The Productive Documents
Five types of documents comprise the "top level" of the Gobe Productive
suite: Word Processing, Graphics, Spreadsheet, Image Processing, and Presentation. This section introduces these documents.
For detailed instructions on how to use the different document types, and for
specific questions, please select the appropriate document section from the main menu to
the left.
Environments
All documents and frames have an environment. An environment is a set of
tools and features available for a frame or document type. Gobe Productive
dynamically changes the environment to reflect the currently active document or frame.
For example, if you are working on a word processing document, the word processing
environment is active. If you activate a spreadsheet frame, the spreadsheet
environment becomes active. The Environment Icon indicates which environment is
currently active.
To keep it simple, the term environment is used to refer both to a document
and a single frame.
A word processor document is a text-based environment. Word processing documents
are ideal for letters, reports, books, proposals, and anything where a lot of text is
used.

Although the word processing document is specially designed for writing text, you can
easily integrate graphics, charts, and spreadsheets into the text flow.
The graphics environment is tuned for the design and layout of graphic objects.
The environment includes tools for drawing lines, curves, shapes, and other graphic items.

Graphic documents are ideal for laying out many different types of frames. For
example, if you wish to create a graphically rich newsletter which contains text,
pictures, and a spreadsheet table, a Graphics document is the best environment to use.
A spreadsheet document is a cell-based environment. It is the best place for
"number crunching" and data organization. Spreadsheet documents can also create
colorful charts and graphs.

The Gobe Productive spreadsheet recognizes many different kinds of data: numbers,
currency, scientific notation, text, dates, times, true/false, and formulas. Over
100 built-in mathematical, scientific, and financial functions make calculations easy.
Spreadsheets are also great for organizing information. For example, you can use
a spreadsheet to alphabetize a list of names. In this way, a Gobe Productive
spreadsheet functions as a simple database. Use it to store information about
inventories, contacts, and investments.
Image Processing is a digital image environment ideal for touching up and editing image
files and digital photographs.

For example, if you have a digital image, you can copy it to your system and edit the
picture for use in other documents. Gobe Productive supports many standard graphics
formats such as PNG, TIFF, Targa, and JPEG.
A Presentation document is a graphics-based environment with the ability to create and
display slide shows.

The presentation environment has a sophisticated layering system to build slide
shows. For example, you can create a presentation that reuses the same elements many
times without having copy and paste those items from slide to slide. Moreover, you
can create multiple backgrounds or "master slides." |