Stuart Cooke tries his hand at a new graphics package

Quite what the long-dead masters would make of computer graphics I don't know. Despite what their reaction would be, we have to accept that computer-generated art is becoming quite a part of our daily lives.

Panorama (H), from Talent Computer Systems, is one of a series of packages the company produces to help you design graphic pictures on your Commodore 64. Panorama (H) allows you to draw full screen colour pictures, and then save them onto tape or disk for use in your own programs.

First impressions lead you to believe that a lot of thought has gone into the design of this program. However, after a few minutes work you find that user friendliness is definitely lacking.

A help screen is an integral part of the software. A press of the spacebar will reveal all the available commands.

Once you are on the drawing screen, you immediately see the cursor, which is made up of the characters T, C and S and is definitely too big and awkward to use. Fortunately, a glance at the help screen shows that alternative cursors are available, and by pressing 'AC' you have the choice of invisible or cross hair, either of which are more usable than the TCS logo.

The cursor keys or the joystick are used to move the pen around the screen. All movement is accompanied by what can only be described as an extremely annoying screeching noise - what's more you can't turn it off. The only way to get rid of it is to turn the volume down on your TV, but then you can't hear the rasping sound that appears when you try to do something the software doesn't like.

You can think of your cursor as a kind of pen. Pressing the '.' key or the fire button will leave a dot of the current pen colour - either the foreground or background colour. As well as printing dots it is possible to turn the pen on permanently, leaving a line wherever you move.

There are numerous commands to make the life of the artist easier. Most commands are two letters which are given on the help screen. Every command has a border colour associated with it. For example, when you are using the circle command, the border turns orange. It's a nice idea which doesn't quite work. There are 13 different border colours and it is difficult to remember which colour belongs to which command.

Panorama (H) has a few commands you don't find on other programs, but then again some of the more important ones are missing.

One command I found extremely useful was DRAG. By defining the two corners of a block, you can move the picture inside the block around within that same boundary. This means if your herd of flying bananas happens to be a little too high in your bright green sky, it's extremely easy to move them to the correct position.

Commands for drawing pre-defined shapes are certainly lacking. Most drawing packages allow you to draw circles, boxes, triangles and polygons. Panorama (H) has the CIRCLE command, but if you want any of the other shapes you must draw them for yourself. This isn't difficult, but remember that every movement of the cursor is accompanied by that atrocious noise.

Using colour within a drawing proved to be much more difficult than with some other drawing packages on the 64. The 64 only allows two colours within every 8x8 square. This made it very difficult to get a picture just right without a lot of careful planning. In fact, it is easier to sketch out your picture on graph paper first.

As well as leaving lines of 'ink', you can also get the cursor to leave a trail of colour or texture. A texture is an 8x8 square with certain dots set. The program allows you to define a number of these textures yourself.

Problems with colours and textures really become apparent when you try to fill in an area with colour or texture.

The first thing you have to do is move your cursor within the shape that you wish to fill. Next you need to type FA, which will fill the area, then rease it. All this does is set up the area in which the next fill is going to occur. This filling in and erasing is very slow; in fact, it gets very boring if you are defining a large area.

Now you can fill the area. If you try to fill it with colour, the background colour of all the character squares in the defined area will change. This means you get square edges. If you need to fill in an area and have curved edges, you first need to fill in the area with a tecture and then with colour.

This is much easier to do than to explain. However, it is definitely not the best way to do it. Most other fill routines on the Commodore 64 expect the area you want filled to be surrounded by the ink colour you want to fill it with. When the fill takes place, it simply plots lines of ink until it meets a boundary of ink of the same colour. This is definitely easier to use, and much faster.

Too much thought has gone into the design of this program, and what should have been a very simple and useful drawing tool has been made a little too difficult to use.

Having a cursor which makes a noise every time you move it seems a very good idea. In practice, however, it becomes rather tedious. Panorama (H) does have a few good points, but personally I've used friendlier programs and won't be using Panorama (H) for my next drawing.

Features 5/5
Documentation 3/5
Performance 3/5
Reliability 4/5
Usability 3/5
Overall Value 2/5