Designing stamps

The stamp designer makes stamps of your own, and changes the ones you’ve made. It keeps the stamp in view on the left while you change it on the right, one named tab at a time.

Opening the designer

• A new stamp: on the Comment tab, click Design a stamp…. It’s also in the Stamp tool strip and at the bottom of the Stamps dialog. The dialog is titled Design a stamp.
• A change to one of your stamps: in the Stamps dialog, click the pencil (Change it in the designer) on its tile. The dialog is titled Change followed by the stamp’s name.
• A new stamp based on another: in the Stamps dialog, click the copy button (Make a new stamp from this one) on any stamp, including the ready-made ones. The copy is named after the original with (copy).

Saving

Changing a stamp in your list doesn’t change stamps already placed on documents. To change one of those, use Change… on the page; see Stamps.

The preview

The left side of the designer shows the stamp as it will look.

• As it will read fills the gaps in with your details and today’s date, and each question with its own name in brackets.
• Showing the gaps shows each gap by what fills it, such as By [Your name].

Under the preview:

• On the page it is 120 pt (42 mm) wide and 48 pt (17 mm) tall, and can be dragged bigger or smaller. — its natural size.
• Whether the stamp fills itself in — Gaps fill themselves in when the stamp goes down… — or says The same words every time.
• Your name is not set yet, so {name} is left out. with a Your details… button, when the stamp uses your details and you haven’t set a name.
• A red warning when you’ve typed a gap Nixt PDF doesn’t know, such as “{nmae}” is not a gap Nixt PDF knows, so it will be stamped exactly as typed.
• An amber warning when the stamp’s picture is no longer in your library.

Words

Gaps

A gap is a word in braces that is filled in when the stamp goes down:

{day}, {month} and {year} also work, filled in with the number of each, and {company} works like {organisation}. Your details come from Your details…; see Stamps.

Questions

A question gap asks for an answer each time the stamp is put down — an invoice number, a batch reference — and writes the answer where the gap is.

1. Click where the answer should go in Big words or Small lines.
2. Click Add a question….
3. In the Add a question dialog, type the question in What it asks — “Invoice number”. Up to 60 characters.
4. Click Add it.

The designer inserts the question as {?Invoice number}. You can also type that form yourself. When the stamp goes down, a dialog asks each question in the order it appears. The answers are kept with the stamp, so Change… later shows them ready to edit.

Letters

Typeface

With A font on this computer, type the font’s name in Font name, as your system’s font list names it, or click one of the suggested names below the box. The words are drawn into the stamp in that font, so the stamp looks the same on computers without the font, and its words can still be searched and copied. A name your computer doesn’t know is drawn in its own standard font.

Big words and Small lines

Lines line up on the — Left, Centre or Right. Centre is the default.

Words in any script can go on a stamp. A line the standard fonts have no letters for — a name in Arabic or an answer in Chinese — is drawn by your computer’s own text engine, in the stamp’s colour, and stays searchable and copyable.

Colours

For each colour, choose:

• Ink (or White, for words on a solid fill) — follow the stamp’s ink.
• A swatch: Green, Red, Blue, Purple, Black, Orange, Teal, Brown, Grey or White.
• Any colour by its hex code, typed in the box labelled Any colour (for the ink) or Hex, such as #1F4DB8. A code that can’t be read shows Like #1F4DB8.

Past 60% fill strength, words without a colour of their own turn white so they can be read.

Shape and border

Start from a look

Click a look to set the shape and style together. Your words, ink and font are kept.

Rubber stamp, Company seal, Notary seal, Outlined, Dashed, Banner, Sign-here flag, Big and faint, Solid label

Shape

Border

As the shape has it puts the border, thickness, corners and fill strength back to the shape’s own.

On the page

Tilt turns the stamp from −30° to 30°, for a stamp that looks pressed on by hand.

Picture

A stamp can carry a logo, a seal or a signature from your library of picture stamps, signatures and initials.

1. Click a picture’s tile, or No picture for none. To add a picture to the library, click Add a picture…, which opens New picture stamp; see Picture stamps.
2. Under Where it goes, choose Left of the words, Right of the words, Above the words or Behind the words.
3. Set its size:
   • Height, 8–200 pt, for a picture beside or above the words. Starts at 36 pt.
   • Strength, 5%–100%, for a picture behind the words, which fills the stamp faintly, like a watermark. Starts at 25%.

The picture travels inside each stamp you place, so it still shows on a computer whose library doesn’t have it.

Stamp size

Whatever its size, a stamp can still be dragged bigger or smaller as it goes down.

Date and time

These settings apply to the {date}, {time} and {datetime} gaps in this stamp. Unless you choose otherwise, dates and times follow Your details.

A stamp read in another time zone refers to a different moment, so the zone is written unless you leave it out.

In the list

Sets matter when you share stamps with others; see Sharing stamp sets.