Between Heaven & Hell 2/BetweenHeavenHell.cdr/500/483/newsrevu.txt

Text File | 1986-10-16 | 14KB | 334 lines

                GRAPHTIME-II Review
                -------------------

Graphtime-II is another newcomer to the growing range of PC
software packages being offered at around $100. Is this part of a
welcome price trend or does it mean a product with limited
usefulness? I decided to have a close look and to my surprise,
discovered some very interesting features.

As the name suggests, Graphtime-II is a business graphics
package. It is written for a standard 256K byte IBM PC fitted
with the colour/graphics adaptor. The monitor can be colour or
composite monochrome.

The first interesting point is that Graphtime-II is probably the
first PC business graphics package to be entirely developed in
Australia. A look through the software catalogues indicates a
number of similar programs which are virtually all from the
United States and all at considerably higher prices.

Graphtime-II appears to be targeted at users of Multiplan, dBASE
II/III and LOTUS, who wish to quickly and easily produce a
variety of graphs. Graphtime-II can also be used as a
`stand-alone' package with data entered directly by keyboard and
saved on disk. There is a built-in data editor.

Set-up
------
The initial set-up looked formidable at first as my curiosity
normally compels me to try a directory listing before starting
the software. There were no less than 70 files of various
flavours on two disks, but no obvious Install program.  A check
in the manual confirmed this. The only set-up required is to copy
the disks to other floppies or to a hard disk. (The disks are not
write-protected.)  As I discovered later, all options can be
selected as you require them and are automatically saved to disk when
quitting. These include screen resolution, colour and input
device used such as mouse or cursor keys.

Entering "GT" calls up the Graphtime-II title page and a request
for an Owner Code.  This is an unusual feature for a relatively
low cost package. My review copy of the disk had a personalised
code. A nice touch, but unlikely to be available for
off-the-shelf customers.

The first menu choice is to call up Draw or Graph. Without
reference to the manual it is not clear what each of these
programs has to offer. Draw turns out to be a graphic editor and
Graph is the main business graphics module.

Menus
-----
On screen at all times is a single line menu and a status line.
The menu is tree-structured as each selection leads to another
menu or a question. As with Multiplan and many other
spreadsheets, selection is made with the first letter of each
command. In order to cope with the large number of commands,
somewhat off-beat use of the English language is occasionally
required to avoid first-letter duplication.

For all this choice, most functions are achieved with only a few
keystrokes. For example to load data from disk to memory, use FL
(File Load) followed by the name.  To then display one of the
many graph types, only two or three key strokes are needed.

While menu-driven systems are ideal for beginners they often can
be frustratingly slow while waiting for each menu to appear.
Graphtime-II avoids this by confining most of the menus to only
one or two lines, together with the use of a buffered keyboard.
The result is that as the user becomes familiar with menu-choice
letters, they are typed in as commands and the displayed menu
lines can then be ignored. Another advantage of single line menus
is that the current graph or diagram is always present on the
screen.

Status Line
-----------
The status line for the Graph program indicates the current
default drive and the contents of four of the data memories. For
the Draw program, the status line shows the X and Y cursor
position and increment, and colour selected. The status line can
also be switched to the function key labels or left blank.

Macros
------
If a particular set of commands is used often, it can be saved on
disk as a macro. As one macro can call another macro, a command
sequence can be of any length. A full-screen macro editor is
included.

UNDO
----
Graphtime-II is the kind of system that one can play with just to
see what happens. Almost every corner can be backed out of with
the Escape key.  Pressing the Enter key uses built-in defaults,
or it remembers the last parameter used.  Behind all this is the
"UNDO" key. No matter what mistakes are made, either with the
displayed graph or some calculation, a single press of the UNDO
key restores screen and data to the previous state.

Help
----
Extensive on-line help information is available with the Help
key.  While not strictly an "in context" help system, individual
command help files can be accessed directly with two keystrokes.
The help files in fact look like a variation of the reference
manual (in colour).

Documentation
-------------
On the subject of documentation, the Graphtime-II comes with a
100 page manual divided into four sections. A longish
introduction describes the the main features, the function keys
and how to run the built-in demonstration.  The next section is a
well illustrated and easy to follow tutorial which is used with a
series of data files on the disk.  The reference manual is
organised in the same order as the tree-structured menus.  The
last section includes a number of appendices and an index.
Separate items included with the manual are the function key
template, a "getting started" sheet and the registration card.

Flexibility
-----------
Many of the graphics modules now included with integrated
packages tend to have a limited range of graphs and are not
particularly flexible. One of the reasons for the existence of
separate packages is the additional graphics related features.
Graphtime-II is no exception. I counted about fourteen different
graph types, most of which can be combined.  Data values can be
positive or negative. All scales and labels are initially
generated automatically and a graph displayed with the minimum of
fuss. By then using any of the facilities under the Alter
command, scales can be altered with Pan and Zoom, and patterns
and colours selected for individual charts.

Legends and titles can be placed on any row or column and when
multiple graphs are required, subsequent titles find their way to
the most appropriate location. Data files can hold up to 365 data
points and can be edited and appended on screen. Scales are
automatically recalculated and a new graph displayed after
editing.

Each graph can have have up to ten sets of data points displayed.
The screen can be divided up into any number of windows.
Subsequent graphs will automatically scale to suit the shape of
the current window.

Speed
-----
In terms of speed, GRAPHTIME-II is fast, with single graphs being
displayed on the screen within one or two seconds including the
automatic generation of the scales, labels and titles. Most of
the operational delays are associated with loading program
modules on floppy disk systems (about four seconds).  As most
activity would be confined to either the Draw or the Graph
program, these delays would probably not be encountered very
often.

Redisplaying a graph in a different form is easily achieved with
a single key to clear the screen and two or three more to display
the new graph. The same data can be used for any graph type.
Separate scales can be displayed at the same time.

Mathematics
-----------
The main module integrated with the Graph program is a range of
mathematical functions which are difficult if not impossible to
achieve with Multiplan, LOTUS or dBASE. These include Trend line,
Smooth curve, Rate of change and Moving averages.

Data can be manipulated with Pan, Zoom, Reduce and Join commands,
and calculations performed between files.  Some simple statistics
such as mean, standard deviation and correlation can also be
displayed for each graph.

The UNDO key is very useful for playing `what-if' with graphs
such as trend lines and smoothed curves.

Slide-Shows
-----------
The macro facility can be used as a controller of slide shows
with commands such as pause, delay and jump forward or backward.
I'm not sure of the value of slide shows unless the PC is
connected to a video projector. At present it would be a lot
cheaper to produce colour slides and use a regular slide
projector. If a macro was set in a permanent loop, the normal PC
monitor could be used as a window or counter display similar to
some in-house videotex systems.

Animation
---------
Though I did not have time to try the animation facilities, by
using additional memory to hold images, a continuous sequence of
slides can be displayed rapidly to give the impression of
animation. Animated sequences can also be included in macros and
displayed at various speeds.

Graphic Screen Editor
---------------------
The screen editor (Draw program) is intended for modifying or
enhancing a graph produced by the Graph program.  While not in
the same league as PC-Paint, this screen editor includes most of
the features needed to draw practically anything.  Flow charts,
system and wiring diagrams, and organisation charts are its
forte. The Draw program has some of the trappings of other screen
editors with pull-down menus and windows.

Cursor Input
------------
Cursor movement can be controlled with either the arrow keys, a
joystick or a Microsoft Mouse. It is possible to use all three
while working on a single screen diagram. The rate of movement of
the graphics cursor is controlled with the increment setting (1
to 9).  This can be changed at any time.

Graphics Commands
-----------------
Most of the graphics primitives are available including line,
frame (box), circle, dot, spray can and area fill with a choice
of 26 patterns.  The Line function for example has three line
types and ten thicknesses. As a line is being drawn it can be
elastic, continuous or temporarily switched off to move the
cursor.

In low resolution mode (320 x 200), all of the graphics can be in
any of four colours from the two palettes. In high resolution
mode (640 x 200) the screen foreground can be one of seven
colours.

The Block command provides for copying and moving any part of the
screen. Blocks can be saved on disk and reused for later
diagrams. This is effectively the cut and paste facility. Blocks
can include graphics and text. Whole screens can be saved on disk
and can be used in slide-shows or later printout.

The UNDO key also works with the screen editor. A complete mess
can be made of the screen without fear, as the UNDO key
immediately restores the previous screen.  While developing
complex diagrams it is worth taking occasional disk backups (as
with word processing).  The separate Rubout facility can remove
lines and blocks as well as providing a mobile eraser in ten
sizes.

Text
----
Text is available in seven fonts plus a user definable font. A
full-screen font editor is included. Some of the fonts include a
range of graphics symbols. Text can be placed anywhere on the
screen either horizontally or vertically and in four sizes.
(Some of the fonts can be displayed at any angle). Each
letter can be in a different colour if required. A text editor is
also included so that blocks of text used often can be entered
once and saved on disk. This text can then be added to any graph at
any location and in any of the provided fonts and colours. Any
external ASCII format text can be input to the text editor.

Output
------
This is the one area that Graphtime-II has a few deficiencies.
The screen display is currently limited to using only the
standard colour graphics adaptor.  It does not as yet use higher
resolution cards such as Hercules or EGA. (Hercules version is
due for release late this year). While this is not particularly
important for business graphics such as column charts, the
resolution of text is limited to that of the screen. i.e 640 by
200 pixels.

Printout is by screen dumps to a range of dot matrix printers
including the Quadjet colour inkjet printer. Two sizes are
possible (A5 and half A5). On the plus side, printouts are very
fast, being limited only by the speed of the printer.

One surprising inclusion is a batch printing system to enable up
to 99 saved graphs to be printed in a single run. As standard PC
graphics printers take several minutes per graph, this could be a
useful feature.

If you need to combine graphs with external text, Graphtime-II is
compatible with Microsoft Windows Write and Multimate Advantage.

If you happen to have an HPGL plotter then all resolution
problems disappear as a plotter driver is included with the
package. Graphs and diagrams are generated as vector data and can
be appended, joined and saved onto disk.

Colour slides are quickly and cheaply produced directly from the
screen using self-developing cameras such as the Kodak
Instagraphic system. The quality of these will depend on the
monitor quality.

Summary
-------
The range of business graphics packages available covers the bare
bones "convince yourself" graphics as found in some statistical
packages through to the "convince others" presentation systems
such as Mirage.  Graphtime-II has elements of all of these. That
is: business graphics, screen editor and data manipulation. It
should be very useful for fast in-house generation of business
graphs, maintaining systems diagrams and for generating overhead
projector foils. Colour slides can also be produced very quickly.

One advantage of locally produced software is that help is not
far away.  A note in the introduction of the manual indicates
that development is continuing and updated versions will be
available to registered users for $25.  A demonstration disk is
available for $15.

For organisations with a number of personal computers,
Graphtime-II is available with a site licence.

All in all Graphtime-II is fast, flexible, easy to use and
excellent value for money.

Ratings:
        Setup and ease of use:  ****

        Performance:            ***

        Documentation:            ***

        Value for money:        ****


Cost: $125 single licence (+$8 sales tax)
      $399 site licence   (+$40 sales tax)

Distributor: MULTISOFT

Tony Watson,
Computer Editor,
West Australian Newspaper.

30 September 1986