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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!utegc!utai!garfield!john13
From: john13@garfield.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Amiga's Worst Enemy
Message-ID: <3666@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-May-87 23:35:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: garfield.3666
Posted: Fri May 22 23:35:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 19:15:44 EDT
References: <18006@sun.uucp> <857@sputnik.COM> <1640@sphinx.uchicago.edu> <136@l5comp.UUCP>
Organization: CS Dept., Memorial U. of Newfoundland, St. John's
Lines: 42
Keywords: Developers programmers comercial software MCC EA DeluxePaint
Xref: utgpu comp.sys.amiga:4719 comp.sys.ibm.pc:3719

In article <136@l5comp.UUCP>, scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner) writes:
>I can yell at if anything does go bump. Yell at a PD author and ya either get A.
>A list of his/her priorities with yours near the bottom. B. "What did ya expect
>for free?" 

I've found the exact opposite to be the case where I could reach the authors
on the net...I'm glad they saw my messages right after the ol' "You have
mail" message instead of hearing me at 3 AM on the phone, though :-)!
  
>As for EA and the Paint series... DP was great for doodling but if you had
>serious work for it, like making illustrations to be printed on a laser printer,
>it just couldn't handle it. And before the DP loyalists scream WHAT?!? lasers
>print at 300 dpi. At that resolution even the largest screen DP can handle is
>VERY tiny, so they have to be blown up by the printer. When this is done those
>nice small dots become big fat squares...

Who wants to write a program to take a DPaint file and print it at 300 DPI,
using some fantastic dithering algorithm to get the colours to come out
as light as they should? Doesn't sound too hard, if I had a Laserprinter I'd
do it myself. (Hint - if anyone actually does this, allow saving of output to
a FILE so I can at least upload it and print it out on a remote printer).

> DP is also missing alot of those
> "small" features that make MacPaint more useful (like hold down shift to move
> in straight lines as a single example of what I mean). DPII excited me, here

I see from your other postings that you are a "creator" moreso than a "user".
I consider myself about 75-25 in favour of using software as opposed to
writing it, even more unbalanced when I'm in a doodling mood, or have a paper
due, etc. Your favourite software will thus be different than mine...but I
have to point out that mine (DPaint I & II) _does_ use shift for constraining
drawing to a straight line, and control for drawing "rays", and lots of
other little features that make it easy and fun to work with.

Also, WRT when the MCC products were released, they weren't available in
this neck of the woods until *well* after their PD equivalents were in
common use (for most, pipe: and aux: excepted), which was my biggest
disappointment with them. I thought the guys who wrote a lot of this stuff
would be first on the bandwagon. It may be that they weren't released or
were scarce in Canada for a while after they were available in the States.

John