New Draw features

Would it be possible to extend the capabilities of !Draw? I am thinking about linear fills and plain transparencies from 0-100%. Also clipping would be nice.

Ok, it’s available im ArtWorks but the Draw format is still used by many applications to output graphs and would also allow them to offer more features related to e.g. clipping functionality. And the ArtWorks format is not an open format.

Michael

Possible? Yes, of course, but each of graduated fills, transparency and clipping are huge projects because the OS does not provide these features. The point of the Draw application is that it mirrors OS rendering capabilities.

Furthermore, just adding these features to !Draw would not help because third party applications would still not be able to render the new features, so you would also have to enhance the DrawFile module, but even that would not be enough because various applications do their own Draw file rendering, e.g., Impression and OvationPro, so they would have to be upgraded as well.

Well, I don’t see any of this as a problem (apart from a whole lot of work). As long as it’s done in an extensible way, and backwards compatibility in such programs is checked, then this should be fine. It’s hardly critical if OPro doesn’t render transparent Drawfiles as long as continues to render the rest of the Drawfile is done as it is now.

Plus it might provide some incentive for upgrades to such programs if there were new OS capabilities to make use of. I presume that the self-rendering is purely for historical reasons, since the DrawFile module has been part of the OS for many years.

A similar situation existed with transparency in sprites, so it’s not like we haven’t been here before.

Draw: file import/export