Drawing Comes Easier

At last in Paean Systems' Micro Artist I have come across a joystick driven drawing package that is simple to use and very versatile.

This program makes good use of Mode 2 and enables one to swiftly draw and save/load lots of items using the rubber banded, dotted/solid lines and the usual filled/unfilled figures - triangle/square/circle.

But this time the circle is a special - the routine supplied is for ellipses!

The cursor expands into a rectangle whose horizontal/vertical sides are related to movements of the joystick. The ellipse is drawn tangentially inside this rectangle. To draw a circle one manipulates the rectangle into a square.

However it is in the other routines that the fun occurs. On chaining the program one is presented with a nicely framed screen whose left and right sides are menus with colours, symbols or initialsin boxes indicating the goodies on offer.

You merely place the cursor into the relevant box, pressing Fire to select a colour. After that it is off to the screen, pressing Fire when the right location is reached.

A well written user guide explains these items but they are so easily learned - even by me - that you only need it a couple of times.

There are a given number of pre-defined characters you can select and place around the screen or you can easily define your own, replacing those pre-defined ones not needed.

Text can be quickly and simply inserted and the size and proportions of the letters defined by the changeable rectangle cursor.

Very valuable are the rotate and reflect routines. The com mand is selected, an area is defined by use of the rectangular cursor and the point about which rotation or reflection takes place is defined.

An appropriate angle is typed in if needed and this area is reasonably faithfully duplicated as required in the same or different colours. The drawback here is the jaggy effectof sloping lines.

The only other drawback is that it comes on tape and uses sufficient memory to make it difficult to use with disc unless I make my Solidisk Sideways RAM supplement the DFS with its STLE00 program.

This means that for most users tape is the only input medium. This is always tedious to reload when a crash occurs - mind you, it is pretty impossible design any program that a five-thumbs like me will not somehow provoke into a fit of the sulks.

Terry Hallard