Can't toggle individual palettes

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Martin
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Can't toggle individual palettes

Post by Martin »

I've just started playing with Mellel and came across what seems to be a bug: toggling an individual palette under the Windows menu affects all the palettes in the same way as the Toggle palettes command. There doesn't seem to be a way of having just the character and paragraph styles palettes open for example.
donb
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Post by donb »

Actually there is a pretty simple way.

First, separate off the two palettes you want to be left open; this involves moving with your cursor the palette immediately below the paragraph palette. This will move all the other palettes away from the character+paragraph palettes. Then click the close-circle on the undesired set you have just moved.

Tip: all of the palettes can be separated from each other, individually, if you like. Then click on the close circles of all those you want not to appear at the moment. Then in future you can have precisely whichever palettes you want to appear on screen at any particular time by ticking or undicking their individual names in the Window Menu.

Don Broadribb
Phil82
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Post by Phil82 »

This is so absolutely cool. I don't know what it is, but just being able to detach and reattach tool palettes has got to be the coolest thing around.
Martin
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Post by Martin »

Don,

Thanks for getting back to me.
donb wrote:Actually there is a pretty simple way.

First, separate off the two palettes you want to be left open; this involves moving with your cursor the palette immediately below the paragraph palette. This will move all the other palettes away from the character+paragraph palettes. Then click the close-circle on the undesired set you have just moved.

Don Broadribb
I discovered this method myself just after I posted my original question but it seems a little unintuitive. There are lots of programs with docking palettes where, regardless of docked state, unchecking/checking an item in the Windows menu affects just that palette rather than all palettes docked together. I'm fine with the workaround though.
alexwein
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Post by alexwein »

I agree that the menu selections under Window are confusing. I'm not really sure what purpose they serve, being listed individually, since it doesn't toggle the individual palette. Thanks for this tip, however. I didn't know how to do this and it's a great space-saver.

Alexandria
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Post by mkenney »

There are some OS X apps out there that handle palette toggling very well. If I recall correct all three of these drawing apps do it in the same way: Lineform, Wouldjadraw, Doodlecad. Essentially, each palette is given its own keyboard shortcut. So, one might use apple + 1 to toggle the autotitle palette. Of course, one would need to find keyboard short cuts that aren't already in use, and many of the easy-to-remember ones already are (for switching between the various styles of a style set).

I would contend that once you get the hang of setting up style sets and then actually putting them to use, you don't need those palettes, except for the biblio and autotitles. I simply close all the others and then use apple+shift+8 to toggle those two palettes on and off the screen. I have a 12" iBook and don't like those palettes taking up real estate.
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