johnmac@fawlty.towers.oz (John MacLean) (09/20/89)
The Graphic Exchange 4.0 (GS/OS) Applefest is now underway and you can go and see TGE 4.0. For those of you who cannot make it, like myself, I promised a rundown on the new features of TGE 4.0. Well here goes: Full GS/OS desktop application - no more ProDOS 8. For those of you who prefer P8 programs, bad luck, use the old version, demand wins out in the end. Support to load any number of any type of graphic. Actually, there is a limit (I think it is 128 or 256), but you can load LOTS of print shop pictures, SHR pics (if you have the memory) etc. Batch transfers. This was due to user demand. Select all the original graphics and a destination format - TGE does the rest while you make a cup of coffee. Improved slide shows. Slide shows can now loop until you press escape, recurse through subdirectories, and retain graphics in memory. For those of you fools that have 9873 or more print shop pictures on your hard disk, I hope you are patient. A recursive display of 320 mode pics off your hard disk is impressive. It is also usefull if you get clip art disks with lots of sub-directories. Color translation and masking. You can now completely control the color translation and masking. Any RGB color in the original graphic can be translated to any RGB color in the destination graphic. Any RGB color in the original graphic can be masked out (any number of). Icon support. You can now transfer to and from IIGS color icons. Creating icons from print shop GS pictures is fun ... Masks are AUTOMATICALLY created when you do transfers to icons. Batch save and save as. Selecting save as will do the usual, with provision for multiple filetypes. For example, you can save a SHR pic in about 6 or 7 formats (I do not remember exactly), and you can save quickdraw icons as either finder icon files or as Merlin source code for use with the DRAWICON toolbox call. Save will do a batch save with no prompting using the default filetype. Painting. You can now paint with one of 6 brushes on any graphic format. This is mostly useful for icons, print shop pics etc. This feature is extremely simple and is not meant to rival any paint program. Support for full page graphics. Yes, finally. Support for Superprint posters and backgrounds. When I saw Superprint posters I was impressed, so a late night session followed. Full support for multiple palette 320 and 640 mode SHR pics. Transfers to and from SHR pics using multiple palettes now work correctly. Dithered 640/320 palette conversion. Dithered SHR pics with non standard palettes now work correctly. Custom editing. A custom edit procedure exists for each format. For example, the custom edit routine for icons allows you to modify the parameters like any other icon editor. Slower transfers. Unfortunately there is some cost associated with all these features. Things are about 2 to 3 times slower. This is mainly a function of the architecture allowing extendability. If you have a Transwarp GS installed, half your luck, I'm envious. Anyway, it's not all that bad, as many people commented on just how fast the previous version was. It hasn't bored me yet, and I have done more transfers than anyone is likely to do in a lifetime. Unrestricted RGB mode. This mode uses the standard 320 mode screen, but stores each pixel as an RGB value. When you go to display or save the graphic, TGE calculates the best possible 16 palettes (up to 256 colors) to use. This is one of my favourite features and took me a good weekend to get working. Fully expandable architecture. Support for new graphic formats can be added by myself or other developers (once they get the docs). This means that if you buy TGE you can expect future upgrades. Plans are at this stage to release 2 library disks. The first will cover clip art for many applications, borders, possibly fonts, and other stuff. I have already written support for about 5 or 6 new formats (with an aim of somewhere in the range of 15 to 20, including GEOS, Works of Art, more Print Shop stuff, more superprint stuff etc). The second library disk will provide support for machine independent formats and machine specific formats. This will include GIF, TIFF, Amiga IFF, IBM PC formats (PC Paintbrush, GEM etc), Macintosh PICT files, possibly postscript, and Mac2 PICT2 formats. Expect both of these in the next year. As I have said before, I am open to suggestions for new formats. I still need tech docs for Print Shop GS full panel graphics, print shop GS fonts, PC Paintbrush, GEM formats. What do you GIF users want? Would a 320 x 200 16 color GIF toolset be useful. Would a 576 x 720 mono GIF toolset be useful. Should I support 256 color GIF with a very large graphic and allow scrolling. Input please - I do not have access to GIF files so want to know what sort of graphics are generally available. Finally, please ring up Roger Wagner Publishing and tell them you heard about TGE 4.0, and want to know when you can get it. I have finished my bit long ago and am hard at work on the first library disk. If they get enough calls maybe they will hurry up with the docs and packaging. Hope you like it, John MacLean. -- Internet: johnmac@fawlty.towers.oz.au Phone: +61 2 427 2999 UUCP: uunet!fawlty.towers.oz.au!johnmac Fax: +61 2 427 7072 Snail: Tower Technology 31-33 Sirius Rd, Lane Cove, NSW 2066, Australia.