A tour of the Preferences in Layout by Zaweba

Preferences are where Layout by Zaweba decides how it behaves for you, as opposed to how a particular document looks. The window lists its sections down the left, and while you'll rarely need most of them, knowing what's where saves time on the day something isn't behaving the way you expect.

The sections in order

General holds the broad settings for how the app works. Display, guides and grids covers how the screen shows guides and grids. Units and increments is where measuring units and step sizes are set. Accessibility gathers the settings that make the interface easier to see and use.

Type and spelling covers how text is handled and checked. Graphics is about how pictures are treated. Composition covers settings for how text is composed on the page. Notes and Track changes deal with the editorial side, for documents that go back and forth between a designer and an editor. Story editor display sets how the plain text story view looks. Clipboard handling decides what happens when you copy and paste, and Output and preflight covers the checking and export side.

That's a long list, but it's grouped in the order you'd meet those things on a job: the screen, the text, the pictures, the editing, and finally getting the work out.

Preferences people change first

Units and increments is the most common early stop. If the measurements and steps the app uses don't match how you think about a page, this is where to look.

Display, guides and grids comes next for many people, especially those used to a particular colour for guides.

Accessibility is worth a visit for anyone who finds the interface small or low in contrast. Clipboard handling matters if you paste a lot from other programs and want a particular behaviour every time.

Preferences versus document settings

It helps to keep straight what's a preference and what's part of the document. Preferences stay with the app on your computer. Things like the page size, margins and swatches belong to the document and travel with the file. If a colleague opens your document, they see your page design but their own preferences.

That's also why the app can feel slightly different on another computer without anything being wrong with the document: the screen and editing settings come from the other person's preferences, while the page design comes from the file.

Preference changes to be careful with

Change one thing at a time and see what it does. If several settings change at once and something odd happens, it's hard to know which caused it.

Don't change composition or output settings in the middle of a job without a reason. Those affect how text sets and how files are checked and exported, and changing them halfway can make earlier pages look different from later ones.

Make a note of anything you change that you'd want again on a new computer.

Most days you won't open Preferences at all, and that's as it should be. When you do, the list down the left makes it quick to find the right section in Layout by Zaweba.