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From: jeff@ee.latrobe.edu.au (Jeff O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Bugs galore in !Draw
Message-ID: <1993Feb10.002716.16331@lugb.latrobe.edu.au>
Date: 10 Feb 93 00:27:16 GMT
Sender: news@lugb.latrobe.edu.au (USENET News System)
Organization: Department of Electronic Engineering, La Trobe University
Lines: 65


Hi,

	I have recently started seriously using !Draw v0.88 which comes with
RISC OS 3 and I have been quite disappointed with its performance.

o  One bug, which causes !Draw to exit immediately, occurs if you close a
'new view' window, select an object and then click 'menu'. If !Draw can find
a !Scrap it will save your file, but otherwise it will be lost.

o  I have had !Draw get stuck in an endless loop after a dragged an icon
onto one of its windows.

o  I have had it suddenly forget the font size of several text objects and
had it change the size of some lines.

o  After changing the page numbers on some of my drawings and printing them
I discovered that the page numbers printed were still all 1. Having
another look at the documents with !Draw showed that some of the page numbers
were still correct (even though they were printed incorrectly), but others
had returned to 1.

o  In another interesting episode, !Draw managed to grab a line of text out
of a text object in one of my files and attempted to use this as the name
and path of my file. Both the 'save as' sub-window and the title bar were
displaying this line of text as the file name.

	In addition to these bugs there are many frustrating _features_ within
!Draw.

o  Having to group objects together before your can do a justify is absurd
and unnecessary.

o  I haven't found any way of having more than one page within one document.

o  It is impossible to select a horizontal or vertical line that has been
drawn over the top of, and within, another object. Double clicking doesn't
select it and you can't do a drag select because that would move the outer
object. The only way I have been able to select it is to do a 'select all'
and then deselect the other items... very useful (and doesn't work if you
only want to select one of a few of these tricky objects).

o  When a line with an arrow (triangle) is 'snapped to the grid', it is the
edge of one of the sides of the arrow, not the center of the line, that
aligns with the grid. This makes it impossible to align a normal line and a
line with an arrow with each other. In general, it is the edge of the bounding
box of the object that is aligned, not the object itself.

	I find it hard to see that this program has undergone any sort of
testing, and if it has I think it is disgraceful that it was released. It
really is totally unusable for any serious work. This is one area where the
Mac has left Acorn for dead. What are people (universities/business)
meant to think when they see this standard of quality from Acorn?

	If you are intending to use !Draw please be aware that there are many
problems with it. I think I've definitely used up my two cents worth.

	Regards.
-- 

ZZ*****   *   ******************************************************************
*      *     *       jeff@ee.latrobe.edu.au      In real life: Jeff O'Keefe    *
*          .         Electronic Engineering                                    *
*                     La Trobe  University       AUSTRALIA                     *
******   *   *******************************************************************
