Drawing in Writer

You can use Writer's vector drawing tools to add line drawings to your documents. (New in this release is vertical text, shown in the illustration at right.)

Drawing Basic Shapes

This procedure covers the basics of drawing; for full coverage of how to get the most from drawings, see the coverage of Draw and the image editing features, starting with Creating and Opening Draw Files on page 756.

1. Click and hold down the Show Draw Functions button on the toolbar to display the drawing tools you can use.

   

2. Click the dark border at the top of the icons that you see to get the separate tearoff menu.

3. Click the icon of the shape you want to draw. The pointer turns into cross hairs, and the object bar displays Draw options.

   Note

   To use a tool once, just click the icon once. To use it until you're ready to switch to something else, in order to draw multiple objects of that type, double-click the icon.

4. Draw the object where you want it to display in the document, as shown in Figure 8-2.

   Figure 8-2. Inserting drawings in documents

   

5. With the drawing selected, set the color and line options you want.

6. If you want to add text inside the object, just double-click in the object and start typing. To control how the resulting text wraps, click outside the object in the document. Then click on the object border, right-click and choose Text. Select or deselect the options under Text.

Inserting Text Frames Containing Vertical Text

1. Make sure vertical text is enabled. Choose Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages and in the Asian Language Support section, select the Enabled option.

   

2. Click and hold down the Show Draw Functions button and select the vertical text tool.

3. Draw a text frame and type in the frame. If you just draw the frame and then don't type, the frame will disappear.