EscAPE Paint

Colin Monro reviews EscAPE Paint, a freeware Falcon only TrueColor
art package...

EscAPE Paint enters the territory currently occupied by Apex Media
and Rainbow. This early v0.5 release by the German author, Norman
Feske (NO/Escape), is designed to provoke response and feedback to
steer further development - so let's get cracking!

The floating toolbars and menus can be left open for quick access
on high resolution desktops

The interface is delightful, similar to Photoline and other
industry standard Mac applications. Floating palettes can be left
open on screen or accessed from the menu bar as required. Unlike
Apex Media and Rainbow, EscAPE Paint offers an enhanced GEM
interface for menu selections, toolbars, dialogs and selectors
switching to the work screen on clicking the right mouse button -
just like Deluxe Paint. This approach works fine but I'm worried
the constant switching back and forth between video modes may
damage my newish Hewlett-Packard 17" multisync monitor which
'squeaks' in anguish when switching between 1152x852 resolution
and TrueColor mode.

EscAPE Paint co-exists with ScreenBlaster 2 and multitasks fine
under MagiC, consuming around 2.5Mb memory on a 14Mb Falcon. In
operation the program is rock-solid with just a few minor screen
redraw problems in TrueColor mode.

The brief English documentation details the system requirements
and tells us all we need to do is press the [Help] button for
further instructions. Unfortunately the help screens are displayed
in an almost illegible font. A help line at the right hand end of
the menu bar saves the day, changing as the mouse pointer passes
over icons.

EscAPE Paint utilises the Falcon's Motorola 56001 Digital Signal
Processor (DSP) chip to handle image manipulation. Block
operations including rotate, scale and mirror tools shove pixels
around with astounding speed and manoeuvrability.

What you see is all you get - no feature packed sub-menus

The main toolbox offers line, polyline, fill, a (lightning fast)
magnifier and block marking tools but misses out tools which come
as standard in other paint packages. Currently text handling is
restricted to the system font but the text interface is currently
being revamped so hopefully this is only a temporary
inconvenience.

Fills and blocks are fast and easy to create but text currently
lets the side down

EscAPE Paint offers a plug-in filter interface and is supplied
with Brightness, Paleness and Darkness modules which are loaded
into memory as required. This approach keeps the memory overhead
to the minimum and allows other programmers to develop compatible
modules - a nice touch.

Plug-in filter support means programmers can add their own

Not so nice is the range of import/export formats available.
Working under the shadow of other platforms support for a wide
range of formats is a valuable asset. EscAPE Paint offers XGA
(eXtended Graphics Array), TGA and (the mystery) TRP/TRU formats.

Import/export options are limited and unfamiliar, no TIFF or JPEG
support!

With no JPEG or TIFF support TGA seems to offer the best cross
platform format - except TGA files cannot be exported. Add to this
no printer support and it all adds up to frustration. Hopefully
before EscAPE Paint reaches v1.0 these problems will have been
resolved.

Creating simple pictures in EscAPE Paint is quick and easy but
with the limited range of tools other applications will be needed
to complete most jobs - which means it's less likely to get used
in the first place.
On the other hand the available features are excellent - there's a
great application struggling to escape in there somewhere. Maybe
that's why it's called EscAPE Paint!
 
 
 
 

Product: EscAPE Paint v0.5 Author: Norman Feske Contact: Cammerswalde Str. 19, 01189 Dresden, Germany Email: norman@iee.et.tu-dresden.de Status: Freeware System: Falcon with 4Mb memory minimum   Pros: Enhanced GEM interface, DSP support, freeware!   Cons: Poor file format support, missing tools and features         (unfinished) Score: 70%