rs4u+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel) (07/31/87)
A response to Robert Gardner's message (in case my direct reply doesn't get to him...he should get a copy of this): I work in a technical environment, and the best program for drawings seems to be MacDraft. Version 1.2 is much less buggy than previous versions, and is no longer copy-protected. We use MacDraw for view-graphs, but MacDraft for technical drawings; I strongly recommend it. (Note that I have no connection with IDD except as a happy user of MacDraft.) And now to the issue at hand: your comments in your postscript: "It constantly amazes me how developers can be so ignorant of the needs of technical users of Macs." That sums it up *perfectly*, and is afavorite peeve of mine, because I am a developer *and* a technical user. I see too many programs that are business-oriented, and the programmers obviously didn't consider that anyone but an MBA might have a use for their program. I wish to amend the above statement: it may be that the *programmers* can see the technical applications (although I've seen some that don't!), and that the powers that be (marketing? management?) are too dialed in on what the bottom line says to really care -- after all, the big money's in business, right? It's really a sorry state of affairs, and like you, I wish it would change. *Plug On* I'm working on a purely technically-oriented program right now; it's a plotting program that is really best geared for graphing already-existing data, such as something you might have generated with a mainframe or gathered with a data-acquisition setup -- it provides no means of editing or creating data. Who needs it? In a scientific environment (research, for example) engineers don't spend all their time keying in data points -- they're almost always generated by some other means, and the sole need is for a quick graph of that data... *Plug Off* Maybe we (the technical users) can put pressure on the software companies, but I think $sometime$ the only language the$se people under$tand i$ money. --Rich R-Squared Development Systems 134 Horseshoe Drive Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 (804) 229-2152 [After 6pm eastern time only] Arpanet: rs4u@andrew.cmu.edu Uucp: {your fave gateway}!seismo!andrew.cmu.edu!rs4u Disclaimer? I don't even KNOW 'er! "Do you wanna be a cop or a lost cause?" -- Sean Connery, in "The Untouchables"