On Jun 7, 1:23 pm, Riccardo Mottola <[email protected]> wrote: > On 06/07/13 16:28, William F. Adams wrote:> - The interface is Byzantine > and awful compared to FreeHand. > > - It's limited to what SVG allows, as opposed to empowered by having > > Display PostScript for imaging as Altsys Virtuoso did > > - It's not written in Cocoa, so no Services support in Mac OS X. > > - lack of inspector palettes makes the interface less efficient > > Never tried it myself, but the screenshots look awful, almost gimp-like. > HOwever teh drawings are good. People who know to draw, draw with > everything... > > > > > &c. while I can muddle through using pretty much any vector tool (like > > the guy in Japan who draws images using the drawing tools in Excel), > > no other tools is as optimal or elegant or efficient or productive or > > profitable as FreeHand or Altsys Virtuoso for me. > > Drwaing in excel? I must see that....
Here: http://www.psfk.com/2013/05/japanese-prints-excel.html > I Liked old versions of Freehnad, I still have the original Aldus > floppies! I met one of the Aldus guys personally, he worked at HP back > then. I was more interested in pageMaker actually and used FreeHand for > drawings. > I remember MacDraw and SuperDraw II ! > > The last good thing was FreeHand from Macromedia, 6 or 7 I think. I used > it on Mac 8 on 68k :) I've always thought FreeHand v8 was the pinnacle (and I was a beta- test for FH/MX) > > But I've been reading through the code for xasy (Python front-end for > > Asymptote) and have downloaded the code for METAGRAF and Cenon in the > > past --- I made suggestions re: the Cenon interface previously, but > > never got a dialog started. > > Well, I think Cenon is good, but is some sort of CAD oriented. > On Mac I like an older version of Stone Design. I don't know how the new > ones are, but the one that did run on PPC and 10.3 mac, is very > open-step-ish, I love it. Not so powerful, but it replaced FreeHand for > most DTP-like work I do, not as much as free drawing > > I spoke with Gregory about a port, but is unlikable. Unfortunate. > You could scour for older OpenStep (or even NeXT) software and try to > get the sources, if you can. In case we then may port it. Or even old > mac stuff, abandoned. But it must not be Carbon, but real AppKit. It's really a shame that we can't get the source to Altsys Virtuoso --- I tried to convince them to go back to the code for it to future- proof FreeHand during the MX beta, but no joy. > > I really do appreciate your work on GraphOS and am currently working > > on a paper for TUGboat which will hopefully be of interest to you as > > regards features and interface. > > Honestly, I don't think Graphos will be ever a FreeHand replacement. It > essentially gathers the capability of our BezierPath engine (it doesn't > use DPS for mac compatibility, but the transition lost really minimal > functionality that is certain fonts magic it could do). I _really_ miss Display PostScript. > However, i already know of several bugs (on the bug-tracker assigned to > the only active developer, me) I want to fix and of some features I want > to implement. The point is that up to now, Almost all features were > there, but more or less broken, it was years of code-reorganization more > than invention. Although some stuff had to be done ground up, likle > circles and squars.. and object ordering, which appeared to be there, > but was totally broken :) > > To make copy-paste work +really+ a lot of stuff had to be improved. > > Although it still looks the same.. and still has missing tools! So > implementing those will be harder :( Especially the bezier path editor > needs some care, I miss some functionality about handles from the times > of Freehand or Illustrator, i don't remember. Working on a paper which covers vector drawing features --- hopefully that will help. > So, don't hold your breath, but test for new releases or follow my blog > when it announces new stuff :) Will do. William _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
