Copy Special

Copy Special

This submenu provides methods to extract shapes and paths from a drawing. A numerical Cartesian coordinate representation is placed on the system clipboard as a formated string of text.

Selected shapes are copied to the clipboard, as a sequence of coordinates.

The submenu is accessed from the main Edit menu. One or more graphics with a Bezier path must be selected in order for these commands to enable.

Path As Text: this command represents the path as a series of coordinates. Each point or curved section of the path is placed on one line of text. Points are listed as pairs. X values are listed first followed by Y values. The first pair is the actual point, subsequent pairs (if present) are Bezier control points. Each segment is on one line of text.

Path As Table: this commands represents the path as a table of coordinates suitable for pasting into a spread sheet. The format is similar to the Path As Text format. There is a leading letter on each line of the table, this letter indicates a Move To, Line To, or Curve To for the path.

The menu items for commas, tabs, and spaces determines the delimitating characters used between each text field (number). These are menu selections, a check mark indicates that character is in use. The 3 delimiters may be combined. Select the menu item to change (check or un-check) the state for the corresponding delimiter.

Path as SVG: this will copy the path to the clipboard using a SVG path specification. This is a series of numeric point values and defining characters such as "M" for Move or "L" for Line To. The formatting is precisely defined on the SVG / W3G web site.

The common Clipboard applies to all applications, not just EazyDraw. This means that a Copy Special of a pathe will be cleared (replaced) by any subsequent Cut or Copy operation. That is ANY Cut or Copy in EazyDraw or another application.

The only way to "see" the Copy Special numeric text string is to paste it into another application, such as a text editor or spread sheet. Use the Paste command in the other application to obtain the numeric text.

EazyDraw’s Export capability provides other methods to send graphic shapes numerically to other applications. Export will place the path defining numeric information in a file on your system. Export CSV (Comma Separated Values) may prove more flexible and powerful than Copy Special in some situations. Export SVG provides a very well defined text based numeric representation of a single path or a full drawing.