A BYTE SHORT TAKE: DrawPerfect
WordPerfect's Graphics Companion
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
WordPerfect Corporation designed DrawPerfect as the graphical
"better half" of WordPerfect 5.0, but an early look at a
prerelease version (1.0) indicates that DrawPerfect could also
stand on its own as a presentation graphics program.
 
The connection with WordPerfect is built into DrawPerfect.
Using a software component called the Shell, you can switch
back and forth between the word processor and the drawing
program with one keystroke. If you've got enough memory in your
system, you can keep both programs running, making it very easy
to hop from a document to the drawing board, work on an image
or chart or figure, then hop back to the text and quickly place
the image on the page. If you do any kind of work involving
text and graphics, you know this sure beats what can seem like
an endless shutting down and firing up of applications. You can
also keep DrawPerfect running while you switch to another DOS
application. DrawPerfect itself takes up 384K bytes of memory,
which is remarkably spare considering the capabilities of the
program.
 
DrawPerfect produces vector, not bitmapped, graphics, so you're
working with objects instead of pixels, creating images by
defining beginning, ending, and joining points. The program's
toolkit, represented by large icons on the left side of the
screen or embedded in menus along the top, includes the type of
things you'd find in, say, Adobe Illustrator or Aldus Freehand:
functions for quickly generating lines, squares, circles,
curves, ellipses, arcs, and polygons. After you've drawn an
object, it's easy to manipulate it in certain ways, such as
changing its shape or size or orientation (although in some
instances you have to first select the Modify command, which I
found easy to forget). The one thing you can't do is go in and
dink around with just a bit of an object, because this type of
program treats each object as a solid entity; if you're
crossing over from a paint package, you might keep looking to
grab the eraser.
 
Besides the shape-making and object-editing tools, DrawPerfect
has text-rendering functions. The program comes with 25 "base"
fonts, from the commonplace, like Helvetica and Courier, to
display typefaces, such as Old English and others called
Brushscript and Hobo. The program will scale these fonts from
very small to very large; I set text in sizes ranging from 6
points up to 130 points and thought the printed output looked
fine and crisp.
 
As part of its role as a presentation graphics package,
DrawPerfect has capabilities for making bar and pie charts.
There are more sophisticated charting programs on the market,
but a WordPerfect user who's producing reports that include
charts won't find a more accessible means of incorporating this
kind of visual data. You can also string drawings together and
have the program display them in sequence like a slide show.
 
DrawPerfect images aren't limited to being used only in
WordPerfect documents. Although .WPG is their native format,
they can be pulled in by any program that works with CGM
(Computer Graphics Metafile) and HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics
Language) file. You can send the output to just about any dot
matrix or laser printer (the list of supported printers runs on
for about half-a-dozen screens), film recorder, plotter, or a
slide bureau.
 
You can operate this program without a mouse, using cursor
keys, but I'd hate to see the drawings made by a person who'd
want to do that. Nice to have that choice, though.
 
This program is about as easy to use as it could be. I had it
up and running (on a BitWise 386) in a few minutes, without a
hitch. The installation program is painless (it tries to
identify on its own what kind of graphics drivers to install,
for example). If something doesn't make sense, the help menu or
the documentation will clarify it. The prerelease manual I had
even took time to explain what boxes and circles are.
 
Although the images on the screen looked a bit rough and
ragged, the printed output was slick and sharp, with that
Illustrator/Freehand look. The first time I printed a
DrawPerfect drawing brought another surprise. The BitWise
wasn't hooked to its own printer, so I dared to send the file
across the office LAN to an Apple LaserWriter. I clicked on the
print command; the program flashed a "please wait" message; and
then the drawing immediately popped back on the screen. I had
expected some kind of response, like "Can't find printer." But
with no indication of any kind, I figured the drawing was
floating out there in the LAN zone somewhere. Later, upstairs
where the destination LaserWriter lives, I found the drawing
sitting there.
 
I must confess I personally didn't expect to be impressed by
this program. A drawing package from a word processor company?
That's like the Boston Pops trying to play the blues. But it's
not, really. WordPerfect Corp. made its name in the world of
words. Now it's got a chance to do the same in the world of
images. Together, WordPerfect and DrawPerfect make an almost
perfect couple.
 
The Facts:
DrawPerfect, $495.
 
Requirements:
IBM PC AT or compatible with two 720K floppy drives or a hard
disk, graphics display; program takes up 384K; mouse
recommended but not required; works with WordPerfect 5.0 or
later
 
WordPerfect Corp.
1555 N. Technology Way
Orem, UT 84057
(801) 222-4455
 
                              --- D.Barker
 
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