A New Design, Step By Step

Finally, we will take a brief look at the step-by-step process of creating a new design. A complex new design can be done in less than five minutes, if you do it right. It takes some cut & paste, though. :-)

Create an empty box design. The only entry so far between the BOX and END statements is an empty SAMPLE block.
Draw your box. Do it inside the sample block. Just draw it like you think it should look.
Create the SHAPE block. Create your shapes by pasting from the SAMPLE block. Remember that all lines in shape definitions must be of equal length.
Add the other entries. You must at least add the ELASTIC entry, but this is also the time to add any other entries you might need.
Take care of quoting. There are two ways to do that:
- If there are only a few double quotes or backslashes in your strings, tell your editor to double all backslashes in the SHAPE block for you. Do not double the backslashes before this point, or you will not be able to undo it so easily (see below).
  Then escape the double quotes (") by telling your editor to put a backslash in front of every double quote (") which is part of a string.
- If you've got a lot of double quotes or backslashes in your strings, simply choose some other characters to be the special characters. This is achieved through the delimiter statement.
Do not leave your editor! Do not leave your editor just yet. Instead try out your design. This is because if you made a mistake with the line lengths or something, you can still easily undo the doubling of backslashes. Otherwise, it may become difficult to judge how long a line is.
Refine your design. Repeat appropriate steps until done.

Easy, huh? :-)

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