Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!scgvaxd!ashtate!dbase!awd
From: awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: MacDraw II
Keywords: Claris MacDraw II
Message-ID: <387@dbase.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 88 06:26:40 GMT
Organization: Ashton Tate Development Center Glendale Cal.
Lines: 31

I just (6/17) got my copy of MacDraw II.  I guess you could say I'm a 
power user of MacDraw (I'm an architect from a life before computers),
so I've been waiting anxiously for MD II.  It's more than I expected,
even after I played with a late beta at a computer store two months ago.
I'm particularly impressed with the "Rotate mode" in which the cursor
changes to an 'X' and lets you free-rotate objects just by dragging them.
They did several other things right, like: tools work like MacDraw I,
but now you can double-click on a tool to get it to stick instead of
snapping back to the arrow.  Zoom in/out is a nice feature; I've already
started drawing a library of objects (another enhancement) and it's
great to double the size while you draw fussy little details and then
zoom back to normal--the object seems inhumanly accurate.

I've already read one reviewer take Claris to task for their lack of
PICT2 support and their quirky 8-color-only support.  I guess this will
be more of a problem for me when my Mac II arrives.  For now, Mac Draw II
supports a 6-color ImageWriter II just fine, and it will even do color
separations on a pen plotter.  (That doesn't read correctly--MDII supports
color ImageWriter and pen plotters, and it supports color separations on
both as well.)

If people are interested, let's pressure Claris to release the
file format so we programmers can mess around with it.  I don't know if
Claris has anyone on the net currently, but Ashton-Tate has been
hemorrhaging in Claris' direction lately, and former followers of usenet,
such as Andy Felong and Dave Krich, are now at Claris.  Worst of all
(from Ashton-Tate's point of view), this is Dennis Cohen's last week
at A-T before moving to Claris.  I'm sure he'll stay on the net if it's
at all possible, however, so we'll continue to benefit from his knowledge
indirectly anyway.

/alastair/