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From: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Drawing in Technical Environment
Message-ID: <5277@prls.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 13:16:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: prls.5277
Posted: Thu Jul 30 13:16:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 10:45:05 EDT
References: <3538@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Reply-To: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Organization: Philips Research Labs, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 34

Does anyone have experience with SuperPaint/MacDraw/MacDraft/CricketDraw
in a technical environment that would care to comment on their relative
merits?
I used MacDraw for my dissertation and was not unhappy with it, but at
work we had heard about how wonderful SuperPaint is so we bought it.
I am less than impressed (for use in technical work). For instance,
(in the draw mode - the only mode I'm really interested in) it will not
rotate text (and cannot even import vertical text), making it useless
for touching up or producing graphs; it does not smooth polygons, making
it worthless for complex figures; it does not put arrows on lines, so
you can't easily annotate figures; the arc tool insists on having
endpoints at 90 degree angles (a failing in MacDraw, also); you cannot
rotate objects at arbitrary angles (also a problem in MacDraw). I
don't have a lot of experience with it, so if I'm wrong, please correct
me (how do you get it to default to draw mode?).
MacDraft overcomes most of these problems, I believe, but I understand
that it is _still_ buggy (and copy protected?). My info is quite old
on MacDraft, however. 
CricketDraw seems to have a number of great special effects, but most
of them wouldn't be needed for technical reports.
Any info on this topic would be much appreciated. We're currently in
the process of a rather large Mac purchase for use in preparing
technical manuscripts.
Thank you,
Robert Gardner

P.S. It constantly amazes me how developers can be so ignorant of the
needs of technical users of Macs. Everyone thinks of business or
desktop publishing but not technical use. Another simple example:
PowerPoint does not include sub/superscripts in its wordprocessor (though
that is planned). Can you possibly imagine a technical presentation
without superscripts or subscripts? Adding support for the technical
market involves adding rather minor features (compared with the effort
of producing the product itself), but developers seem to be ignorant of this.