System Preferences

These settings correlate Sketchpad’s behavior with your particular computer, allow you to edit Sketchpad’s color menu, and allow you to change all preferences back to their original values.

To access the Advanced Preferences, hold down the Shift key before activating the Edit menu.

Ideal Normal Speed: This value sets the approximate speed represented by a value of 1.0 in the Motion Controller, or “normal” speed for a Movement button. You should modify the speed only if your computer is consistently too fast or too slow for your tastes when animating objects at a speed of 1.0 in the Motion Controller.

This value is "ideal" in the sense that Sketchpad attempts to reach it. If you're animating a particularly complex sketch or have a slower computer, animations may be slower than this.

Screen Resolution: This value sets the correspondence between the pixels on your computer screen and real-world length units. The normal value is 96 pixels/inch for Windows computers and 72 pixels/inch for Macintosh. You should modify this value only if it’s absolutely necessary that on-screen distances match Sketchpad’s measured distances. Changing this value may result in discrepancies when you paste Sketchpad pictures into other applications, which assume your screen resolution is fixed at 96 or 72 pixels/inch.

Math Symbol Font: Sketchpad needs a symbol font so that it can display certain mathematical symbols such as p and q. These symbols are normally found in the font called Symbol. If the Symbol font is not present on your computer, you can enter the name of a different font that contains the required symbols. If the Symbol font is missing or the alternative font you specify doesn’t contain the needed symbols, Sketchpad won’t be able to display those symbols correctly.

The Symbol font comes pre-installed on your computer.

File URL Prefix (Macintosh Only): Under Mac OS X, different Internet browsers require different URLs to access local files. When Sketchpad opens a local file—either to access Sketchpad Help, or to resolve sketchdoc: or sketchapp: links you create in Link buttons—it combines the default File URL Prefix given in System Preferences with the path name of the local file. Under Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, this prefix should be “file:///”. Under Mac OS X, it depends on your choice of preferred browser. If you use the default OS X browser, Internet Explorer 5.1 or later, set the prefix to “file:///Volumes/”. If instead you use Netscape 6 or a Classic browser (such as earlier versions of Internet Explorer), set the prefix to “file:///”. If you are using another browser or a different file system, substitute the appropriate prefix for that browser.

Edit Color Menu: This button displays your system’s Color Picker dialog box, which allows you to change the colors in the Color menu. You can use this feature to add your favorite shades of magenta, teal, or chartreuse. If you create a sketch with a dark or black background, you may want to add white to the Color menu.

Reset All Preferences: This button allows you to reset all Sketchpad preferences to their original values. Use it with care: you’ll lose all the preferences values you’ve set in any other way.