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From: DonH@cup.portal.com
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To: lightwave-l@netcom.com
Subject: A Chat with Newtek's LW Product Manager
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Date: Sat, 29 Apr 95 10:13:59 PDT
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Yesterday afternoon, I finally received the LW PC upgrade in
the mail(I ordered it on the morning of April 17). Since I planned to
attend a local LW meeting in 2hrs, I just installed it and looked
through the menus. When I showed up at the meeting place, I found
out it was cancelled due to the leader's illness. However, a couple
of people were standing there and I asked about LW 4.0. By chance,
one of the people was Newtek's LW product manager! He was in the area
to demo LW 4 to various meetings and groups in the area.
For the next two hours, we stood outside the closed building
talking about Newtek, LW 4, etc. Since I had not enough time to
thoughly check out the new LW, I could only ask him about features I
noticed immediately. What comes with the pre-release is just reprints
of the amiga manuals plus a few pages describing some new features. He
said that LW 4.0 final will be shipping in 4-6 weeks with four completely
new manuals (Layout, Modeler, Tutors, and Reference). Support for about
20 read/write formats for objects, images, and anims will be included.
Now only IFF/TGA/LW images can be loaded or saved.Some plug-ins will be includ
before final release. The Xaos plug-in for SGI may also be available
for the Intel platform at no charge. The amiga LW macros are being converted
to C and will be available in a free plug-in.They said they may mirror the
Newtek BBS to Tomahawk. They will monitor the LW use group and mailing
list frequently. At present, you can not import/export directly from
Layout to Modeler (they are working on the problem). There is no
moving preview in Modeler as in the amiga version (because of lack
of Bitter?). The prelease has references to amiga which will disappear
in the final. The Amiga will still be supported as long as there is a
market.He said Newtek has sold "tens of thousands" of Toasters.
The company currently employs about 45 people.
That's about all I can remember about LW issues. Others
there ask about Toasters/Flyers, but I only half listened.