eboltz@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Eric Scott Boltz) (02/12/91)
Hey All,
So, anyone used TopDraw? With the edu. pricing on Diagram! there's absolutely
no doubt that I will buy a copy (the demo is slick), but I haven't seen
any postings regarding TopDraw. It's definitely more expensive and I don't
know if there is an edu. discount. If someone has used it, I'm sure I'm
not the only one who's curious.
With regard to the UNIX / MICROSOFT flame war I can only say...
Microsoft?
a ha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahaha....yeah right!
ouch my stomach hurts from laughing so hard.
Eric S. Boltz
Materials Science and Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
(eboltz@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu)mikec@epsl.umd.edu (Michael D. Callaghan) (02/12/91)
In article <7540@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> eboltz@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Eric Scott Boltz) writes: >Hey All, > >So, anyone used TopDraw? With the edu. pricing on Diagram! there's absolutely >no doubt that I will buy a copy (the demo is slick), but I haven't seen >any postings regarding TopDraw. It's definitely more expensive and I don't >know if there is an edu. discount. If someone has used it, I'm sure I'm >not the only one who's curious. > I have been hoping to have a chance to sit down and type up an intelligent overview of TopDraw. But since I haven't yet, I'll just type a few lines of whatever I think. I've been using TopDraw for about a month now. Before I sold my Mac II, I used Aldus Freehand to do all my illustrations. First, I'll tell you what I don't like about TopDraw when compared to Freehand. Keep in mind that a lack of a feature is not a shortcoming, just a lack of a feature. TopDraw lacks the Auto-trace tool that Freehand has. Now, Freehands auto-trace is not the greatest thing in the world, but it DOES exist. TopDraw cannot open Illustrator files, as can Freehand, and edit them. I find this very annoying, since I have a pretty large eps collection in Illustrator format. Now I'll mention some general problems I have with TopDraw. It doesn't recognize any of my new fonts! Apparently it has the same problem that FrameMaker 2.0 has! The fonts that were installed prior to my upgrade to NS2.0 work fine. All other fonts don't even show up in the font panel. I got the FrameMaker Fix that someone posted here a few days ago, but haven't tried it yet. I hope it works. Every now and then, seemingly at random, I will get the infamous Display PostScript Error, and TopDraw will die completely. To their credit, though, Media Logic has placed a catch for this error: You get a chance to save your work before TopDraw dies. Now on to some good stuff. I really like the way TopDraw handles text. It actually does a better job in some respects than does Frame! Frame does not allow for irregularly shaped columns. With TopDraw, you can paste text inside any closed path, and it works fine! I am also very pleased with TopDraw's handling of Rotation, Scaling, and Skewing of Complex Art. I scanned in a photo last week, and it was crooked. I imported the bitmap into TopDraw, and rotated -2.5 degrees. It printed beautifully. I think that credit goes equally to TopDraw and PostScript, for being able to do such things with bitmaps. I can't think of anything else that bothers me, or jumps out at me about TopDraw. I haven't yet played with Diagram. Perhaps I'll get it tonight. If anyone has any specific questions about TopDraw, just ask. I don't work for them. I work for myself. MikeC -- _________________________________________________________ Michael D. Callaghan, MDC Designs, University of Maryland mikec@wam.umd.edu
shawn@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Shawn Broderick) (02/14/91)
I've used TopDraw a couple of times for some specific projects. I've been doing all sorts of graphic work on Macs for something like four years, and I thought that TopDraw beat the pants off any piece of software I've used on the Mac for general, object-oriented, art creation. TopDraw has problems, but in terms of features and options I think they've done a good job. The program crashes _A LOT_ (if I could bold and underline I'd have done both a couple of times there). It crashes quite creatively sometimes too (I've seen TD do more neat things with a crash than I've seen any other piece of software do - a dubious distinction). HOWEVER, I think it's a really great app. IMHO, It's one of those apps that is a great idea, was done in a fine way, but really screams for a version 1.1 to get some feature fixes, format compatibilities, and stability fixes. Check it out - it's really worth taking a look at. Shawn Broderick shawn@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu merk!bb!shawn