home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Floppyshop 2
/
Floppyshop - 2.zip
/
Floppyshop - 2.iso
/
diskmags
/
3565-4.665
/
dmg-3609
/
news.txt
/
jonwills.asc
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1997-06-21
|
8KB
|
221 lines
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
∙ THE ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING STEN INTERVIEW ∙
∙ ∙
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
Just when you thought it was safe to sit down at the keyboard, the
infamous STEN Interviews resume! This is a series in which we talk to the
movers and shakers of the ST world and see what they think of past and
current developments.
In the hot seat for this issue is John Wills of Image Art PDL.
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°
∙ DATA ∙
∙ ∙
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°
STEN: How old are you?
JW: Not too old... (45)
STEN: Where do you live?
JW: Tooting, London.
STEN: What work do you do?
JW: Apart from the library, as litle as possible.
STEN: What computer/s did you use before the ST?
JW: An Ohio Superboard UK 101 built from a kit, an Atari 400, then an
Atari 800 with a disk drive, etc.
STEN: What's your current ST set-up?
JW: A Mega ST4, external disk drive, mono monitor, colour monitor,
Daatascan hand scanner, Centronics Laser printer (HP compatible), Star
dot matrix, and an Integrex Colourjet 132.
STEN: Do you use any other machines or equipment?
JW: We've also got a 386 clone with 150 Meg Hdisk, Vga screen, and a
256 greyscale (400DPI) hand scanner.
STEN: What do you mostly use the machines for?
JW: Mainly for collecting, converting and manipulating artwork in
various formats, though they also get used for the library's
administration and some games.
STEN: What's your favourite productivity software?
JW: Calamus on the ST, Adobe Illustrator on the PC.
STEN: What are your favourite games?
JW: I'm currently playing Eye of the Beholder.
STEN: What are your favourite PD or Shareware programmes?
JW: A shareware game called '4-7-11 Card Games' by John Phillips
(registration £5.00).
STEN: What do you like about the ST scene?
JW: Mainly the friends I've made through it. The funny thing is the
nearly every one uses their system for differnt purposes.
STEN: What do you dislike about it?
JW: The apparant lack of interest from Atari.
STEN: What other interests do you have outside of computing?
JW: Steam railways, music, old movies from the 40's and 50's.
STEN: What music do you listen to?
JW: Classical, heavy metal and odd sounds.
STEN: What's your ultimate ambition?
JW: I'd like to make Image Art the first choice for all types of
artwork (PD, commercial and Shareware) for the ST, PC or Macintosh.
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
∙ THE INTERVIEW ∙
∙ ∙
∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙°∙
STEN: Why did you start the library?
JW: Initially it was to give me a good supply of artwork for my own DTP
projects. But then we found that most ST clip art at that time just
wasn't worth using - it was very low resolution and only suitable for a
dot matrix printer. So we started converting images from the Macintosh
and PC formats to the ST. Really, it took off from there.
STEN: Long have you been running it?
JW: About 2 years.
STEN: Is the library the main part of your business?
JW: Not yet, but it will be in the future.
STEN: A lot of your clip art and fonts are converted from the Mac or the
PC - how do you go about this?
JW: Various friends have written custom conversion programmes and
utilities, and some filetypes are interchangeable anyway.
STEN: What are your most popular discs? Is one type of programme or
clip art more popular than another?
JW: The most popular ones at the moment are the font discs for Calamus
and Pagestream.
STEN: Are there any recent PD discs that you'd really recommend?
JW: Our new Medical, Weddings and Faces discs.
STEN: Being involved with the ST and the PC gives you a good overview of
what's happening - how does the ST compare to the PC these days?
JW: Not very well. The ST was good when it came out, but everything
has changed since then. The PC and the Mac are the standard business
machines, and how do you challenge a standard that's been around for ten
years? The ST's still a good hobbyist machine, but you'd be mad to use it
to run a business - the software just doesn't compare to what's available
for the PC and Mac.
PC filetypes are becoming more common on the ST, but ST resolutions
don't allow the display of high quality colour clip art - 8 bit or 24 bit
colour, or colour vector graphics. There's also no affordable way that
you could print anything like that out on an ST.
STEN: Is there much differnce between the ST PD scene and the PC one?
JW: PC libraries supply 360K discs as standard, so you don't get as
much on them! But most PC libraries are more professional in the way they
deal with customers.
STEN: What do you think of the Falcon? Do you think it'll take off, and
can Atari be trusted to get it right this time?
JW: It could take of if it actually arrives! Serious hobbyists will be
the main market, but if Atari want to sell it as a serious business
machine, for graphics for example, then the main thing will be what file
formats it can deal with. Atari claim it gives 65,000 colours from a
pallete of 250,000, in True Colour but that isn't enough. True Colour is
24 bit colour, and there's also 32 bit colour on the way - can it deal
with that? Then there's the drawback of what can you print it out on. If
you can't print it then it's just colours on the screen.
STEN: The PD scene has become more commercial in the last couple of years
- what do you think of that?
JW: It's a good idea for libraries to be more professional. After all,
they are charging for the library service, and presumably making a small
profit.
STEN: What did you think of the 'Shareware Shopper' and 'Public Domain'
magazines?
STEN: What do you think of the current ST magazines?
JW: The only readable one is 'ST Applications', the rest are just
advertising vehicles.
STEN: What do you think about the SWSL hassle? Do you have any thoughts
about copyright in general?
JW: Everything that's drawn is copyright to that person - even if it's
your own interpretation of a Disney character. If someone's using a
sample of someone else's work, then that's obviously wrong, but the SWSL
business should have been handled differently. What was wrong with
issuing a warning to check certain disks and withdraw them if necessary?
STEN: What do you think the future holds for clip art and artwork (on all
machines)?
JW: Different machines obviously have differnt operating systems, but
file formats generally are going to have to be standardised at some time.
Apple and IBM have come to an agreement to work together, and they're the
ones who'll inevitably set the standards.
CD collections could be the end of PD and Shareware as it is at the
moment. One CD can hold 1,000 high quality images and sell for £20 - £30.
STEN: What plans has Image Art got for the future?
JW: We're going to introduce a series of discs of reasonably
priced, and good quality, original clip art produced by artists. These
will be for different trades, occupations and businesses. E.G a plumber
could ask for discs of plumbing and plumbers' images, the car trade could
get discs of car and driver images. These will be priced at around the
£10.00 level for a collection of several disks.
STEN: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, John, and all
the best for 1993!
~~~~~eof~~~~~