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From: Lee_Robert_Willis@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: re: Zen Ami businessware
Message-ID: <40169@cup.portal.com>
Date: 15 Mar 91 03:18:51 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 80

Earlier, I wrote:

>>The structured drawing program GemDraw is much faster on a mere PC/AT.
>>It gets its speed from having less options (e.g., text only comes in
>>certain sizes, you can only rotate it at 90 degree angles, you can't
>>strech, bend, curve, warp, spindle, or mutilate it.)  Depending on your
>>needs, this is either good or bad.    
>

To which, Dave Hanie replied:

>For any real professional work, I don't think you can possibly live with
>something like that.  In my work with technical illustrations, I need fonts
>that are scaleable within at least a point of being perfect.  That will
>_require_ vector fonts, even though a program could kludge it and go faster
>with bitmapped fonts, if it chooses to limit the sizes.  

Oh, excuse me.  'Real professionals' use vector fonts.  And all this time 
I thought I was a professional.  Must have been all those paychecks that 
fooled me. :-)

All sarcasm aside, I got along fine without vector fonts for years.  It's
nice to have them, but I'd swap them for a drawing program that allows me
to add text quickly (i.e., just put the cursor on the screen and type),
and allows me to re-edit text after its on the page.  ('Course there's no
reason why one couldn't have both.)

Vector fonts are great if you can afford the time 
penalty, but I bet there are plenty-o-folks with vanilla 68000 Amigas
who would be thrilled to have a fast, bitmapped font structured drawing 
program.

----------------

Earlier, you wrote that you used ProfessionalDraw for the Zorro III bus
documentation.  Out of curiousity: how could you do such extensive 
illustration on a program that provides no way of drawing perfectly 
vertical or horizontal lines, and does not support 'Grid Snap'?  I
find these to be indespensible.

----------------

The following comments were addressed at ProfessionalDraw 2.0:

>>>However, complaining about a tool being too powerful is rarely a valid
>>>point when you claim to come from a business prespective.  A business will
>>>rarely make such complaints, and if the tool runs too slow, they'll buy a
>>>faster system.  
>
>>b) I disagree with your statement.  A business will buy a superfast PC  if
>>they NEED the power of Ventura Publisher or AutoCAD.  Businesses won't buy
>>VP if they just need to do simple memos, 
>
>Of course not, they'll use WordPerfect or something.  You can too, but you're
>not writing simple memos, you're interesting in doing things that are pretty
>much only handled by high end system.

Dave, you're trying to change the subject on me.  We were talking about
ProDraw being too powerful, not Ami word processors.  My point is that I
didn't need all its power (for text manipulation) but I didn't have the
option to buy a low-end structured drawing program, because 
there weren't any (that I was aware of.  Since then, everyone keeps 
telling me about ProVector.)

And even if I had been talking about word processors: 

>              ...you're interesting in doing things that are pretty
>much only handled by high end system.

I am not talking about any capability that cannot be done with a word 
processor on a PC/AT, which is NOT my definition of a high-end system.
(I've actually done this work on an PC/XT, but its s_l_o_w.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

On the more positive side: everyone has given such strong recommendations
on AmigaTeX that I'm going to give it a try.  It will have to wait til next
month though, as I've already spent this months software budget.

Lee      Lee_Robert_Willis@cup.portal.com