What is the "painter" ?

[albert]

In the "Appearance Menu Section" on an element, there is an option "Copy Appearance to Painter". In the help file, the explanation is "Copies the element appearance to the painter". What is the painter ?

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Featureitis?

I never managed to make it work...  But that doesn't say much...

Paolo

[«Midnight»]

I suspect - without proof - that it is somewhat like the feature painter in MS Office, which it mimics in both name and toolbar icon.

I gather that if you highlight an element, click the feature painter, then click (or select) another element (or other elements), the appearance settings of the first element will be applied to the others. Sort of a shortcut for F4, that remembers the settings.

In MS Office you can double click the painter, which will apply the same format to each thing you select until you click the painter again to turn it off. The button always has a 'pressed' graphic when it is active, so you know whether it is still on.

Still, I've not tried this in EA, so I don't know if it was intended to work this way, or if so, whether it is broken.

David

[thomaskilian]

My experience: It is just for assigning attributes to the CURRENT diagram. If you choose F4 then the element will appear in that color in ALL diagrams. You can additionally overwrite the appearance using the painter in single diagrams. E.g. I have a style PostIt that makes an element yellow. Selecting the element and selecting PostIt from the dropdown will make it yellow. It behave strange though as setting the default color does not always seem to work. I account that EAUI and was too lazy to raise a bug report for it.

[«Midnight»]

Still, that's a help. It was always possible to set diagram-specific appearance from the API, so this must be the UI equivalent.

If memory serves, the API path is also a bit strange on when it works and when it sets things globally, whatever settings you use.

[Eve]

'Copy Appearance to Painter' copies the default appearance (as set with 'Configure Default Appearance' in the same menu.)  The equivalent 'Paste Appearance' is on the Diagram toolbar (with a paintbrush icon)

The equivalent function for diagram-specific appearance is on the format toolbar.  'Get Style' (dropper icon) and 'Apply Style' (paintbrush icon).  This also allows you to save and use a list of named styles.

Neither of these are intended to have a mode where you paint everything you select mode.

[«Midnight»]

'Copy Appearance to Painter' copies the default appearance (as set with 'Configure Default Appearance' in the same menu.)  The equivalent 'Paste Appearance' is on the Diagram toolbar (with a paintbrush icon)
...
Neither of these are intended to have a mode where you paint everything you select mode.

Still, it is good to have a reliable way to duplicate a setting, without having to manually check each component. When doing some presentation work (for example) this can be quite a time saver.

David

[RoyC]

The Help wasn't as clear on these matters as it might have been, so I have updated it to expand on Simon's points.

• Copy "new" default appearance to painter using Appearance context menu, and paste using Diagram toolbar option.

• Set global appearance of all elements using Tools | Options | Standard Colors

• Set appearance of specific element wherever it might exist, using Configure Default Appearance option

• Change appearance of specific element on current diagram only, using Format toolbar.

The changes will, as always, wash through in the product help on the next build release.

[«Midnight»]

Thanks Roy,

The EA documentation is moving along quite well these days.

That's a big help to us all.

Keep it up.

David