sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (02/15/84)
I have just purchased a new "Lisa-Draw"-like package for the CoCo which is truly amazing, especially given its price: $29.95. It's called "Graphicom", and it is an icon-driven graphics editor. It requires a 64K CoCo (of any vintage), Disk Basic and one disk, and two joysticks. It supports most dot-matrix printers for output. It also has provisions for slow-scan TV transmission amd the use of the cassette port as a 1500 baud modem. Graphic pictures can be saved for use outside Graphicom, and vice versa. Its user interface is a bit weird, but perhaps that's because I have the new Deluxe joysticks which are more bulky than usual. Depressing the left joystick fire button flashes the menu icons on the screen--otherwise, one is always in simple-drawing mode. Drawing and icon selection are performed with the right joystick and fire button. The keyboard is used only for font/text input. I think a foot pedal for the menu button would do nicely, leaving two hands for the right joystick. Now, if I can only bring myself to step on my Color Mouse... It uses an ingenious way to extend the resolution of the CoCo joysticks (alluded to here several months ago) which can distinguish only 64 discrete values. The joystick controls a 54 x 54 pixel region, and when the pixel position lies on this border, the entire region "moves" across the screen in the direction of the border. Thus one has both coarse and fine adjustments. Having used LisaDraw, it is amazing how much has been transferred to a $250 machine. The only thing which comes to mind as not being present is the ability to "stretch" images. Full BitBlt rasterops are provided. A four-page "animation" buffer is provided. I'm only just beginning to play with it, so I will keep you all posted. For those interested, contact: Moretom Bay Software 316 Castillo St. Santa Barbara, CA 93101 -- /Steve Dyer decvax!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbncca