object created wholly inside a 'parent' frame. Child objects are moved or copied automatically when their parents are copied.
Clipboard A temporary store for text, pictures or objects which have been cut or copied from the document. The contents of the clipboard may be pasted back into any document.
Clipart A set of pictures and symbols for importing into documents.
Copy In Ovation the Copy instruction causes marked text or the currently active object to be copied to the clipboard without deleting the original from the document. Items on the clipboard may be pasted back into any document.
Crop To mask the edges of a picture in order either to give it the aspect ratio to fit the space available or to ensure that only certain parts of it are reproduced.
Cut To delete a block of text, a picture or an object from the document, and place a copy of it on the clipboard.
Decimal Tab A tab stop which aligns the decimal point in decimal numbers on the tab stop.
Default The condition that is assumed by the computer or Ovation on start-up until that condition is changed.
Descender The part of a lowercase letter which extends below the baseline, such as the 'tail' of the letter 'y'.
Discretionary A hyphen inserted into a word by the user which is only Hyphen displayed if that word appears at the end of a line and needs to be split. Often called a soft hyphen.
Draw Files Picture files that are compatible with the Acorn Draw module and the Draw application. All Draw files may be loaded into picture frames and moved, re-scaled, cropped etc.
Em Space A measurement of width that is relative to the font. In Ovation an Em space is equal to the height of the font bounding box, but traditionally it is defined as the width of the letter M. Em space is used in Ovation as the measurement unit for kerning.
En Space An En space is half the width of an Em space.
First Line Indent The indent that may be applied to the first line of a paragraph. A zero first line indent combined with a positive left indent is used to produce a hanging indent.
Fixed Hyphen A hyphen which appears as a normal hyphen, but is not affected by word wrap. Words separated by a fixed hyphen are never split across lines. A fixed hyphen is also referred to as a 'non-breaking hyphen' or a 'hard hyphen'.
Fixed Space A space which appears as a normal space, but is not affected by word wrap or justification. Words separated by a fixed space are never split across lines and the space between them is not expanded during justification. A fixed space is also referred to as a 'non-breaking space' (NBSP) or a 'hard space'.
Font A complete set of alphabetic and numeric characters, punctuation marks or other symbols of matching style and size. Fonts are also referred to as typefaces.
Footer A line of text that appears at the bottom of every page.
Format The arrangement of text and paragraphs on the page. Paragraph alignment, margins, leading etc. are all aspects of the format of the page.
Frame Rectangular outlines which may contain text or pictures. Frames may also contain other frames and lines. Frames are shown on the screen, but are not printed unless given a border.
Gutter The space between columns in multi-column documents. A standard gutter width is 1 pica (12pt), about 4.2 mm. The default in Ovation is slightly wider at 5 mm.
Guideline A line which appears on the screen as an aid in laying out the document, but which is not printed. In Ovation there are three types of guidelines: frame/line , column and ruler guidelines.
Handles Small red squares attached to frames and lines, which are used to re-size or re-shape the object. Handles are only displayed on the currently active object.
Hanging Indent A paragraph format in which the first line of the paragraph is flush with the left margin and subsequent lines are indented, so that the body of the paragraph appears to 'hang' from the first line. In Ovation hanging indents are created by setting the First Line Indent to zero and the Left Indent to the required indent depth for the body of the paragraph.
Hard Hyphen See Fixed Hyphen.
Hard Space See Fixed Space.
Header A line of text that appears at the top of every page.
Horizontal Scale A text style which allows the widths of characters to be adjusted. In Ovation horizontal scale is specified as a percentage of the usual character width.
Hyphenation The splitting of words when they occur at the end of a line. When hyphenation is enabled, Ovation will hyphenate words which cannot be fitted on the line using an algorithm which determines the most suitable position to split the word. An exceptions dictionary allows you to build up a list of words that should not be hyphenated or should to be hyphenated in a specific way.
Image File On the Archimedes, an image file is normally referred to as a sprite. It consists of a picture made up of dots called picture elements or pixels and is usually created with a painting application such as Paint or a scanner or a video digitiser.
Import The introduction of text or graphics from another application into a document either directly or from a file on disc.
Indent The left indent is the gap between the left margin and the start of the line of text. The right indent is the gap between the end of the line of text, and the right margin.
Inset The margin around the inside of a text or picture frame, which prevents the contents of the frame running into the frame guideline or border.
Italics A text style with characters slanting to the right (occasionally in some fonts the slant is to the left).
Justify A formatting option in which extra white space is inserted between the words in a line, so that both left and right edges are aligned to the margins.
Kerning Fine adjustment of white space between letter pairs to enhance their appearance. It is mostly used to reduce the white space between characters in larger font sizes.
Landscape The orientation of a page such that its longest edge is horizontal.
Leading The vertical spacing between lines of text. Pronounced 'ledding' it takes its name from the strips of metallic lead that were used to space out lines of text in mechanical printing. In Ovation leading may be specified as an absolute distance between the baselines of each line, as a percentage of the font size, or as an absolute gap between the lines of text.
Left Aligned A paragraph format option where text is aligned to the left margin, leaving the right edge ragged. Left aligned is also referred to as 'flush left', 'ranged left' or 'ragged right'.
Legal A standard paper size 8.5 inches wide by 14 inches long.
Letter A standard paper size 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long.
Line Art A picture composed of straight lines and curves and stored as a set of data describing the attributes of each line. On the Archimedes line art is stored in Draw file format.
Linking The process of connecting a number of text frames together so that text of one story flows automatically from frame to frame.
Marked Block A region of text that has been selected for editing. A marked block is highlighted by inverting its foreground and background colours. Normally this is shown as white text on a black background.
Master Pages Special pages that act as a template for all the pages that are inserted into the document. Master pages define the format of the page and may contain text, pictures and lines that are to be inserted on every page. In Ovation there are separate master pages for every chapter of the document.
Mono Spaced The even spacing of characters in a font regardless of their actual widths so that letter 'I' uses the same horizontal space as an 'M'. A typical mono spaced font is Courier. Mono Spaced is the opposite of Proportionally Spaced.
Outset The gap between the outside of a text or picture frame and the text flowing around it. Outset prevents the text running into the frame outline or border.
Paragraph In Ovation a paragraph is defined as the text between two carriage returns.
Paragraph Style A named user-defined style that determines the font, size and format of the current paragraph or the marked range of paragraphs. If the paragraph style is edited, all paragraphs in the document using that style will be reformatted automatically.
Parent Frame A text or picture frame within which another frame of line is drawn. The object nested inside the parent frame is often called the 'child', and is moved or copied when its parent is moved or copied.
Paste The insertion of the contents of the clipboard into the document. The clipboard may contain text, pictures or lines.
Pica A unit used in typesetting. A pica is equal to 1/6 of an inch, or 12pt.
Point The standard unit of measurement used in typesetting. A point is equal to 1/72 of an inch.
Point Size The standard system for measuring the size of fonts. The point size of a font is the vertical distance in points from the tip of the highest ascender to the bottom of the longest descender.
Portrait The orientation of a page such that the longest edge is vertical.
Proportionally Allowing the characters in a font to have varying widths to Spaced suit their designs. A proportionally spaced letter 'I' uses less horizontal space then the letter 'M'. Most outline fonts are proportionally spaced, the main exception being Courier which is mono spaced.
Repel Text Make text flow around the edge of a superimposed frame with a specified gap. The gap is called the Outset.
Reverse A text style which swaps the foreground and background colours of the text. Normally this produces white text on a black background.
Right Aligned A paragraph format in which text is aligned to the right margin leaving the left edge ragged. Right aligned is also referred to as 'flush right', 'ranged right' or 'ragged left'.
Sans Serif A typeface which lacks serifs, the minute cross-lines finishing off the main strokes of the characters. Helvetica is an example of a sans serif font.
Select The left-hand mouse button.
Serif A small cross-line finishing off the main strokes of the characters in some fonts. Times is an example of a seriffed font.
Snap to Guides A feature of Ovation which allows a drawing tool to locate accurately on a guideline. As soon as the tool is positioned near the guideline it 'snaps' automatically to line up exactly with the guideline. Snap to guides allows a number of objects to be aligned with consistent accuracy.
Story An independent block of text contained within a text frame, or in a series of linked text frames.
Stylesheet A file which describes the exact format and style of a document and which may be used as a template for other documents. A stylesheet contains master page definitions, defined styles, view options etc.
Subscript Text in a reduced point size and positioned below the normal font baseline.
Superscript Text in a reduced point size and positioned above the normal font baseline.
Tab Stop A horizontal position to which text is aligned when the Tab key is pressed. In Ovation Tab Stops are defined on the Tabs/Indents ruler and left, centre, right and decimal point alignment are all provided.
Tabloid A standard paper size 11 inches wide by 17 inches long.
Tracking Fine adjustment of the space between characters. Tracking is similar to kerning, but applies to all of a marked range of text instead of a pair of characters.
Transparent In Ovation, text and picture frames are normally solid, and text flows around them. If a frame is made transparent, text will flow beneath it instead of around it. Any text, pictures or other objects behind the transparent frame will be visible through it.
Underline A text style that underlines all characters, including spaces.
Word Underline A text style that underlines all characters except spaces.
Word Wrap The forcing of words that are not hyphenated and which will not fit on the end of the line to be carried over to the next line.