wdh@holos0.uucp (Weaver Hickerson) (05/30/91)
Has anyone had any experience with DrawPerfect and a Deskjet? I've heard rave things about DrawPerfect from people with laser printers. I need to know what it will do with a Deskjet500 and monochrome VGA. The software dealer that I buy from here (CompUSA) doesn't sell deskjets and doesn't know. My main area of need is in creating graphics for manuals, promo material, etc rather than "electronic slide show". After several disappointing software purchases, I hesitate to drop the bucks on DrawPerfect without knowing what it will do. I do know that PC Paintbrush is destined to be wiped from my hard disk and into the garbage as soon as I can decide on an alternative. Even my rapidograph pens are looking attractive... Thanks for any advice on what sounds like a great package. Anyone recommend Harvard or Corel over DrawPerfect? Why? Weaver -- -Weaver Hickerson Voice (404) 496-1358 : ..!edu!gatech!holos0!wdh
apg@csd2.dsto.oz.au (Andrew Gabb ( x5505 CSI/CSD 79 Labs )) (06/06/91)
COMPARISON OF DRAWING PACKAGES In article <1991May30.155136.777@holos0.uucp> wdh@holos0.uucp (Weaver Hickerson) writes: >Anyone recommend Harvard or Corel over DrawPerfect? Why? The following is a brief evaluation of Harvard Graphics (HG), Corel Draw (CD) and DrawPerfect (DP). It is based on our requirements, which are mainly for semi-technical drawings and diagrams to be used in WordPerfect (WP) documents; common uses include system or subsystem schematics similar to (but more complicated than) organisation charts, network charts, software structures etc. Include IMHOs according to taste. We are now mainly using DP which has its problems but meets our needs best. Each of the tools has its uses, depending on what you want - none is ideal. Although I am not a Mac user, MacDraw seems to beat any of them for our purposes. COREL DRAW 2.0 ruled itself out mainly because of the need for Windows (many of our users are 286/Herc based, and CD would be a real pig in that environment) but it would have had trouble anyway. It has some really quirky defeatures which were certainly not intuitive to me, and the manual was essential. I couldn't find any on-line help either, which was a big minus. I couldn't find a way to abort out of half-finished operations (such as drawing a line), either. It is also less of a WYSIWYG than the other tools - many features cannot be seen on the drawing screen. You CAN have a side by side preview, but this really slows it down with even a modicum of text (I was using a 16MHz SX with VGA and 2M XMS), and you lose half your drawing area! I got the impression that with a few day's use it could be used quite efficiently, though. I guess that its market could include power-user graphics artists - its text handling (fonts, kerning, shaping) is remarkable. HARVARD GRAPHICS 2.3 is designed for the business graphics market and shows it. It is great for quick pie charts and such, but falls down on any sort of semi-precision drawing. It is now enhanced by a separate (but included in the package) drawing package, Draw Partner, which compensates for the original's problems, but only so far. Any further reference to HG here is mainly based on Draw Partner. One real problem I had with HG is that it is not a power-user tool. It appears to be aimed at novices (sorry, "business users"), which makes it easy to use but quite tiresome if you are trying to do something complicated or make several modifications. DRAWPERFECT 1.1 (release 1/91) seems to be aimed at both the business graphics market and semi-technical drawing. I can't comment too much on its piecharts and bargraphs - I tried a few and they worked OK but that is not what I was testing for. It has a "paintbrush" type interface and the usual WordPerfect-like hidden features. Its greatest initial strength for me was the commonality with WP - many of the magic keystrokes are common, and I it means I didn't spend all that time learning WP's quirks for nothing. It also has an almost seamless relationship with WP, particularly when working in "the shell" (I don't), where you can edit DP diagrams in WP using DP (did you get that?) with a single keystroke. Regardless of its WP-ness, we found that it met more of our requirements than the other two. Enough flattery - you will start to think I work for WP Corp. DP also has surprising deficiencies, making you think they didn't really case the market first. PostScript fonts Firstly, I couldn't use PostScript fonts in printing from DP, and the bitmap builtin fonts look lousy under about 10 points (and not so good at other times). There was a workaround to this, but ugly - export the drawing as EPS to WP, which means you can't preview it in the document (and can't preview it by printing from DP). HG is a bit short in the font department, but is improved on previous versions. CD has a great range of fonts and special provisions for the printing of PostScript fonts rather than its bitmapped fonts. Grid registration Then there is the problem with grid registration. I wanted to put little node circles on line intersections (this is easy in CD which provides various sized circles on the start or end of lines as a form of arrow line - see later). OK, so I made a little circle centred on a grid point, turned snap on, and tried to copy it. I couldn't even put it down where I lifted it from! I had a similar problem with text boxes - boxes with flowed (?) text inside. I made a "blank" box with an invisible text rectangle inside it, intending to copy this combination all over my grid so all the text positioning would look consistent. But the boxes wouldn't sit exactly on the grid points. The problem in both these cases is what DP calls "definition points" which it aligns with the grid when snap is on. For a circle the definition points are on a square around the circle, so I could put the corner of this square down on a grid point, but not the centre of the circle. In the case of the text box, the definition points for the text rectangle extended outside the box itself (even though the actual text was well inside the box) meaning that the group I had created could not be snapped to the grid in the way I wanted. What DP needs desperately is a mode in Move or Copy where the object (or combination object) is set down at the same RELATIVE position to the grid that it was taken from. BTW, CD has the same problem but has an "align to grid" function that can help, in some cases, in a longwinded way. HG ignores snap on move and copy - put it where you like - and does not have "text in a box" anyway. Arrow lines, Arcs and Boxes DP does have arrows - graphically drawn polygon arrows that look great on a "YOU ARE HERE" poster. It doesn't have arrow lines, but, and its standard arrows are no substitute. For those who are lost, arrow lines are ordinary lines with arrow heads showing direction of flow, implication or even inheritance (for OO buffs). CD and HG are good on arrow lines with CD offering oodles of options on arrow heads and tails: circles, double arrows etc. So in DP you make an arrow head and position it on the end of the line, using snap to make it spot-on, right? Nope, see the problem of grid registration, above. DP does have arcs, but they are not circular arcs, just circularish (a three point curve fit sometimes approximating part of a circle). You can't even make a semicircle easily (make a circle and overwrite with a white rectangle, perhaps - Yuk!). CD and HG both have nice arcs, thank you, filled and unfilled. DP does have boxes, with sharp and rounded corners (no control over corner radius, but). HG has a great selection of bevelled corners, frame boxes etc. CD is not so bad either. CONCLUSIONS HG is great for the casual user wanting to draw bar-charts etc. and annotate them. It is also reasonable for simple org. charts, flashy shadow boxes and so on. It has much less flexibility when trying to do something complex, like a detailed network diagram. It also has much less than the others in printer options (paper sizes, fonts, printers and so forth). CD and DP are better for the computer literate user and for most semi-technical drawing, but are not as good as MacDraw (dammit!). As I said, we use DP - it's better for our purposes but it has a way to go. Roll on, DP 2.0 (and yes, I have told Mr. WP about these issues). DISCLAIMER : "If you go to the police, I did not write this letter and I do not live at the above address." (Goon Show) More importantly, these are my personal views, and I would thank you for treating them as such. ==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+== Andrew Gabb apg@csd0.dsto.oz.au Ph +61 8 259 5505 DSTO/WSRL Fax +61 8 259 5619 Salisbury, South Australia.