Creating your own set of letters
You can create your own set of letters to be shown as samples for the students to draw themselves. To do this, follow the steps below.
Create a set of letters based on an existing set of letters
Click on the "Settings" button, and then click the "Customize" tab when the Settings window appears.
A list of the sets of letters currently available to you will be shown.
Click the "New..." button. A window will appear showing you the existing sets of letters again. Your new set will start off by being a copy of an existing set.
Select the set of letters that you want to be copied when creating your new set. For example, "Lower case letters".
Type the name of your new set of letters. This can be whatever you want.
Click the "Create" button. The window will close, and you'll be back at the Settings window. The list of available sets of letters will now include the set you just created. For example the image below show's a new set "Guy's letters".
Customize the new set of letters
Having created your own set of letters, you'll now want to change the letters to look like what you want. To do this follow the steps below.
Select the set of letters that you want to customize from the list of available sets of letters. This will normally be the new set that you created when running through the steps above.
Click the "Customize..." button. A window appears which will allow you to customize your letters.
Select the letter that you want to customize from the dropdown list of letters near the top left corner of the window. You will see the current version of that letter appear at the left side of the window.
In the right side of the window, draw the letter as you would like it to appear to the student. If you're not happy with what you drew, then click the "Clear" button to remove the ink from the right side of the window.
Once you're happy with the new letter, click the Apply button. This will save your new letter.
Repeat the above steps to customize every letter that you want to change. Once you've made your changes, click the Close button.
To see your changes, make sure your new set of letters is selected in the list of letter sets in the Settings window, and then close the Settings window by clicking OK. When the related sample letters are shown to the student, they will appear as you drew them.
The picture below shows a letter being customized.
In the future, this customization feature will be expanded to make it easy to add new letters, remove letters, or rename letters. This will be useful when the "letters" aren't really letters at all, but rather they're numbers or shapes.
Some improvements to this feature will also be made to make it easier to use. For example, sometimes after customizing the letters you might find that they don't sit exactly on the background lines as they should. When this happens you need to redo them and position them a little higher or lower in the Customize Letter Set window shown above.
If you have questions about the steps for creating your own set of customized letters in Herbi Writer, or have feedback on how the steps could be changed to be more useful to you, please contact Barker@Herbi.org.