The Effects palette

You use the Effects palette to apply the following text effects: small caps, outline, superscript and subscript, ligatures, and shadow. You also use the Effects palette to override the document’s smart quotes setting.

When applying a small caps effect, Pagesmith first determines whether the selected font contains direct support for small caps. If the font supports small caps, Pagesmith uses the glyphs provided in the font. Otherwise, Pagesmith simulates small caps by adjusting the size, weight, and spacing of the font’s uppercase characters. Pagesmith’s simulated small caps look far more professional than those produced by word processors that merely adjust the character size.

To apply a small caps effect:

You can apply an outline effect to text. You should use this effect cautiously; many people, ourselves included, do not find it particularly attractive.

To apply an outline effect:

You can apply a superscript or subscript effect to text. The text can appear at normal size, or a reduced size.

To apply a superscript or subscript effect:

A ligature is a single character that displays two or more letters; for example, ffi. Some fonts have more ligatures than others. You can have Pagesmith substitute ligatures for separate characters. You can choose to display only the standard ligatures, or all possible ligatures present in the font.

To control the display of ligatures:

Normally, you turn smart quotes on or off at the document level. You can apply a character attribute that overrides the document setting. This can be useful is a style; for example, you could create a character style that uses a monospace font and turns off smart quotes.

To set the smart quotes behavior as a character attribute:

Remember that smart quotes works as you type; applying a smart quotes attribute to existing text does not change the characters already present in the text.

You can apply a shadow to text. A shadow has four properties:

To add a shadow to text:

The Effects palette expands to show controls for modifying the shadow.

To adjust the shadow angle:

To adjust the shadow offset:

Setting the shadow offset to 0 rests the shadow angle to 0.

To adjust the shadow blur:

To adjust the shadow opacity: