Manual Menu Reference

Menu reference

Every action in the menu bar, grouped by menu, in the order it appears. Eight menus, standard categories, flyouts one level deep: File, Edit, View, Canvas, Output, Tools, Render, Help. For a tour of the window itself see Main window.

The screenshots below predate the current menu layout — the actions are unchanged, only their grouping and, for a few, their menu moved.

File

Action	Shortcut	Does
New workspace…	Ctrl+N	Creates a new workspace
Open workspace…	Ctrl+O	Opens an existing .platemaker.json
Open recent		Submenu of recently opened workspaces
Save	Ctrl+S	Saves the workspace
Save as…	Ctrl+Shift+S	Saves under a new name or location
Open package…		Unpacks a .platemaker.zip into a new folder and opens it
Export package…		Packs the open workspace — pages, overlays, templates, fonts — into one .platemaker.zip
Reveal in Explorer		Opens the folder containing the workspace file
Close workspace		Closes the workspace, prompting if there are unsaved changes
Exit		Closes the application, prompting for unsaved changes exactly like Close workspace

→ Workspaces, Packages

Edit

Action	Shortcut	Does
Undo	Ctrl+Z	Reverses the last edit
Redo	Ctrl+Y	Re-applies an undone edit (also Ctrl+Shift+Z on Windows)

Undo / Redo act on whichever tab is in front — a project has its own history, and the workspace has one of its own — and cover input edits (add / remove / clear / reorder / sort, profile links, output profile and directory) and workspace edits (rename a project; create, edit or delete canvas and output profiles; generate or delete templates).

Adding or removing a project is not undoable, and a render is never recorded. History goes back 10 steps per timeline.

View

Action	Does
Workspace panel	Brings the left dock back if it has been closed
Action panel	Brings the Action dock back if it has been closed

Canvas

Action	Does
New profile…	Creates a canvas profile
Edit active profile…	Edits the profile assigned to the open project
Manage profiles…	Opens the workspace-wide list of canvas profiles
Import	Copies canvas profiles from another workspace, a profile bundle, or your library
Export	Saves canvas profiles to a bundle file or your profile library
Templates…	Opens the template manager
Open templates folder	Opens the workspace's templates folder

A template belongs here because it is a canvas profile's own file, generated from that profile's margins — see Templates.

→ Canvas profiles

Output

Action	Does
New profile…	Creates an output profile
Edit active profile…	Edits the profile selected for the open project
Manage profiles…	Opens the workspace-wide list of output profiles
Import	Copies output profiles from another workspace, a profile bundle, or your library
Export	Saves output profiles to a bundle file or your profile library

→ Output profiles

Tools

Action	Does
Import bubble presets…	Copies bubble presets from a pack file
Export bubble presets…	Saves your bubble presets to a pack file
Fonts…	Lists the workspace's own fonts and the ones its lettering is missing; add or install a font

Bubble presets are shared by every open strip editor — one imported or saved here (or from a strip editor's own tool options) is offered in all of them. See Object state and tool options for how presets are stored.

→ Workspaces

Render

Action	Shortcut	Does
Render current project	F5 (or Ctrl+R)	Renders the open project
Refresh all projects	F6	Renders every project, but only what each one needs
Stop	Esc	Cancels the running render

"Refresh all projects" is the render-everything action, despite the name. It walks every project in the workspace and renders each one — but incrementally: a project that is already up to date is skipped, and a project where only a few slices changed re-renders only those. Swap a shared page (a new title page, say) into every chapter and one press brings the whole workspace up to date.

Do not confuse it with the per-project Refresh button on the Output tab, which only re-scans files and repaints statuses — it renders nothing. Same word, very different weight.

→ Rendering, File statuses

Help

Action	Does
Help	Opens the About dialog on its manual tab, which links to this wiki
Authors	Opens the About dialog on its authors tab
Version	Opens the About dialog on its About tab — component versions and licences, the numbers to quote in a bug report

→ About

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+N	New workspace
Ctrl+O	Open workspace
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+Shift+S	Save as
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Y	Redo
F5 / Ctrl+R	Render current project
F6	Refresh all projects
Esc	Stop

Actions outside the menu bar

Several actions are not in the menu bar at all — the eight menus above are the complete set. These live elsewhere:

• New, Rename, Delete project — right-click menu in the Workspace panel (see Projects)
• Open input directory, Open output directory, Set output directory — buttons on the project's Input and Output tabs

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See also: Main window · Manual · Troubleshooting