Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!emory!utkcs2!ornl.gov!wnn
From: wnn@ornl.gov (Wolfgang N. Naegeli)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: PostScript/TrueType Question
Message-ID: <1990Oct10.143710.9985@cs.utk.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 90 14:37:10 GMT
Sender: news@cs.utk.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Univ. of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Lab.
Lines: 36
References:<2868@bridge2.ESD.3Com.COM> <70500050@m.cs.uiuc.edu>

In article <70500050@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> On the other hand, Canvas 2.0 does screw up rotation.  Once an item is
> rotated, it is represented on the screen by a bitmap.  Subsequent
> rotations just spin the bitmap, making the item illegible upon the
> second rotation.  "Zoom In" does not enhance the legibility of a
> rotated item.

Don't flame outdated versions!
Canvas 2.1 lets you rotate text freely several times, and it is always 
fairly legible. Of course, it has to be represented on the screen by a 
bitmap. There is no way around that. (Why do you think the NeXT displays 
use higher dpi? They have Display PostScript, but when it comes to drawing 
on the screen it must still be represented as a bit map.)

Canvas 2.1, recomputes the bitmap from the original, each time you rotate 
it. You can edit rotated text by clicking in it with the text insertion 
tool. This causes the text to quickly snap back to a horizontal position. 
After you finish editing and deselect it, it snaps back to its previous 
rotation.  Yes, when you zoom in, it still simply blows up the rotated 
bitmap. But this is probably a good feature since it would take too long 
to recompute all the bitmaps if you have several rotated text blocks in 
the drawing.  You can force recomputation by clicking in each of the 
rotated text blocks with the text insertion tool. When you zoom out after 
having done this, the rotated characters will appear too heavy at the 
smaller scale until you select and deselect them again with the text tool.

When applying special effects, Canvas 2.1 always works on copies of the original. Thus you can select "Revert to original" after having applied several special efects only to realize that you better start all over again.
Not that this is on a per-object basis, not a file reversion, and that you can apply it even after having worked on or added other objects in the meantime.

It would be nice if there were a Preferences option to have Canvas automatically recompute bitmaps after zooming. Perhaps the next version will have that. At any rate, Canvas is, IMHO, the best all-around drawing and painting package, and it certainly beats its competition in price performance.

Wolfgang N. Naegeli
Internet: wnn@ornl.gov    Bitnet: wnn@ornlstc
Phone: 615-574-6143       Fax: 615-574-6141
QuickMail (QM-QM): Wolfgang Naegeli @ 615-574-4510
Snail:  Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6206