ELLIOT@STAR3.STANFORD.EDU (Elliot Bennett) (12/18/88)
A number of people have been curious about Canvas 2.0 (or at least what graphics packages are "out there") and I thought I would help out with my impressions of Canvas 2.0 now that I've had some time to play with it. Very simply, Canvas is (in my opinion) the BEST (non-CAD) graphics package in ANY software market. In fact, read this review, and if anyone knows of something better ON ANY MACHINE, I'd like to know. A "short" list of Canvas' features include: GENERAL ------- o ABSOLUTELY the BEST user-interface I have ever seen on the Mac (and I studied user-interface design at Stanford [I could talk a LOT about this if anyone's interested]). o supports 16 mill. colors (using the color wheel and/or saved sets of color tables to set the current color palete). It uses a great pop-up color palate to access the colors. You can set fore- and background colors. o unlimited layers (memory permitting). Different layers can be saved to a separate file or printed (e.g., print layers 3,8, and 23). Layers are easily reordered, hidden, or greyed (for tracing bitmaps, for example). Easy transfer of objects between layers. o Tons of well placed and useful pop-up menus (as alternates to the pull-down/ heirarchical menus under the menu bar) o Zoom in/out by up to 64 times using a brilliat pop-up menu, a magnifying glass, or the keyboard. o Custom editable fill/pen patterns (patterned sets can be saved to disk. "Only" 60 or so patterns can be seen/used at once). o Fill/Pen patterns can be a postscript gray scale (from 1-100% @1 deg. incr.). o Tear-off rulers let you measure anything anywhere. o Ruler zero-point reset o Ruler guides o Pen Modes (COPY, OR, BIC, XOR, and their compliments Not XOR, etc.) o Pen sizes from 1 to 9 adjustible in both height and width o Custom pen sizes of anything you like down to 1/8 of a PIXEL width for hairlines o Macros (of complicated objects savable into sets) o New Textedit (allows letters to be INDIVIDUALLY sized, colored, styled, or 'font'ed. o 9 Feet x 9 Feet drawing space (and pages can be set to print with overlap for easy cutting and pasting). Not only that, but you can set the DIRECTION of printing the pages (i.e. horizontally or vertically). Ever wonder in MacDraw which page it considered #2 when you had 2 down and 2 across? Well, YOU set it in Canvas. o Exports/Imports all the standards, including PICT (except it only imports MacDraw). o On-line Hypercard-like help that tells you most of what you need to know. OBJECT MODE ----------- o Unlimited point Bezier curves. Well done (as in Illustrator). o 4 standard types of editable arrow heads. o Auto-dimensioning (height, width, perimeter, and area) of objects o Splitting and gluing of polygons. Points are easily added or subtracted. o Open ovals (for pie charts, etc). o Scaling of objects o Duplicate feature lets you set # of copies, angle of rotation, start/stop pattern fill and/or color, x/y offsets, % inc/decrease in size, and more o Easily changed curvature of round-rectangles (ala MacDraft). o Rotations at 1 degree increments BITMAP MODE ----------- o Autotrace of bitmaps to polygons (this, like most autotracing, works so-so) o Bitmaps up to 2540 dpi (I use 300 dpi for LW perfection). o Full MacPaint tools that really are at least as good as Superpaint o Flow rate control on Spraycan. PLUS ---- o A LOT more (cropping, grids, multiple ruler scaling units...) I could probably go on and on. To be fair, it does have a couple of shortcomings. Like when you save a file, the icon is moved to a grid location in the finder (if it's not at one already) and the color of the icon (on a Mac ii [obviously]) is lost. Text is only single spaced (no double or 1.5- don't ask me why). And I would prefer floating palates to having one in each window. But, hey, I can live with it... So, if you're not using Canvas you've got to ask yourself why? (I've seen it for as little as $150 mail order). You can get a demo version from them for about $10 (I think). My FREE upgrade from 1.0 also came with a desk accessory version that they claim has about 70% of the program's capability (though on my 5 meg Mac ii under MF, I have little need of it :-). I'd really enjoy hearing why people wouldn't use this package. Please note that my enthusiasm for this program comes from more than an impressive and long list of features. It's not just WHAT they put in the program, but HOW they implemented it. I, for one, am ready to go out and buy stock in Deneba... Elliot Bennett elliot@star.stanford.edu Disclaimer: Unfortunately I have absolutely no connections, relations, or am otherwise involved with Deneba Software**. I'm just an incredibly satisfied customer... (**despite the fact that this sounds more like an ad than a review ;-) Oh yea, for your information: Deneba Software 3305 N.W. 74th Ave Miami, FL 33122 (305) 594-6965 -------
peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (12/19/88)
> I'd really enjoy hearing why people wouldn't use this package. > > Elliot Bennett > elliot@star.stanford.edu Why wouldn't we use Canvas 2.0? Simple: In the summer of '87 when we set up our Mac lab, we bought 15 licences of SuperPaint. It's a *lot* cheaper to upgrade those licences each year to the latest version of SuperPaint than to buy new licences of Canvas. And besides, I'm sure the students will get along fine with SuperPaint 2.0 (which also sounds pretty good as far as features are concerned. And why wouldn't I use Canvas 2.0? Same reason: I bought SuperPaint way back and it's cheaper to stick with it... -- 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
frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick) (12/21/88)
In article <598452939.0.ELLIOT@STAR3.STANFORD.EDU> ELLIOT@STAR3.STANFORD.EDU (Elliot Bennett) writes: > (a glowing review of Canvas 2.0) I generally agree with this review, having had my 2.0 upgrade for a week and being a heavy user of Illustrator and Cricket Draw (and having tried and given up on most other drawing packages). However, I haven't thrown Illustrator out yet, and still use Cricket Draw, too. So, since you asked, a contrasting viewpoint... >o Unlimited point Bezier curves. Well done (as in Illustrator). You may attribute this to my relative inexperience with 2.0, but I wouldn't say Beziers are as well done as in Illustrator. I tried redrawing a relatively simple closed curve that I'd done in Ill. and gave up. Canvas would probably be suitable for most people but it doesn't have the general finesse of Ill. (I'm getting tired of typing Illustrator) and lacks several key tools for editing them. (It also doesn't seem to print them as smoothly, i.e., I sometimes get 'bumps' where the curve changes direction. Don't know if this is my fault.) >o 4 standard types of editable arrow heads. This is one of my favourite features now. Unfortunately, you can't put arrow heads on Bezier curves (one reason I still use Cricket). A couple of other things still unique to Cricket Draw (Ill. is a world unto itself and only has FreeHand as real competition): 1. logarithmic and radial gradients (Canvas will do linear shading, using a method similar to Ill.'s, by duplicating an object). 2. binding text to a curve; not to be fancy, just to make labels look like they really belong with a curved arrow, etc. 3. better wysiwyg, i.e., I only have to test-print a drawing ten times with Cricket instead of 20 with Canvas; lining up text with lines seems to cause me a lot of problems 4. I have hundreds of Cricket drawings and can't figure out how to convert them to Canvas (saving as PICT doesn't work; Canvas imports this as a general 'picture' object which is not editable -- it just sits there) So, if I had only one program, it would be Illustrator. Of all the rest, I'd still choose Cricket (*for the kinds of diagrams I do*). Specific features of Canvas are much better done, but Cricket has more all-round flexibility and, in my opinion, a slightly cleaner interface. -- Frank Kolnick, consulting for, and therefore expressing opinions independent of, Computer X UUCP: {allegra, linus}!utzoo!mnetor!frank
david@randvax.UUCP (David Shlapak) (12/23/88)
In comparing Illustrator and Canvas 2.0, the price differential (at
least $150, if I'm not mistaken) has to be taken into account. Although
Illustrator is a *terrific* piece of software, if "bang for the buck" is
the measure of merit, I'd have to go with Canvas.
Cheers.
--- das