Subject: REVIEW: DesignWorks
From: [email-masked] (James Kummer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

[Designworks is an object-oriented drawing program published by New
Horizons Software that is similar to MacDraw on the Macintosh.  It runs
on all Amigas. - JLT3]

At long last, an affordable object-oriented drawing program for the Amiga! 
I use a Macintosh at work, and have been waiting for at least four years
for something comparable to 'MacDraw' to come available for the Amiga.  I
have long enjoyed the use of New Horizon's 'ProWrite' word processor, so
when I received an introductory offer in the mail for their new structured
drawing program, I immediately sent in my order.  

The package arrived two days ago.  My expectations were fulfilled!  The
program will display in high, medium and low resolution, plus SuperHiRes
and Productivity for KS 2.0.  I couldn't verify the KS 2.0 modes, but
HiRes is just my cup of tea.  A tool box and pallette are displayed upon
opening the program - these can be moved around, as you need to draw
around them, or you can put them 'behind' the drawing until you need to
access them.  The drawing tools are rectangle, ellipse, straight-line, 
horizontal-vertical line, polygon, freehand-line, and text tool.  Each
object that you draw is independent of the others.  You can reposition,
resize, reshape, and rotate each object separate from all others.  You can
also flip (mirror image) objects horizontally or vertically.  Objects can
be grouped, so that they move and reshape as a group.  Ungrouping is also
available.  And, you can lock objects so that they cannot be moved or
resized.

Lines may be drawn plain, or with arrowheads at one or both ends.  Lines
and polygon borders may have a range of thicknesses.  In fact, you can
vary the height and width of the lines independently, for a calligraphy
effect.  Colors are available for lines and polygon borders, as well for as
area fill.   The program provides for constructing your own multicolor fill
patterns.  

Text can be produced in any of the fonts you have in your font directory. 
Text can be left- or tight-justified, or centered.  A rectangular area may
be defined for text, and word wrap is performed at the boundaries of the
rectangle.  Text can be produced in color, and rotated.

Adjustable rulers and grid are provided, and if you select 'grid snap',
then the objects you create or move will 'snap' to the nearest grid
intersection.  Objects may also be aligned with respect to one another, in
the vertical and/or horizontal directions.  Your drawing can be composed
of layers, which you can work on one at a time.  Layers can be displayed
or hidden.  Objects within a layer can be moved in front of or behind
other objects in the same layer.

Zooming in and out is supported, so that you can do very detailed work,
and also be able to see the overall composition of a large drawing. 
And, although I have tried neither, support for macros and AREXX is
provided.

Limitations and quirks:  You must have KS 1.2 or higher, and a minimum of
0.5 MB memory is required.  Rotations can only be performed in
plus-or-minus ninety-degree increments.  You can edit a text object; if you
have rotated or flipped it, you must first restore it to its right-side-up
orientation before you can edit it.  The one real 'quirk' I found is, if
you select 'centered' or 'right-justified' for text, and then click once
with the mouse at the location on the drawing where you want the text to be
positioned, the orientation reverts to 'left-justified'.  You can always go
back and reselect 'centered' or 'right-justified' after you have placed the
cursor, but then the location of the text is not as you desired.  Another
way around this anomaly is to 'drag' out an area where the text is to be
positioned, in which case the selection does not revert to
'left-justified'.  Selecting 'centered' or 'right-justified' for an
existing block of text also has the expected result.  This is a small
glitch that I can live with, but I do hope that New Horizons (are you
listening, NH?) fixes it in the very next revision.

All in all I am very pleased with the program.  At a suggested list price
of $125, I think it is very reasonable, and recommend it highly.  Be
assured that I have no ties to New Horizons, other than as a satisfied
customer.  BTW, a full-page advertisement for the product appears on page
9 of the August issue of AmigaWorld.

--
-- Regards ------ Jim Kummer --- (disclaimer applies)
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