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From: jmpiazza@sunybcs.uucp (Joseph M. Piazza)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Drawing in Technical Environment
Message-ID: <4360@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-Jul-87 11:33:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.4360
Posted: Fri Jul 31 11:33:13 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 22:23:56 EDT
References: <3538@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> <5277@prls.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: jmpiazza@gort.UUCP (Joseph M. Piazza)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
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In article <5277@prls.UUCP> gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner) writes:
>Does anyone have experience with SuperPaint/MacDraw/MacDraft/CricketDraw
>in a technical environment that would care to comment on their relative
>merits? ...

	"Technical Environment" is a bit fuzzy to me.  I do a lot of
diagrams and such for Computer Science articles, tech reports, etc.
I don't do drafting or intense applications that requires accurate scaling
though I do try to be precise in my diagram layouts.

>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. 

	MacDraft is our mainline draw application and it serves quite
adequately.  As of the latest version, 1.2a, it is not copy protected.

	Not too buggy -- nothing major at least; more like quirky.
Sometimes it doesn't fully erase portions of the screen; has a hard time
selecting an object; drops out of text mode when doing anything other than
text, like scrolling; it doesn't have those little lines on the ruler that
tells you where the cursor is when moving objects, but are there when
drawing them; always starts off with a cross hair cursor that spans the
entire window even when "small cursor" is selected (a little cross which I
prefer to the cross hair) but works fine once you select small cursor; etc.
Nothing insurmountable.  One very wierd quirk with our new SE was that it
wouldn't change fill patterns.  Their tech support directed me to turn menu
flashing on (I prefer it off) and voila!  fill patterns.

>CricketDraw seems to have a number of great special effects, but most
>of them wouldn't be needed for technical reports.

	I've played with it and all it really is good for is special
effects.  One small nice feature is that you can use different fonts in the
same text object.  Otherwise, when I tried doing real work, it just lay
there like an old dog -- very frustrating.

>P.S. It constantly amazes me how developers can be so ignorant of the
>needs of technical users of Macs. ...

	I wonder if any of them have ANY user in mind.  It seems that every
application is deficient of one feature or another in virtually every
discipline.  To solve ALL problems usually requires at least two
applications.  Oh, well.

	Hope this helps.

Flip side,

	joe piazza

--- Cogito ergo equus sum.

CS Dept. SUNY at Buffalo 14260
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