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The Inspector Panel

The Inspector Panel allows precise control over most object properties. Select an object to edit it in the inspector.

Metrics Inspector.

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The metrics inspector allows numerical control over the position, size and rotation of objects on the page.

bullet Position: controls the position relative to the bottom left corner of the page.

    • The button on the right can be used to center selected objects on the page.

bullet Size: controls the size of the object.

    • The Original Size button resets an object's size to the size it was when originally added to the document.
    • Activate Constrain Proportions to force the horizontal and vertical proprotion of objects to remain intact when resizing them.
    • The Scaling status displays the percentage by which the dimensions (width/height) are scaled relative the the object's original size.
    • The Anamorphic index status displays a factor that represents the amount by which the current height-width proportion deviate from the original proportion. The larger the index the greater the deviation.
    • The action button is home to the resize templates and the resize templates editor. These templates can be used to store and quickly invoke commonly used object sizes.

bullet Rotation: controls the rotation of the object (by degrees).

bullet Locked for editing: Objects that are locked can not be deleted from the pages, nor can they be moved by the mouse. But they remain editable by the inspector controls.


Appearance Inspector.

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The appearance inspector controls the appearance of objects.

bullet Stroke: Controls the style and thickness of the stroke used when drawing objects and the style and thickness of the frame around image, text and PDF objects. For non-solid frames the Ends setting affects the drawing of the line segments. The Dash Pattern field is used to enter the pattern for custom strokes. Enter number pairs that define resp. the size of the dash and the size of the following gap. E.g. a pattern of 4 2 6 3 will create a dash pattern with a dash of 4 units, followed by a gap of 2 units, a dash of 6 units and a gap of 3 units, and then the pattern repeats itself. The slider behind the dash pattern input field controls the start of the pattern on the stroke. The check box to the right of the slider links the stroke pattern to the line width.

bullet Fill: controls the interior color of objects. The fill of text objects is drawn behind the text. On image and PDF objects it is drawn in front of the contents allowing them to be tinted by the color. The fill color's opacity is multiplied by the object's opacity, providing a great range of interesting effects. The Options popup menu give access to the following elements:

  • Winding Rule: controls how segments of complex freehand/polyline objects are filled. When Even-Odd Rule is off, generally speaking more parts of the shape are filled, when on, less of the shape is filled.
  • Blend Mode: Using blend modes for the fill color allows for convenient highlighting effects that may not be possible with the standard dynamic highlight annotation (use multiply mode). It also makes it possible to change the color of existing text on the page to a lighter and optionally different hue (set the target color as the fill color and use the lighten mode option).
    • Multiply blend mode specifies to multiply the foreground image samples with the background image samples. The resulting colors are at least as dark as either of the two contributing sample colors.
    • Darken blend mode specifies to create the composite image samples by choosing the darker samples (either from the foreground image or the background). The background image samples are replaced by any foreground image samples that are darker. Otherwise, the background image samples are left unchanged.
    • Lighten blend mode specifies to create the composite image samples by choosing the lighter samples (either from the foreground or the background). The result is that the background image samples are replaced by any foreground image samples that are lighter. Otherwise, the background image samples are left unchanged.
    • Color blend mode specifies to use the luminance values of the background with the hue and saturation values of the foreground image. This mode preserves the gray levels in the image. You can use this mode to color monochrome images or to tint color images.

bullet Opacity: controls the opacity of the object as a whole, except for text objects where it controls the opacity of the background, allowing whatever is behind the text object to progressively shine through, unless a solid fill color is set.

bullet Corner Radius: controls the rounding of the corners of rectangle shapes.

bullet Corner and Ends Style: control how corners and line ends are drawn.

bullet Start and End Arrows: allow addition of arrows and other shapes to the ends of line objects. You can control the relative size and the fill color of the start and end shapes.

bullet Polygon Sides: controls the number of sides of polygon objects (between 3 and 99).

bullet Path:

  • Close: Controls whether a freehand or polyline shape is closed by drawing a line from the last point to the first point.
  • Callout: Text boxes and rectangle shapes can have a callout, which is an arrowed line drawn from the box to some point on a page.
  • Knee: A Callout line can have a knee, which is an intermediary point that divides the line into two linked segments.


Dynamic Annotations Inspector.

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The dynamic annotations inspector controls the settings of dynamic annotations (proper PDF annotations that remain editable within the PDF document). The top of the editor always shows the controls that are common to all dynamic annotations. The bottom part shows controls that are applicable to the active selected annotation.

For hyperinks the Get Dest. button is used to set the destination by point and click when linking to other pages within the same document: Click the button, then navigate to the target page and click on the location on the page where the document should scroll to when the link is clicked. After clicking the destination PDFClerk beeps and scrolls back to where it was when the Get Dest. button was clicked. When a link type to an external location is selected the URL field becomes available. After setting the URL it can be tested by clicking the Test URL button.


Display Boxes Inspector.

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The display boxes inspector allows precise control over the different display boxes defined by the PDF standard. It shows the settings for the currently selected page.

bullet Media Box: shows the dimensions of the Media Box.

    • The x and y fields control the placement of the contents within the media box. Adjust them if you need to offset the content of the page horizontally and or vertically.
    • The width and height fields control the size of the 'physical' media.
    • The Scale Content check box controls whether the content of a page is scaled when the media box has been resized (PDFClerk remembers the original size of each page).
    • Use the Proportionately check box to force the resizing to maintain the widht-height proportion of the original page.
    • The Alignment button is available when scaled content does not fully align with each side of the media box.
    • The Apply to selection button applies the displayed media box settings to all pages selected in the page list.
    • The Scaling status displays the percentage by which the dimensions (width/height) are scaled relative the the object's original size.
    • The Anamorphic index status displays a factor that represents the amount by which the current height-width proportion deviate from the original proportion. The larger the index the greater the deviation.
    • The action button is home to the media box templates menu and the media box templates editor. These templates can be used to store and quickly invoke commonly used media box dimensions. The menu also hosts the option to reset a media box to its original dimensions.

bullet Insets From Media Box: The popup button allows you to choose which display box’s values to consult or edit. You can individually set the top, left, bottom and right margins, by specifying a distance from the edge of the page. The Apply settings to selected pages button takes the settings for the currently displayed display box and applies it to all selected pages. Mirror margins on opposite pages: if this option is checked when applying a box to selected pages then the left and right margins are swapped on pages that are conceptually on the opposite side (i.e. odd vs even pages).

bullet The Forced Display Box option when set will force the page at hand to be rendered with that particular box in imposed layouts. It has no effect on non-imposed layouts.

See also: Display Boxes Explained


Fonts Inspector.

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bullet The Fonts Inspector lists the fonts of selected text. To use it the document must be in text mode (the first work mode choice) and some text must be selected.

Note: There is currently an issue that, if a font embedded in the document is not present as a font on the system, the displayed font may be incorrect.


Security Inspector.

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bullet The Security Inspector provides feedback about the permissions of the current document and whether the document is encrypted. It also allows entering passwords to unlock the document or to remove otherwise restricted privileges (printing and copying).

Important: Encrypted documents cannot be saved (in PDFClerk format) or exported as PDF documents, nor can their pages be copied within the document. They can however be printed to printers or to PDF documents. If you want to edit an encrypted document over various sessions or with full editorial access it is best to open and unlock the document, then print it to PDF and use the produced PDF document as the source for further editing in PDFClerk.


See also

Editing Topics