¢SOFTWARE SCENE¢¢¢SAM DESIGNER¢Publisher: Power Per Post¢Supplier: DGS¢Price: 6.95 pounds (disk)¢¢Reviewed by the legendary ODI¢alias Dan Baverstock¢¢ Well, it's about time an application for SAM desktop was made available. There really should be a lot more considering the near 14 pounds price tag, and of course it's great potential. These additional applications should also include a BASIC/OBJ/COM file launcher and a more advanced set of standard DOS functions which are icon based. These really should have been included in the SAM desktop to begin with.¢¢ SAM Designer is a very versatile and comprehensive mouse controlled icon based art package and in my opinion is what all Atari art programs should be based on.¢¢ Although only a 2 colour Hi-Res GR.8 package, SAM Designer makes up for this with many of the mouse controlled tools that you would expect to see on a PC art package. In addition, it has the ability to easily create schematics such as circuit diagrams (circuit icons are pre-prepared on the disk).¢¢ At last no more joystick jerking(!). No more will you have to wait hours for the cursor to travel across the screen! Now you can draw free hand those curves you have always wanted and it won't look like someone has been stabbing you in the back while you did so!¢¢ I can safely say it is much easier to use than SAM Painter and it has more options added, including a text import option and the ability to load icons designed with SAM's mono character editor to create your own schematics as mentioned above.¢¢ One thing about SAM Painter I don't quite understand is why the programmers didn't base SAM Painter on the same 'on-hand' icon system that SAM Designer uses. Although released long after SAM Painter, SAM Designer was in fact made or devised a few years before. I wonder why SAM Painter didn't develop from this. Painter is jerky to use and hasn't got nearly as many options as SAM Designer.¢¢ SAM Designer has a multi-menu icon bar at the top of the screen that you can call up. This is far more advanced and more convenient than SAM Painter's menu. The best thing about SAM Designer is it's full compatibility with other mono art packages like R-Draw or Text & Draw, unlike SAM Painter.¢¢ Anyway, enough of my peti-drivel. Or would you like more? What do ya mean, "have mercy!"?¢¢ After loading SAM Designer from SAM'S desktop ACCESS/INFO menu, you are presented with the workspace which at present is free of any childish scribblings, but not for long! ¢¢ SAM Designer can operate with both mouse and joystick although the latter is practically useless it you want to draw free-hand. Your mouse/joystick controls a very sharp little pointer around the screen, while the Spacebar calls up the icon-menu bar. The Option key allows you to select from the 16 screen colours, although you can't change the luminance.¢¢ The icon-menu bar itself is full of very highly detailed icons, the functions of which I have listed below:¢¢Free-hand draw, line, lines, rays, box, block, circle, disc, fill, cut & paste, sparycan, unfill, icon paster, screen swap, zoom, brush size, and 18 different patterns.¢¢ Incidently, the patterns can be altered, as can the mouse pointer. Again, this involves using SAM'S mono character editor and is a good example of making full use of SAM's present applications on it's new accessories.¢¢ Also available is the text importer called T-COM, the icon-plot mode, text mode, a quit to SAM desktop, and entrance to an options icon-menu bar.¢¢ The options available on the option menu are extensive. These include 3 paste modes, transparent, overpaste, or a mixture of the two. You can load new printer drivers, Epson being the default, although a 1029 driver is available.¢¢ You can also load new character fonts, icon fonts, and load text into the buffer for latter importing of your text using the T-COM. import function.¢¢ A reverse screen option allows you to do just that.¢¢ You can set your text to italics, inverse, expanded, high character, as well as type in four different directions.¢¢ Finally, you can set the print mode, the values that your printer reads when processing the data for printing. Four are available for Epson only: Big picture, normal density; Small picture, normal density; Big picture, high density; Small picture, high density.¢¢ The DOS option menu I/O contains the usual fuctions load, save, erase, initialize, and current drive 1-8.¢¢ Funnily enough, the swap screen function is about the closest option to UNDO, since there is no latter. Most of the time you can do without an UNDO option, for a screen is always saved to memory after a function. Only once have I cleared the wrong screen in memory. If you make sure you are careful when experimenting with the Swap-screen function, then you don't really notice you haven't got a full UNDO facility.¢¢ The program really is great fun to use as well as being probably the best GR.8 mode drawing tool and schematics designer. The circuit icons are a default load, so you can start to experiment with the schematic designer straight away. It is very effective and since you can create your own icons, the designs are unlimited. SAM Designer is almost like a desktop publisher in someways.¢¢ As I mentioned earlier, using the joystick is much harder, especially freehand, so I highly recommend you buy a mouse. I picked up a fully working ST mouse for a quid(!) and with the decline of the ST range you are bound to find cheap mice.¢¢ With the mouse, it's very easy to draw freehand. The lines mode (which is like the 'line' function only the last point you click on is the point from which you take your next line) is great for creating precise 3-D objects. The circle and rectangles are really easy to plot as you can see where they are while you drag them around the screen.¢¢ One major quibble was that I found that sometimes in circle/disc and square/box modes, when trying to plot inside a filled colour, I couldn't see whereabouts my plotting shape was positioned while I dragged it around. As the two colours were the same, my plotting shape was invisible. I had to rely on guess work to get it right.¢¢ The fill mode is fairly fast and the range of 18 patterns gives a surprisingly varied number of shades on screen considering there are only two colours displayed. Again, you can design your own patterns.¢¢ The spraycan option is quite usefull, although it sprays over quite a large surface and as you can't change it's size, spraying anything smaller in diameter than the spraycan's diameter can be a problem.¢¢ The cut & paste option is excellent. Perhaps this function could be improved even further if you could actually cut around a shape rather than being limited to cutting it out in square form (it only allows you to cut square or rectangle parts of the screen).¢¢ Another function with room for improvement is the zoom. It is fairly hard to see the pixels you are editing on occasions, as the enlarged cursor sometimes obscures your view of the area, and the zoom box in the screen's corner can only offer a small view of the area. The zoom function can be left on through all operations, which can be quite useful when performing exact point to point drawings.¢¢ One final but minor gripe is the text mode. While typing, all the keys on the keyboard bar escape produce a character other than the letter. This includes the important cursor and delete keys, essential in any text function. Any mistakes you make while typing have to be erased manually by exiting and selecting a brush. It would have been so much easier to have say two modes alternated by the select key which switched between characters and the keys' primary functions.¢¢ Text importing is very easy. It simply involves the loading of the text from SAM Texter (SAM desktop's built-in word processor) followed by stretching a box in the desired shape and size for your text. The text then automatically fills up this designated space. A little practise is needed to get your text to fill the space in the way you intended. Additional keystroke commands in the imported text allow special character styles to be created. This is because imported text doesn't use the text functions selected in the options menu (i.e. italics, etc). Instead you have to place symbols amongst the text to achieve the desired styles.¢¢ As for hardcopies, the printouts are of fairly good quality when using my Panasonic 9-pin. I have not tested it with a 1029 yet.¢¢ Well, what about the price. At 6.95, and requiring the SAM desktop at 13.95 (the latter price may have changed to my knowledge) it looks quite pricey, but well worth it if you want a good designer package.¢¢ Next step for the SAM accessories should be a top-notch desktop publishing package, perhaps with an option to use upgraded memory capacity. Or a good desktop DOS accessory. I would also like to see a really good animation package.¢
