# JavaDraw Help

JavaDraw provides tools, handles, and commands to manipulate a drawing.

### Tools

The tools on the left create or manipulate figures.

| selects, moves or resizes a figure; the shift-key toggles the selection. Dragging the selection tool in the background selects the figures within the dragged rectangle.
| creates a new or edits an existing text figure
| creates a new text figure and attaches it to the clicked figure. Once a text figure is attached it remains connected to the figure.
| edits a figure's URL attribute; the URL thus associated with a figure is followed when the figure is clicked in the viewer applet
| creates a rectangle figure
| creates a round rectangle figure
| creates an ellipse figure
| creates a line figure
| creates or adjusts connections between figures. A connection is split into segments by dragging a point on the connection. To join two segments click the end point of a segment
| creates an elbow connection and offers the same features as the ordinary connection tool
| creates a scribble figure; dragging the mouse creates a smooth line while successive clicks yields a polyline figure
| decorates the clicked figure with a border

### Handles

When selected figures provide different handles to manipulate them.

- the filled red handles enable to manipulate the shape of a figure
- the blue circle handle is a connection handle. It allows to create connections between figures.
- the framed red handles are null handles. They only show the selection status of a figure but don't support any manipulation.
- the green handles are shown on connections. They enable to reconnect them with another figure.
- the yellow handle enables to change the font size of a text figure or the size of the radius of a rounded rectangle.

### Commands

Commands are invoked from the button bar at the bottom (applet) or from the menu bar at the top (application).

The standard commands that are provided include, cut, copy, paste, duplicate, delete, group, ungroup, bring to front, and send to back.

### Attributes

Attributes, such as fill color, text color or arrow tip, can be changed through the attributes menu (stand-alone) or the pop up menues (applet).

Comments or questions to Erich Gamma