First drawing package to take advantage of QuickDraw GX.
Henry Bortman
Rating: Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
QuickDraw GX has been available as part of the Mac OS for years, but applications have begun to take advantage of its features only recently. LightningDraw GX, from Lari Software, is the first drawing program to do so and as a result offers features unavailable in any other drawing package -- on any platform. Although version 1.0 has some shortcomings as a design tool and although there are still big question marks associated with integrating GX-based graphics into the publishing mainstream, LightningDraw may be the best reason yet to consider installing QuickDraw GX on your Mac.
At first glance, LightningDraw looks much like MacDraw Pro or ClarisDraw, with palettes containing many familiar drawing tools. The fill, line, and text tear-off menus will also seem familiar if you use other Mac drawing packages. In spite of its ordinary appearance, however, LightningDraw conceals remarkable power just below the surface.
The Versatile Type
One of the advantages of QuickDraw GX that LightningDraw taps is its sophisticated handling of type: GX fonts offer a much richer set of capabilities than do traditional fonts. A single GX font file, in addition to the upper- and lowercase characters found in TrueType or Type 1 fonts, can contain such sophisticated goodies as alternative character sets, swash characters, small caps, old-style numerals, and an expanded set of ligatures, as well as a range of widths and weights.
LightningDraw supports all these advanced type attributes, but, like other applications that support GX fonts, LightningDraw has failed to develop an interface that makes it easy to understand and control type-related features. For example, the program has a control palette that governs special GX font features but several important type attributes -- size, style, and color among them -- aren't accessible from it. Selecting a typeface, point size, style, and color for a string of text requires trips to four different menus or palettes. In fairness, the awkwardness of some of LightningDraw's controls is the result of Lari's adherence to Apple's interface guidelines for QuickDraw GX; still, there's considerable room for improvement.
I'm Looking Through You
Object translucence -- the ability to fill objects and type with see-through color and have them interact realistically -- is another unique advantage LightningDraw has over other drawing packages. PostScript-based applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand let you create pseudotranslucent effects, but PostScript does not support true translucence: If you created, say, a translucent yellow object and a translucent blue one in a PostScript package and then placed one object on top of the other, PostScript would create the expected green color in the overlapping areas by turning each overlapping section into a discrete object, making it next to impossible to edit the original objects. LightningDraw has no such limita-tion. Because translucence is built into the QuickDraw GX imaging model, objects, including text, can have true translucence (see figure) yet remain easily editable.
Doughnuts? Easy As Pie
LightningDraw also breaks new ground when it comes to drawing tools. Take the program's InConcert feature, for example. Want to cut a pie slice out of a circle? Click on the circle, select the polygon tool, choose the Remove from Selection option from the InConcert pop-up menu, and draw a triangle that bites into the circle. The circle reshapes itself, with the wedge missing. Want to turn the circle into a doughnut instead? Choose the Cut Out from Object option from InConcert, and draw a small circle inside the existing one. You can add onto a shape in the same way, using any of the drawing tools and InConcert's Merge with Selection option.
You can also reshape an object by directly manipulating its border with the reshaping tool. If you're used to working with Bezier control points, you'll find that the program's approach takes a bit of getting used to. A sensitivity slider controls whether your reshaping affects the entire object or only the immediate area. We had some difficulty, though, adjusting the sensitivity slider to accomplish exactly what we wanted.
In addition to having some interface problems, LightningDraw also suffers from being the odd man out in the publishing world. It can't, for example, import TIFF images, something even Illustrator -- at long last -- can now do. Nor can it import EPS files. And although it can output EPS files, EPS format converts GX type to line art, so it's no longer editable as text. Furthermore, you wouldn't have to have too active an imagination to envision problems incorporating LightningDraw images into QuarkXPress layouts. And since no GX-based drivers yet exist for imagesetters, high-end output from LightningDraw is still a question mark.
Still, LightningDraw is a powerful program and offers features unique among drawing applications. With the arrival of System 8 sometime next year, QuickDraw GX will become more difficult to avoid in the world of desktop design and publishing. It's not too early to get familiar with its full range of capabilities. For now, LightningDraw is the only drawing program that will let you do that.
The Bottom Line
Bundled with an assortment of GX fonts, digital stock art, and several handy utilities, it's a bargain, at $299 list. Install QuickDraw GX on a Zip cartridge, pick up a copy of LightningDraw, and experiment. You just might get hooked.
LightningDraw GX 1.0, $299 (list). Company: Lari Software, Chapel Hill, NC; 800-933-7303 or 919-968-0701. Reader Service: Circle #406.
LightningDraw GX is the only drawing program on the market that can take advantage of QuickDraw GX features such as automatic ligatures and translucence.
