ePointer Usage Tips

Usage instructions for each drawing tool or feature can be accessed by clicking the question mark button next to each tool in the ePointer’s [Preferences - Shortcut Key Settings]. This section only covers some important or easily overlooked tips for using the ePointer.

ePointer Usage Tips

1. Hiding and Collapsing the Toolbox: The ePointer interface has only one toolbox. When you drag the toolbox to the left, top, or right edge of the screen, it will automatically hide into the screen edge. Moving the mouse over the edge where the toolbox is located will redisplay it.
2. Tool buttons with a black triangle ◢ in the bottom-right corner: This indicates that the button has a dropdown menu. There are generally 3 ways to open the dropdown menu of a tool:
   • Click the black triangle ◢ area to pop up the menu
   • Long-press the button to pop up the menu (not applicable to effect buttons on macOS¹)
   • Right-click the button to pop up the menu (not applicable to effect buttons on Windows²)
3. Exclusive activation of effect buttons: Graphic effect buttons include Shadow ²¹, Stroke ²¹, Dashed Line ²¹, and Semi-Transparent ²¹ effects. To quickly disable other active effects and exclusively enable one of them, you can:
   • On Windows, right-click the effect button you want to exclusively enable.
   • On macOS, long-press the effect button you want to exclusively enable.
4. Drawing with Shift: Most drawing tools support Shift drawing. For line tools, holding Shift while drawing allows you to draw horizontal or vertical lines. For rectangles, ellipses, etc., it allows you to draw squares or circles.
5. Quick switching between sub-tools of a drawing tool: For drawing tools with multiple sub-tools, such as Single Arrow Line and Double Arrow Line , these two tools are integrated into the same drawing tool button due to their similar shapes. After activating the button, to quickly switch between these two tools, simply press the Tab key back and forth.
6. Quickly deleting all spotlights: After drawing multiple spotlights ²¹, to delete all spotlights at once, simply use the eraser to click on the shaded area between the spotlights.
7. Using the Text tool:
   • On Windows, when entering text, you can use Shift+Enter for line breaks within the text, press Enter to finish text input, and press Esc to cancel text drawing; switch to the selection tool and double-click the text to re-edit it.
   • On macOS, you can use the Return key for line breaks and press Esc to finish text drawing; switch to the selection tool and double-click the text to re-edit it.
8. Full-screen and area screenshot: The screenshot ²¹ tool — click the screen for a full-screen screenshot; press and drag the mouse to draw a rectangle for an area screenshot.
9. Multi-selecting shapes: After switching to the Selection Tool , hold the Ctrl ² or Command ¹ key and click multiple shapes in sequence to select them all at once; another method is to use the mouse to draw a rectangular selection area to lasso-select one or more shapes. Once shapes are selected together, they can be moved, cut, deleted, etc. together.
10. Returning to the previous drawing tool:
    • On Windows, for the screenshot , icon , eraser , and selection tool , after finishing using these tools, you can press Esc to quickly return to the previously selected drawing tool.
    • On macOS, for the eraser and selection tool , after finishing using these tools, you can press Esc to quickly return to the previously selected drawing tool.
11. Temporary click-through on the canvas:
    • Windows: In Classic Mode or Dynamic Mode (Frozen Mode not supported), you can hold the shortcut key Ctrl+Alt (default) to temporarily toggle the click-through function on or off. When click-through is enabled, users can interact with third-party software beneath the canvas using the mouse. Note that Ctrl+Alt may also be a shortcut key in that third-party software, which could cause execution conflicts. Therefore, it is recommended to use the F5 key (default) to toggle click-through on or off (this feature can be found in the dropdown list of the Start button in the upper-right corner of the toolbar), which does not require holding a shortcut key.
    • macOS: Similar to the Windows version, in Classic Mode or Dynamic Mode (Frozen Mode not supported), the Fn key is used by default to temporarily toggle the click-through function on or off. If using a third-party keyboard without an Fn key or if the key cannot be detected, you can set an alternative key in [Preferences - Shortcut Key Settings - Temporary Click-Through Toggle]. Similarly, if the Fn key is unavailable, it is recommended to use the F5 function instead of setting an alternative shortcut key.
12. Using the Paginator:
    • The paginator needs to be activated before entering drawing mode: First activate the paginator switch on the toolbar; after entering drawing mode, the paginator will appear at the left edge of the screen.
    • Paginator drag handle: The paginator drag handle can collapse and expand the buttons by double-clicking; dragging and dropping the paginator to the left, top, or right edge of the screen will cause the paginator to snap to the screen edge.
    • Changing the current page: After enabling the overlay mode of the paginator, right-click or Ctrl-click an overlay page button to set it as the current page. The current page determines which page subsequent annotations on the canvas belong to. Once the current page is confirmed, all newly drawn annotation shapes will be saved to the data file of this current page.
13. Icon Panel Pagination (Page Navigation): In the Windows version, when many custom icons are added to the ePointer and cannot be fully displayed in the icon panel at once, place the mouse cursor over the icon panel and scroll the mouse wheel to navigate pages.
14. Saving or exporting annotation data:
    • After entering drawing mode, if the paginator is not enabled, right-click the canvas and select Save Annotations to temporarily save the annotation shapes on the canvas; use Load Annotations next time to re-read and load them onto the canvas.
    • If the paginator is enabled, right-click the canvas and select Save Paginator Annotations to package all shape data from all pages of the canvas into a compressed file and save it to a location of your choice. Next time, you can use the Load Paginator Annotations command to reload them. However, note that reloading paginated annotations will overwrite existing paginated annotation data. If there are important annotations in the current data, it is recommended to package and export a backup first.