Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!nucsrl!accuvax.nwu.edu!lentz From: lentz@accuvax.nwu.edu (Rob Lentz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: SuperPaint 2.0 impressions... Message-ID: <10330140@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Mar 89 21:04:18 GMT References: <5952@bsu-cs.UUCP> Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA Lines: 59 Unforutnately, I must agree. SuperPaint 2.0 is quite disappointing. We received our upgrade two weeks ago and I played with it the same night that we received it. The speed was quite slow. Definitely slower than MacDraw II, as far as the draw layer is concerned. The controls could definitely be improved. I still am not used to the fact that double clicking on some of the polygons causes them to be drawn from the center while clicking on others brings up a dialog box. (Now, if I click on this one...?) The controls for items such as the Bezier(sp?) curve settings suffer from some of the same problems I have heard about Digital Darkroom, small controls, no readout thus making it darn difficult to duplicate a previously used setting,... I find the Bezier curves difficult to control (all those little circles are too close together :-) ) especially on the zoom setting, it would be nice if they adjusted the size of the control when you zoomed. The plug in tools are nice, but I would seriously disagree with their idea of storing them in a folder in the Blessed Folder, what are all the people with only floppies supposed to do? This takes up additional space on the system disk, which is already overcrowded and will not get any better. The file operations are slooooowwwwwww! Unbelievably slow! With just a simple painting, nothing in the draw layer even. It works on a Mac II in multiple bit screen depths now, but becomes unbearably slow (no wonder they did not let us paint in color :-) ) Otherwise, it is nice on a Mac II in two color mode, about the only place the program looks decent. And yes, the color preview mode is a pain! But like I said, drawing in color turned out to be horrendously slow, so they probably did not want us to be doing much of that anyhow. All in all quite a disappointment. Slow and buggy. I would have expected that the delay from last fall's expected release date would have been to get the bugs out and the speed up, but evidently not. Buggy? Why yes, it did not take me long to find bugs which primarily involve the plug-in tools and screen depth on the Mac II. Another case in which it was assumed that no one could do anything behind your back to change your environment, when they could. (Try switching screen depth with Switch-A-Roo while use a plug in tool, such as the 3-D box :-) I use a macro to invoke it but I believe the simple function key combo will suffice.) Is anybody from Silicon Beach out there? P.S. I belive the multiple styles in text boxes is not as much their doing as the new StyledTextEdit from Apple in System 6.0, but then, what do I know? Robert Lentz These are merely MY opinions. Internet: lentz@accuvax.acns.nwu.edu 616 Noyes Street Bitnet: lentz@nuacc Evanston, Illinois 60201-2814 UUCP: {gargoyle,chinet}!nucsrl!accuvax!lentz Academic Computing and Network Services Student Consultant Macintosh Public Domain Administrator Northwestern University ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "How can you be a man, til you see beyond the life you live?" -Boston, "What Does It Take To Be a Man?", _Third Stage_