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| My first
experience with computer graphics was ASCII art on teletype terminals
and lineprinters; with typesetting, using Letraset transfer lettering
for heads, and setting type on a mix of dot matrix and daisy wheel
impact printers to achieve a selection of fonts. ..... Currently, I use Altsys Virtuoso for NeXTStep and its antecedent, Macromedia's Freehand for Macintosh (and Windows) for illustration and design-intensive page layout, and TeX for long documents. Quark XPress and Adobe PageMaker don't offer many typographic amenities which I feel are essential (even as XTensions). Adobe's new InDesign does offer some niceties, but has very steep hardware requirements, and a UI based on Adobe Illustrator which I mislike. Freehand affords an efficient drawing / production interface, professional quality PostScript and complete control over all elements on the page---Virtuoso provides all that in the rich (yet austere) NeXTstep environment, and also leverages the synergy of the NeXT UI w/ Services, and Display PostScript, so that custom fills and strokes display on-screen, and placed .eps files do not require (or limit one to) bitmap previews. |
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Altsys Virtuoso, née Macromedia FreeHand | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Classic
PostScript illustration program which gained page layout capabilities
as Altsys Virtuoso. A truly native program in NeXTstep, Altsys Virtuoso
was the result of porting the core of Aldus FreeHand 3 to NeXTstep and
then adding improvements. Even now on Windows or Macintosh, one sees
hints of this in its Inspector palette and some other UI aspects.
Unfortunately, Macromedia has not chosen to revive or recreate the
Altsys Virtuoso codebase so that FreeHand could take full advantage of
Apple's Mac OS X by way of its Cocoa programming environment (it is
instead written as a Carbon app). It is thus unable to take full
advantage of OS X System Services (incl. spell checking), Apple
Advanced Typography so as to have the nice NeXT-style Type (Font)
palette, or Unicode, &c. .....Perhaps the best thing which can be said of FreeHand is that it is such a nice tool to draw with or do production in, that it inspired the wonderful site The FreeHand Source. |
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| FutureWave SmartSketch | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| An
innovative drawing program created for Go Corporation's PenPoint
environment, it was ported to Windows and Macintosh after that
platform's demise. Although a brilliant interface perfectly adapated to
the use of a graphics tablet, it is best-known as the basis for
FutureWave's Splash Animation program which was the basis for
Macromedia's Flash. Apparently, the source code was sold off to
Brøderbund which now uses it in its consumer-oriented DTP
programs. |
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| Adobe Illustrator | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| An
industry-standard tool, the UI leaves a bit to be desired in terms of
efficient drawing or production, a fact witnessed by the many plug-ins
sold for it (many of which afford capabilities native to FreeHand by
default). |
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| Cenon
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| Originally
a CAD/CAM program for driving milling and engraving machines in
NeXTstep, the core program, suitable for illustration and
design-intensive page layout has been released under an opensource
license for OPENSTEP 4.2, Mac OS X and GNUstep. |
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| Aldus PhotoStyler | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In 1994,
this program was awarded five stars by Publish Magazine and described
as the ``best photo editing program you can buy''; then Adobe bought
out Aldus. |
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| Adobe PhotoShop | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The
industry standard. |
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| TEX | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primarily,
I use NeXT's TeX implementation with IPC (inter-process communication)
which allows TeXview.app to display a page as soon as it's processed
and Dmitri Linde's Instant TeX system of programs, which provides one
with a responsive system, even on a 25MHz 68040. TeXview.app also
provides a ``tex eq -> eps'' Service which lets one make use of TeX
to typeset equations or text in programs which are properly programmed
to support Services---in particular Altsys Virtuoso (it's an elegant,
immediate way to label a plot or graph or other illustration). A
contemporary alternative is the Marked Objects plug-in for Adobe
Illustrator with the WarmReader package for pdfTeX. ..... I also use MikTeX on my Fujitsu pen slate running Windows 95 (see Hardware), with Dirk Stuve's WinTeXShell program which supports handwriting recognition quite nicely. |
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| LYX | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A ``What
You See Is What You Mean'' Document Processor, which uses LaTeX for
formatting output, I feel that this is the most innovative opensource
application thus far. The new QT versions extend its reach
significantly, allowing it to seem to be a near-native Windows (it even
supports handwriting recognition) or Macintosh program. |
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| Adobe TouchType.app | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| An amazing
application for tweaking or playing with display type. ..... Sadly, the closest analogue is the Quark XPress XTension FingerType. |
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Nvu
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| ``The
complete Web Authoring System for Desktop Linux.'' ..... This is also available for Windows. |
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last updated 19 August 2004 |
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