chapman@fornax.UUCP (John Chapman) (10/26/90)
Hello - I am looking for pointers to information on the existence of commercial or public domain (if sufficiently robust) picture editors (e.g. AutoCad, XFig); the wish list includes the following capabilities: 1. Should run under X windows. 2. Should run on a variety of hardware platforms, e.g. work stations from DEC, HP, MIPS, IBM all under some flavor of unix. 3. Existence of a version which will run on a PC would be a plus. 4. Should use some relatively standard file storage format, e.g. DXF, CGM or there should be utilities to convert from proprietary format to some acknowledged standard. Along with the usual capabilites (selection of line/text colour, style etc., sub-pictures, a reasonable user interface, etc.) a further requirement is extensibility of some sort. The pictures to be produced are (relatively) simple line drawings with some text however it is necessary to be able to associate additional attributes with a picure (possibly just as a text file which would in some manner be know to be associated with the picture under creation), e.g. while editing the user should (in some manner) be able to indicate that s/he wishes to specify some attributes and enter a sub-menu that allows this; the ability to start independent unix processes in response to some user initiated event would probably satisfy this requirement. A decision needs to be made fairly soon as to the best available package for satisying these requirements so if anyone has any info about products/companies/packages I would appreciate a direct email reply; Thanks, as they say, in advance.... john chapman chapman@cs.sfu.ca