Shapes and freehand

Four tools draw rather than mark words: rectangle, oval, line and curve (freehand). Each is dragged out on the page and is a mark like any other: selectable, movable, recolourable, deletable, and listed in Marks.

They are tools 4, 5, 6 and 7 on the strip, the oval and the line next to each other. The first ten tools answer to a key, 1 to 9 and then 0 for the region tool; the field tool, eleventh, has none.

A tool's key works from anywhere in the window: the page, the thumbnails, a tab. It does not fire while you are typing in a field or in the marks and talk lists, so a number typed into a search box stays a number.

Outline or fill

A rectangle or an oval takes the armed swatch's outline and its fill, both at once. Right-click the swatch and choose Edit Fill… or Edit Outline… to change either. A swatch whose fill has been emptied draws as a ring; one with a fill draws as a solid square.

Press the tool again for a dotted outline, and again for a fill with no outline. There is no separate control for this; it is in the tool's tooltip, and here.

One thing to expect: while the outline and the fill are the same colour, which they are unless you have changed one, a filled shape with an outline and a filled shape without one look the same. So the cycle can look like two states rather than three until you have given the outline and the fill different colours.

Making a shape remove what it covers

Any shape, of any colour, can be declared a black-out: select it and choose Legal ▸ Make This a Black-Out. It then removes what it covers when the document is made permanent. Until then it hides nothing. See Blacking out.

Black Out, the switch at the foot of the tool strip, does the same for every shape you draw while it is on.

After the mark is down

A shape, a line or a stroke ends selected, with the pointer back in your hand, because the next thing you usually do with a new mark is move it, recolour it or comment on it. The same goes for a form field.

Two things do not hand the pointer back:

• A text box stays open with the caret in it. Clicking elsewhere, or choosing any tool, finishes it.
• A pinned tool stays in your hand. The pin is Form ▸ Keep the Tool in Hand, and the same switch is on the field palette while a form is being built. Pin it when the job is twenty of the same thing.

A line or stroke that closes a chain (its end landing on the free end of another) hands the pointer back whether pinned or not.

A note is placed, selected, and its comment editor opens straight away.

The text marks (highlight, underline, strike-through) are swept over words rather than drawn, and the sweeping tool stays in hand; see Marking text.

What is written into the file

Standard PDF annotations, visible in Preview, Acrobat and anything else that reads PDFs. Drawing a shape writes no line into the document's history.

See also

• Marking text: marking words rather than areas
• Working on a path after you have drawn it: joining, closing and bending a shape

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