At the present time there are three CD ROMs connected with ArtWorks, two containing clip art and the other a program disc.
ArtWorks CD
The CD contains 474Mb of data which you will appreciate is a lot more than the contents of the fourteen disc version, so what do you get?
Firstly, you get the ArtWorks (AW) application to load onto your hard disc, as well as the normal applications, such as Fliptop, New Modes, Convert Print and Font View and the set of fonts. The fonts are in four sections: RISC OS 2 & 3 in compressed format with their loader and then again in uncompressed format so that they can be loaded straight away. RISCáOSá3 fonts are of a higher quality, and include full foreign character sets. Many include kerning information which means that, when used in an application supporting automatic kerning, the letters will be spaced more correctly. The AWáapplication will be out of date as soon as new versions appear, so it will need upgrading at regular intervals as with the disc-based version.
Secondly, you get the complete contents of the CD 1 clipart disc as well as the normal clipart examples. There are also pictures in both TIFF and sprite format as per clip CD 1. There are also 60 samples of Matt Black clipart in a rather jumbled, untidy directory that contains images from Image Art and Vanguard Graphics.
Thirdly, you get three demos of AW, Colour Card and AudioWorks. The AWádemo cycles through a simple presentation of some of the features of ArtWorks, and the Colour Card demo only works (not surprisingly!) if you have a card in your machine, so that demo is of little use. The AudioWorks demo, however, is very interesting. You get a crippled version that can play the many megabytes of sounds, instruments, voices and effects supplied.
ArtWorks Clipart CDs
In 1993 and æ94, Computer Concepts ran vector graphics artwork competitions and the best work was released on CDs. These form the main basis for the two CDs, with other additions of vector graphics and bitmap graphics in 24-bit sprite and TIFF format.
The graphics on each CD are not sorted into any thematic order, but are listed in alphabetic directories. There is a utility called Portfolio which can be used to display thumbnail pictures of TIFF, sprite and vector files. In the window, there are buttons to step backwards and forwards through the pictures and there is a database search facility. If you want a given picture, there is a drag icon so it can easily be loaded, rather going through the directory structure. The search facility is on a keyword which can be redefined to the required target group. For example, ötransportò gives 81 files and öcarò gives 23 pictures. Some of the keywords seem a little obscure to me, but if you open !CCSTORE in the main directory, you can get at the CSV file that the search facility uses and, when it is dropped into Publisher or TableMate, you can get a hard copy or you can browse through the formatted listing.
It is very difficult to go into details as to the actual contents without listing everything, so I chose keywords and performed identical searches on each CD to give an idea of contents. In some cases, the same picture will be included in different categories and others will not be covered by the table.
The overall standard is very good, with just a few poor files. In some cases, you would need a colour printer to get the best results, and some are fairly large files that may not load or print on smaller machines. One excellent picture of a mermaid is nearly 3Mb, so you need 6Mb of memory to load and print it. A few files are demonstrations of colour blending using different techniques and so are of no real use to a clipart user, but are of use to an AWáuseráas study examples.
Copyright
The files are all royalty free which means that they can be used by any purchaser for their own use and may be reproduced in any printed document free of charge. The files may not be used in electronic form in any other commercial or public domain product without prior written permission, so cannot be used in multimedia. However, in my experience, Computer Concepts seem to be quite reasonable in granting permission, so this may not be a severe limitation.
Conclusions
I consider the CDs to be a worthwhile investment. Some of the files will be of immediate use and others will have their place at a later time. You also have the opportunity to look at some excellent artwork and are able to dissect them to learn new techniques. It means a large selection of pictures are available, some of which would not fit on a normal disc, so this is the only sensible way to distribute them. The CD version of AWáis the same price as the disc version, so is definitely the best way to buy it. If you already have AW,áyou can upgrade to the CD for ú10, which makes it really cheap and a worthwhile buy.
ArtWorks CD is ú180 through Archive, and Clipart CD-2 is ú21. Contact Computer Concepts if you are interested in an upgrade.áuá
