Rio Designer
Article Abstract:
Lucent Technologies' Rio Designer is descended from a DOS program that was once cutting-edge but is now archaic, slow and cumbersome. The program does not let users save long file names under Windows 95, is crudely ported from DOS and ignores such basic Windows conventions as object manipulation. Rio Designer has a very quirky interface with 16 hot spots for selecting each option, annoying cursor constraints and arcane color selection. Users can create high-end RGB graphics with Rio Designer, but its redraw is extremely slow. Displaying a sample file on a 150MHz Pentium machine with 24MB of RAM takes 30 seconds. The display is often jagged, and while there are both raster and vector editing tools, the raster-art tools are weak. Importing and exporting data is all but impossible because Rio is not written in a format other programs can use. Rio Designer is one of the most awkward, incompatible and difficult-to-use graphics packages on the market.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1997
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Ray Dream Designer 3.0
Article Abstract:
Ray Dream Inc's $349 Ray Dream Designer 3.0 for Windows offers an outstanding interface with features that make 3D object creation easier to visualize and control. Designing objects in 3D is often difficult to visualize in a 2D environment like the computer screen, but Ray Dream's interface is designed to make this easier. The Working Box, the primary object work space, has grids that form a background for visualizing how an object looks in a 3D environment. In the Working Box environment, objects appear as themselves in the work space and as projects on the three grid areas, which helps pinpoint exactly how the object looks in relation to other objects. Ray Dream is also good at tracking objects in a scene, with drag-and-drop features for grouping objects, and the Hierarchy window that shows a complete list of all objects in a drawing. The application can import files from Adobe FreeHand, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw 4.0, CGM and WMG.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1995
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The art of organization: Clickart Scrapbook+
Article Abstract:
T-Maker's $129.95 Clickart Scrapbook+ is a graphics storage and retrieval program for art imported from Windows applications. Scrapbook+ automatically adds any cut or clipped art to its data base and stamps a data and time on it. Graphics are called up by keying in descriptive words from an option al text block that contains a brief image description. A sample data base containing 35 ready-to-use graphics is provided, and images can be added by importing from files in formats such as TIFF and EPS. Memory limitations are encountered when running the program with other applications, so it is recommended that 2Mbytes of RAM be used for optimum performance. The program is easy to use and comes with a well-written manual and complete on-screen help, making it an excellent value.
Publication Name: Publish
Subject: Publishing industry
ISSN: 0897-6007
Year: 1989
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