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/