peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (06/28/88)
Thanks to everyone who followed up on my request for info on PC graphics
packages. I tried to reply to each of you individually but several mailings
bounced back. For those of you might be interested, here's a summary of
what I received:
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From: Dale Gass <dalcsug!dalegass>
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada
The GEM software by digital research is pretty decent graphics software.
GemDraw is an object oriented thing with all kinda neat features. GemPaint
is a bit mapped graphics package. There's also GemWrite (pretty lame) and
GemGraph (charting/graphing package) that integrate with these products.
The Gem environment supports a wide variety of input and output drivers.
Check out the latest version, I hear they've really fancied things up
in their latest release, an now have available desktop publishing software.
----------------
From: Alastair Dallas <awd@dbase.a-t.COM>
You want Designer from Micrografix in Richardson Texas. It has objects as
well as bitmaps. It not only runs on (yech) ATs, but it requires (gads)
Windows, as well. But it'll run in 512k. I'm nauseated just talking about
this PC stuff...
----------------
From: littauer@uts.amdahl.com (Tom Littauer)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
I've used Lotus Freelance with some success, although I think it
needs a lot of improvement. Yes, it's object oriented, does fills
(which Autosketch doesn't), scales, uses plotters, printers, mice,
etc. It feels a little klunky (real technical, Iknow). It does
produce CG metafiles, but I don't know anything else that does yet.
----------------
From: homxc!rps (Russ Sharples)
The GEM system from Digital Research most closely emulates the Mac
graphics ability on an IBM compatible. The system consists of GEM
Desktop which looks like the Mac file directory screen. From the Desktop
you access all other GEM applications: GEM Draw Plus - object oriented drawing
package; GEM Graph - bar charts, line charts, pie charts; GEM Paint - pixel
based drawing package; GEM Wordchart - for creating bullet lists, tables, etc.;
GEM First Word - word processor.
Draw, Graph, Wordchart, and Desktop are available as a $300 package called the
GEM Presentation Team. All are available separately. One feature that makes
GEM so good is that it produces top quality ouput on an ordinary Epson FX
printer: 120 x 144 dots per inch! I have seen no other graphics package
that can produce such good output. GEM also comes with printer drivers
for Epson LQ compatibles and Postscript. Many other printer drivers are
avilable for a nominal charge ($5).
For your application you would want GEM Draw Plus which offers line, circle,
rectangle, polygon, text, fill patters, flip & rotate functions, arrow heads,
etc.. Just like MacDraw. GEM Paint would offer you all the usual paint
features. Any one tool or set of tools inculdes the GEM Desktop.
I have not yet found anything that can approach this system for drawing
in the IBM world for the price. There are some Windows based tools,
Micrografix Designer for example, but is costs twice as much and will
only produce tolerable output on a postscript laser printer. The dot
matrix output looks awful. Another Micrographics product, DRAW!, offers
features similar to GEM Draw Plus but lacks the ability to put arrow heads
on lines! This killed it for our application.
***************
That's all folks!
--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU