mithomas@bsu-cs.UUCP (Michael Thomas Niehaus) (02/28/89)
Has anyone used SuperPaint 2.0 enough to give it a full review? I have used
it in a limited sense, and here are my first impressions:
- The object (draw) layer lacks speeds (at least on my SE). If MacDraw II
had that liability, I don't think anyone would use it.
- The Bezier (sp?) curves are nice, but the above problem makes them a pain.
- The 'Pouch' concept of having external tools (like XCMDs sort of) is nice.
However, there are not any useful tools yet in existance. The ones that
are included are cute, but not really useful (except for maybe the
tornado).
- The use of color (yes, on a Mac IIx) was o.k., but annoying. Having to go
to a preview mode to see what colors you have drawn is a real inconvenience.
The draw layer can use the 8 color palette, and so can the paint layer -
one color at a time. The entire paint layer changes color to the color of
the last applied paint.
- The autotrace tool is nice, but still a little slow (I expect this to be
true). Since this isn't probably used often, I don't see it as a problem.
- Zooming in and out could be more flexible. Magnification levels (like the
Claris products) would be useful.
- Some bugs appear to still exist. For instance, I was playing with the
autotrace feature on a paint graphic that I created (a jumbled mess). It
worked fine, and I discarded the file that I was working on. I then tried
to open another new (from the file menu) window (the only one) I received
a "SuperPaint cannot open this file -- not enough memory" error -- even
though the "About" screen said that I had 420k available.
- The about screen is neat, although I don't know if I want it taking up my
disk space.
Let me know if anyone else has any impressions.
-Michael Niehaus
--
Michael Niehaus UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep ARPA: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)emuroga@m.cs.uiuc.edu (03/02/89)
I also wish the draw layer would allow dashed lines and arrowheads on more than just the straight lines. In my case, I need arrowhead/dashed lines on beziers. Of the paint tools, I like the airbrush and the shadowbox. Something I noticed by accident: You can select anything on the screen to be your paintbrush shape. This includes the menu bar etc. Eisuke Muroga Department of Computer Science | 1304 W. Springfield Ave. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Urbana, IL 61801 ARPA emuroga@m.cs.uiuc.edu CSNET emuroga@uiuc.csnet USENET uiucdcs!uiucdcsm!emuroga BITNET emuroga%m.cs.uiuc.edu@uiucvmd.bitnet
moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (03/04/89)
After using SP 2.0 to put together a few flyers, I'd have to say that it's
worth the upgrade price to me; however, I'm more impressed with the features
in 1.1 that they've enhanced than many of the new features. Things like
multiple fonts and styles within a text box, duplication where you can set
the X & Y offsets, 1-degree rotation of text; I particularly like that when
you group text with other objects, and then shrink the grouped object, the
text scales correctly (about time!). All of these are things they needed to
correct, and they did. I like the autotrace features, though it's taking
some time to find out how to autotrace beziers; it's not revolutionary, but
it ain't bad.
I didn't have any speed problems (no more than SP 1.1) with a Mac Plus (2.5
Megs memory) under MultiFinder, and that's with a *lot* of text objects....
From friend's descriptions, Canvas has more abilities than SP 2.0, but I've
bought SP and like it and am used to the interface; 2.0 is adequate for my
needs. Guess you'd say I'm a happy SuperPaint owner. Charlie Jackson is
speaking at the local Mac user group meeting next week (showing SuperCard,
Digitial Darkroom and SP 2.0); I'll forward any promised features for later
versions of SP to this group (if he announces any).
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOONWALKER (CMV). As SCTV
would say, `Stay tuned for THE MAKING OF
MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOONWALKER, followed by THE
MAKING OF THE MAKING OF MICHAEL JACKSON'S
MOONWALKER.'"
---
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>lentz@accuvax.nwu.edu (Rob Lentz) (03/04/89)
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_
hardy@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Hardy) (03/07/89)
Can anyone tell me how big SuperPaint 2.0 is compared to 1.0? When I upgraded to MacWrite 5.0, I was shocked to see that it had grown from 70K to 170K! (As if things weren't ALREADY getting tight on my floppies.) I'd like to know if I would have a similar problem with SuperPaint 2.0. My impression is that this would NOT be an appropriate program to use on a 512KE. thanks -- mark
lentz@accuvax.nwu.edu (Rob Lentz) (03/09/89)
hardy@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Hardy) asks: >Can anyone tell me how big SuperPaint 2.0 is compared to 1.0? When I >upgraded to MacWrite 5.0, I was shocked to see that it had grown from >70K to 170K! (As if things weren't ALREADY getting tight on my floppies.) >I'd like to know if I would have a similar problem with SuperPaint 2.0. >My impression is that this would NOT be an appropriate program to use >on a 512KE. > >thanks -- mark >---------- Well, I checked our copy here and SuperPaint 2.0 is 506K. I do not remember how big the original was but I believe it was around 280K. The 100K growth in MacWrite 5.0 was probably due to the inclusion of a dictionary. According to the manual SuperPaint 2.0 requires at least 1MB, System 6.0 or newer, and the 128K ROM. Apple seriously should have come out with the FDHD sooner, 800K is just not enough now. Robert Lentz Internet: lentz@accuvax.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_
steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) (03/10/89)
In article <9799@ihlpb.ATT.COM> hardy@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Hardy) writes:
#>
#>Can anyone tell me how big SuperPaint 2.0 is compared to 1.0? When I
#>upgraded to MacWrite 5.0, I was shocked to see that it had grown from
#>70K to 170K! (As if things weren't ALREADY getting tight on my floppies.)
#>I'd like to know if I would have a similar problem with SuperPaint 2.0.
#>My impression is that this would NOT be an appropriate program to use
#>on a 512KE.
#>
#>thanks -- mark
SuperPaint 2.0 is 516,017 bytes.
SuperPaint 1.0 was 165,034 bytes.
However, the suggested memory size has increased from 582K to
700K.
So, yes, if you are using floppies, you'll have to dedicate one
to SuperPaint 2.0, unless you have one of the new 1.6M drives.
Steve Goldfieldrubinoff@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Robert Rubinoff) (03/10/89)
In article <21373@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes: >SuperPaint 2.0 is 516,017 bytes. >SuperPaint 1.0 was 165,034 bytes. >However, the suggested memory size has increased from 582K to >700K. Although I would expect that you could cut down a little on the required memory by getting rid of any plug-in tools and commands that you aren't using. There are a lot of them that are cute but not very important (like the ones that sprinkle stars or bubbles or various other things around the picture). This still won't make the application file any smaller, of course. Robert
kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (03/10/89)
In article <9799@ihlpb.ATT.COM> hardy@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Hardy) writes:
<
<Can anyone tell me how big SuperPaint 2.0 is compared to 1.0? When I
<upgraded to MacWrite 5.0, I was shocked to see that it had grown from
<70K to 170K! (As if things weren't ALREADY getting tight on my floppies.)
<I'd like to know if I would have a similar problem with SuperPaint 2.0.
<My impression is that this would NOT be an appropriate program to use
<on a 512KE.
<
SuperPaint 2.0, according to the Get Info box is 505K and the suggested
memory size is 700K. The pouch which contains tools like the spray can,
3D box, bubbles, charcoal, cycloid, diffuse, dry and fade brushes, etc.
is 193K. The Other Plug-ins pouch containing the balloons, footprints,
hearts, snowflakes, starrs, etc. is 55K.
My secretary couldn't seem to use these tools the other day until we
reinstalled SuperPaint. We have no idea what happened, except that she
had stuck SuperPaint in the pouch folder and taking it out didn't help.
Shirley Kehrkehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr) (03/14/89)
In article <8661@netnews.upenn.edu> rubinoff@linc.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Robert Rubinoff) writes: >In article <21373@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes: >>SuperPaint 2.0 is 516,017 bytes. >>SuperPaint 1.0 was 165,034 bytes. >>However, the suggested memory size has increased from 582K to >>700K. > By the way, with only a 700K partition, you can't have more than one page. I had to up the memory to open a two-page document this morning. Shirley Kehr