+ drawing of text, rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, lines and arrows
+ moving, copying and resizing objects
+ editing of text
+ different fonts, styles and font sizes (9,10,12,14,18,24,36 and 48)
+ left, centered and right justification of text
+ framing text
+ moving objects pixel by pixel with the cursor keys
+ the same pen and fill patterns as in MacPaint
+ line widths from 1 to 12
+ hair lines (only when printed on a LaserWriter)
+ drawing in a grid (1 to 32 pixels)
+ copying pictures between Draw and the Clipboard
Draw does not support
– polygons, splines, free-hand drawings, arcs and wedges
– full justification of text
– subscript, superscript, condensed and extended text
– more than one font, style or font size in the same text
– flipping or rotating objects
– multiple duplication of objects
– grouping objects
– zooming
– printing
– saving pictures as files
– object oriented editing of MacDraw or MacDraft etc. pictures
Draw is Clipboard-oriented. This means that Draw does not save pictures in files for later use. All you can do is copy a picture into the Clipboard and paste in into a word processor document or into a scrapbook. However, if you copy such a picture into the clipboard and paste it into Draw again, it can be modified.
WARNING: When you close Draw, the current picture will not be saved. You will have to copy it to a scrapbook or elsewhere before leaving.
How to use Draw
Once you are familiar with a Mac-like drawing program, you will find it easy to create Draw pictures. In the following, you will find some useful hints that should enable you to make efficient use of Draw's capabilities.
• Squares, Circles & Co.: As in most other Mac-like drawing programs, the shift key may be used to constrain the movements of the mouse. This is in particular useful for drawing squares, circles, horizontal and vertical lines. Simply press the shift key while drawing rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals and lines and watch what happens.
When the shift key is down during a move or resize operation, the selected objects will only move horizontally or vertically.
• Copying Objects: The most simple way to copy selected objects is to press the option key and moving the objects. This will cause an identical copy of all selected objects to be moved, while the original objects remain in their place. Note that this operation is slightly different from Copy followed by Paste in that the new objects will not be put on top of all others, but each copied object will appear immetiately above its ancestor. To move the copied objects on top, you can use the Bring to Front menu command.
• Patterns and Lines: The two topmost squares in the icon palette on the left side of the Draw window work like "pull-aside menus". Clicking into one of these squares displays a variety of patterns
To fill an object with one of these patterns, simply select it and choose one of the patterns from the pattern list. The word "none" on the left is meant for "no filling", i.e. the selected objects become transparent. If no objects are selected, when a pattern is chosen, the pattern becomes the default pattern which is to be used for all subsequently created objects.
Applying a fill pattern to a textual object specifies the background of the text.
Clicking into the second square offers the same patterns. This menu may be used to change the pen pattern. In this case, "none" means that no frame is to be drawn for rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals and text.
Applying a pen pattern to a textual object causes a frame to be drawn around the text.
The second pattern menu also offers a variety of line widths.
To change the width of a line, simply select the desired width from the palette (widths range from 1 to 12). The first item (a dotted line, entitled "hair line") may be used to produce very thin lines on a LaserWriter. These hair lines are exactly one laser pixel wide; they are especially recommended for drawing arrows.
• Font Sizes: To keep the Draw menu as small as possible, the possible font sizes are not listed in the menu. Two menu commands are available for changing the font size of text: smaller size and bigger size. The corresponding keyboard equivalents are "<" and ">". If your keyboard requires the shift key to be pressed for ">", the keys "," (comma) for smaller size and "." (period) for bigger size may be used. Each invocation of smaller size or bigger size changes the font sizes of all selected textual objects to the previous or following size in the series 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, 24, 36, 48.
• Pseudo Groups: Although Draw does not support grouping and ungrouping of objects, there is a trick to collect a set of objects into a single object:
– Select the desired objects.
– Type Shift–Command–"C". This causes the selected objects to be copied into the Clipboard without additional information (i.e. just like a picture created by MacDraw).
– Perform a Paste command. This inserts the Clipboard's content into your Draw picture as one object.
WARNING: Objects "grouped" this way cannot be "ungrouped" again.
How To Use Draw Legally:
Draw is distributed on a shareware basis. You are encouraged to test it thoroughly before deciding whether Draw is worth to be used or not. If you decide to keep it, send a US$ 30.– cheque (or the equivalent in any currency you like) to
Günther Blaschek
Petzoldstr. 31
A – 4020 Linz
Austria (Europe)
This is also the address where you should write to, if you encounter any problems.
Once you are a registered user of Draw, you will receive informations about new versions, as soon as they become available.
If you are not willing to pay or if there is any other reason for not using Draw (although I cannot imagine any reason), you should remove Draw from all of your disks. However, you should give Draw to as many Macintosh users as possible, before you finally get rid of it.
Draw Version 1.2 (07/09/87)
Version 1.2 of Draw is about 2 kByte bigger than version 1.1. Some inconveniences have been removed and some new features have been added.
Changes
• The cursor doesn't change to a watch any more during pattern selection.
• Version 1.2 allows to create centered or right justified text.
• A problem with reshaping objects that have been drawn with a different grid than the actual one has been fixed.
• Updating a picture on the screen is now faster, if only part of the picture has to be redrawn.
New Features
• The "Grid …" menu command now offers a check box "display grid". This will cause a dotted grid to be displayed on the screen. The grid display can be switched on and off by simply pressing the command key and the space bar simultaneously.
• Pressing the command key may be used to switch the grid off temporarily.
• The "Text Alignment …" menu command has been replaced by the more general command "Align Objects …", which brings up a dialog box that allows you to align several objects. There is a check box "text adjustment only" that disables vertical alignment and works just like "Text Alignment …" did in version 1.1, i.e. it leaves all objects in their place, but merely changes the adjustment of all selected texts. If nothing is selected, "text adjustment only" is automatically checked and disabled. In this case, the left column (which is used for horizontal alignment) shows the current settings that will be used for all subsequently created texts.
Draw Version 1.3 (07/21/87)
Version 1.3 of Draw is about 400 Byte bigger than version 1.2. The only difference between version 1.2 and version 1.3 is that pictures containing hair lines can be pasted without problems into Draw. This bug in version 1.2 occured only in some special cases (i.e. when the first object to be drawn had hair lines), but caused severe memory management problems that crashed the system hopelessly (sometimes with interesting sound effects).
When using version 1.3, you will notice a new icon labeled with a diskette. Clicking into this icon has no effect except bringing up a dialog box with a polite message. The disk icon was just inserted in preparation for version 2.0, which shall support saving and loading Draw pictures to and from disk files.
Draw Version 2.0 (08/16/87)
Version 2.0 of Draw is again more than 1 kByte bigger than version 1.3. The new features of this version are:
• The disk icon mentioned in the section on version 1.3 has now a nice effect. Clicking on it brings up a dialog box.
The left two buttons allow to save the entire picture or part of it to a disk file. After pushing one of these buttons, a standard dialog box will come up where you can specify the desired disk and the file name.
The button labeled "Load picture" also invokes a standard dialog box, where you can sepcify the desired file to be read. Only files written by Draw and PICT files can be read. They are simpy read in and their contents are added to your picture.
In version 1, the only way to save pictures was via the Clipboard into a Scrapbook. It is recommended to use the new method – saving them as separate files – because this representation of a Draw picture requires less space than the equivalent Clipboard representation. You can use Draw files to create your own templates for frequently used pictures. The Draw folder contains two examples: a disk template and a document template.
• In version 1, the available drawing area was 1000 x 1000 pixels. However, this was just a limit for scrolling, but not for the real size of the picture. It was very easy to move an object out of the visible area, but rather tricky to recover it.
Version 2.0 now provides a drawing area of (nearly) infinite size. This means that there is no practical limit for the size of your picture; the word "nearly" indicates that there is a limit, but you will have to try very hard to reach it.
Due to the very large drawing area, you cannot scroll over the entire area any more, but just over your picture. When working with version 2.0 of Draw, you will realize that the scroll bars change whenever the size of your picture changes. In particular, when you start Draw or when your picture fits into the Draw window, the scroll bars are disabled. As soon as you draw or move an object beyond the border of the Draw window, the scroll bars will indicate that only part of your picture is visible.
Note that this scrolling method is very convenient to find the borders of your picture. For example, scrolling to the very right and to the very top will show you the right upper corner.
• Version 2.0 now supports resizing of partially or evern totally obscured objects, as shown in the following figure. When – say – a rectangle is selected, four square handles are shown in each corner that can be moved in order to change the size of the rectangle. A selected object's handles are always visible, even when the corners are obscured by other objects. A mouse click on such a handle caused the obscuring object to be selected in version 1. In version 2.0, clicking exactly on the handle will grab it and move the corner around as long as the mouse button is held down.
Draw Version 2.3 (09/20/87)
Version 2.3 of Draw has no spectacular features except that a little bit of more comfort has been added and some nasty bugs have been fixed.
If you wonder why version 2.3 immediately follows version 2.0, here is the explanation: Version 2.1 was an internal test version that should have some bugs fixed. However, testing showed that one bug still insisted to bomb in some cases. This is why this version was not released, but rather immediately replaced by version 2.2.
Since version 2.2, Draw offers a help facility and cursor key substitutes for older keyboards:
• Clicking on the "?" icon brings up an info dialog box with an additional help button. Pressing the help button displays a help window that shows the effects of the modifier keys and some useful shortcuts.
• If you use a Mac with an older keyboard that has no cursor keys, you may now move objects pixel by pixel with the key in combination with the four letters W (west), E (elevator), R (right) and D (down):
Version 2.2 still had a severe bug that caused the system to crash, but could not be reconstructed at will. In some cases, deletion of a whole text by selecting it with the text cursor and hitting the backspace key caused the text cursor to remain on the screen and neither keyboard input nor mouse clicks had an effect; after a short delay (about 2 seconds) the bomb appeared. This bug is now fixed in version 2.3. Also, text input within a large picture (i.e. with many objects) works faster now.
By the way: Version 2.3 implements a new concept for text editing that can speed up creation of pictures with many textual objects:
• Hitting the enter key during text input now not only terminates editing the current text, but also switches the current mode back to the cursor icon. As in earlyer versions, the text remains selected. This allows you to create a text at a temporary location, press the enter key and move the text to its final location without having to select the cursor icon from the icon palette.
If you want to do more text editing (e.g. change more than just one text or create a couple of text objects successively), do not press the enter key when you are done with a single text, but rather click at a different location with the text cursor.
• On the other hand, you can now select a single text object with the arrow cursor and completely overwrite the text by typing the new text in from the keyboard. This can be particularly convenient, if you want to create a text object with the same attributes as another object you have already on the screen. Simply copy the object (move it with the option key held down) to the desired location and type in the new text. This is considerably faster than creating a new text with the current standard attributes and assigning the desired attributes (font, style, size, alignment, frame and fill pattern) afterwards.
Draw Version 2.5 (09/29/87)
Version 2.5 is a real revolution in the history of Draw. Version 2.4 (again just an internal one) required about 1 kByte less than version 2.3. Version 2.5 now uses this available memory to perform memory checks! Draw therefore became much more reliable than ever (in fact, it became reliable for the first time…). In the case of insufficient memory, Draw now displays an alert that informs you about the lack of memory and suggests that you close some open documents before proceeding. The operation, that would have caused the violation of the memory limits, is aborted. In fact, is is not executed at all in most cases. In some cases (e.g. when a large picture is pasted into Draw), part of the operation may already have been executed. However, this part can be undone, if desired.
Besides this fancy feature, Draw now offers two more conveniences:
• Command–S ("save") can now be used to save the entire picture onto the file, where the latest "save picture" went to (or "load picture" came from). In this way, the nasty dialog sequence (when the picture is to be saved to the same file again) can be circumvented.
• Furthermore, Draw now offers the default file name "Temp•Pict" (on the default volume), if no read or write operations have yet been performed.
