Editing Functions

Imaginary Teleprompter offers numerous editing options for the text. For example, you can change the type, size, and attributes of the font, as well as the text alignment if necessary. These adjustments help you visually highlight special features, such as the emphasis of individual terms.

The Search and Replace Terms dialog lets you edit selected text sequences or individual terms. Other editing functions include inserting and managing tables, graphics, or formulas. The editor also includes a language-specific spell checker that lets you choose a dictionary.

Even when using all the functions, the training curve is quite flat, since symbols and keyboard shortcuts are oriented on the familiar features of conventional graphic word processors. However, the editor does not support the usual menu structures and menu bars that you will find in graphic editors.

Anchor

An anchor marks a text passage or assigns it to a key. Pressing the predefined key jumps to the anchored text passages in the prompter window during text playback (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Anchors stored in the text let you jump to certain text passages in teleprompter mode by pressing a key.

To add an anchor to a term, click on the small flag symbol in the lower-left button bar after highlighting the text passage. In the window that opens, enter the key you want to press to jump to this text passage as the Anchor Name. Pressing on OK saves the mapping.

Playback

After you have entered and saved the text, start the teleprompter by clicking Prompt It! in the top-right corner of the editor window. The software then switches to a full screen mode and all the controls disappear. If you are using the preset options, the scrolling text will start scrolling through the image from bottom to top at a steady speed.

The presentation brightens the image background from the bottom to the middle line by line in three steps and darkens it again from the middle upwards. The text therefore appears lighter towards the middle and then darkens again until it disappears at the top edge of the image.

When reading, you need to concentrate on the middle, and thus brightest, line of the text display. This ensures that the text is read at a constant speed; you can compensate for slight deviations by reading the following line. If the timer is activated, it will count along at the bottom edge of the screen (Figure 4).

Figure 4: In teleprompter mode, Imaginary Teleprompter only displays the running text, plus a timer if enabled.

Several keyboard shortcuts, which are described in detail in the program documentation, are available for control functions during text playback. The shortcuts include, for example, speeding up, slowing down, and pausing the text flow, changing the font size, or even functions for controlling the timer.

After the text has been scrolled through, or if you need to stop to edit a passage, you can disable the prompter by clicking on Close It… at the top right of the window. Alternatively, you can close the window by pressing F8 or Esc.