How can I make a half-circle line?

As far as I know, using only Pages we must use two objects

• a circle whose background will be set to none
• a rectangle whose border and background are set to white.
set the rectangle height to radius + 1 pixel
set the rectangle width to diameter + 2 pixels
move the rectangle so that it hides half of the circle.
Group both objects so you will be able to move them easily.

Third party programs like Easydraw give you the ability to build specific objects which we are able to export to Pages.

If you compare the cost of Pages to the Photoshop's one, it's normal that this late program proves to be able to do more things than the 1st one.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 12 juin 2008 18:06:30)

The problem here, Yvan, is that Ben wants transparency. I think another app is his only answer.

Walt

My half circle is transparent.
The complementary rectangle is not.

I was hoping that it was sufficient to fit the OP's needs.

I was able to do the trick with the free LiveQuartz.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 12 juin 2008 18:31:49)

http://idisk.mac.com/makentosh-Public/halfcirclearrow.mov

Bravo

I didn't thought that the Bezier curves are fair enough to give us the ability to draw the half-circle 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 12 juin 2008 19:36:17)

The video was made by Kyn Drake, by the way. I thought one could figure that out from the url, but that seems difficult, so I'd better write it in clear.

Though new to this discussion forum, I've read all the answers posted so far to your original question. Yet, another technique for drawing semicircles or other complicated figures can be suggested by taking a picture of a part of the screen that you select. To do this either use a keyboard shortcut (such as Cmnd Ctrl Shft 4) for copying a picture to the clipboard with the Finder or use a different shortcut (such as Cmnd Shft A) for saving a picture to the desktop with the Grab utility.

The clipboard image can be pasted directly into Pages (use Cmnd V), but the desktop picture would need two steps (use Cmnd Shft V for selecting and inserting). While it may be possible to change the background transparency of a desktop picture, I have been able to satisfy my drawing needs so far simply by continuing to draw over the opaque images that have been pasted from the clipboard and then perhaps taking another picture. In either case, it is important to keep the selection handles of the final group as conservatively constrained as possible.

One thing I would like to be able to do (in a particular graphic) is create a 'half' circle: as if I could take a standard Pages circle, remove the fill, and then ERASE one half of the remaining 'line' or 'stroke' circle

Transparency has been supported by Apple GX since 1994 and by the Adobe since PDF 1.4 in 2000 (or was it 2001, can't recall off the cuff).

Pages needs an illustration app, e.g. Intaglio, like InDesign needs an illustration app, e.g. Illustrator. A longtime Mac developer buit Intaglio which supports TrueType and ColorSync through the operating system like Pages does. There is an Intaglio help forum on the Freeway site operated by the SoftPress folks in Oxford who are also longtime Mac developers - they originally developed Uniqorn for QuickDraw GX.

Best wishes,

Henrik

Please note that this technique makes use of Appleworks. Moreover, I only have a demo version of iWork, so I do not now whether the following procedure will yield acceptable results when printed.

- open an Appleworks drawing document
- select the arc tool
- depress the shift key and drag a 90 degree arc and size it to your liking
- with the arc still selected, choose “arc info...” under the Edit menu -- enter 180 degrees
- fill/not fill and stroke the arc to your specifications
- drag the arc onto the pages document

Appleworks also has a Reshape mode (located under the Edit menu) that accomplishes pretty much the same result. Note: you must uncheck the Reshape command to return to the "normal" mode.

The reshape mode is also great for manipulating individual vertices of objects created by the Polygon and Regular Polygon tool.

Message was edited by: stubulman

Message was edited by: stubulman

In Pages there is not predefined ARC object.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 15 juin 2008 21:53:58)

Yvan,

As I stated in the opening sentence of my post, generating an arc makes use of Appleworks, not iWork. Many Mac users have a copy of Appleworks among their collection of applications. Appleworks does indeed have an arc tool.

Regards,
Stu B.

I have tried to use this method to draw shapes, but am finding it difficult to grab the "handles" on shapes to manipulate them. Any thoughts?

Any vector pdf file will have the transparency you need.

So all you need to do is use a drawing program to create the pdf or make an .eps or .ps file that can be converted to .pdf in Preview.

Programs that produce either the .pdf, .eps or .ps files are Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, EazyDraw, VectorDesigner, ZeusDraw, LineForm, Sketsa, Acorn, AppleWorks, Inkscape (free), DrawBerry (Free), DrawIt Lite (free).

You can also look for a font which contains geometric shapes one of which would be in likelihood a semicircle.

Thinking laterally, create a circle in Pages, using shapes, with whatever color stroke and thickness you want and no fill. Print that to .pdf, then drag that back into Pages and crop it so only half of it is showing.

You can get something similar to a semi-circle by taking a circle shape, making it editable then double-clicking on the red points to delete them until you have only an arc left. This curls slightly inwards at the open side but is close to a semi-circle.

I played with the arc in Pages a little more. If you click on the ends of the arc they change to red dots with handles on them which you can adjust to make them closer to a true half circle. It helps if you use the inspector to make the shape 2x wide as high to at least get the proportions of a half circle.

Or if you go down to the bottom of the pop down menu of the shapes icon there is the draw tool with which you can draw a half circle.