Did you ever meet someone you felt was real special? That one special someone who had all the charm, looks, money and talent God could possible give to one person. Only later to discover that he/she had one irritating little habit (eating crackers in bed or whatever) that you just couldn’t accept. Eventually the irritation grows to the point where it overshadows the charm, looks, money and talent. Well, permit me to introduce you to GRAPHIQL.
GRAPHIQL certainly has a nice personality. It is clean, very versatile, well designed, with many more talents than a cursory look can discover. While not a full CAD system (the QL just isn’t equipped to handle 3D graphics), GRAPHIQL certainly pushes the graphics capabilities of the QL to the maximum, with a few new and unique twists.
“Rubber-banding” is one of the most versatile and unusual of the new commands incorporated into GRAPHIQL. Imagine putting pins into a board in any strange configuration you wish and then putting a rubber band around them to outline the shape you wish. That’s “rubber banding”, and it’s a facility that, until now, was available only on the “high-priced” brands.
GRAPHIQL offers eight colors which can be mixed and printed in textures or solids. One can draw in a freehand or use the set of commands to create any size rectangle, square, circle or elipse. Both regular and irregular shapes can be filled with a solid color or texture.
All these capabilities make GRAPHIQL a multi-faceted artists tool.
Now, let’s get down to those little irritations.
GRAPHIQL is a REAL BEAR to use. As with all of the programs marketed by Sinclair, the window is designed ONLY for a RGB monitor. If you have a TV or a monochrome monitor, that means that only about 2/3 of the screen (canvas) is visible, and none of the on screen commands can ever be seen. It’s like working in the dark with something you can’t see OR FEEL.
As if that wasn’t enough, this is no icon-based program. All commands are entered as a letter or series of letters. If something is entered incorrectly, the QL growls at the user, and just sits there dumbly, waiting for you to correct yourself. As a result, anyone who uses this program, will spend a considerable amount of time with a 63 page manual, trying to find what may be the appropriate command.
If you can live with these minor irritations, and have the time to spend learning the new commands, you may find that to have the ability to draw complex pictures, save them and recall them from a SuperBASIC program, is exactly what you’ve been looking for (but, then some people don’t mind cracker crumbs in their bed).
GRAPHIQL is produced by TALENT COMPUTER SYSTEMS of the U.K. It lists for $49.95, but is discounted through several American QL dealers. The review copy was obtained from: RMG ENTERPRISES, 1419 1/2 7th St., Oregon City, OR 97045.