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I'm really surprised no one has suggested Deneba's Canvas . Or maybe it is for OSX only? It's nice because it's different than Illustrator, and therefore, things made in it don't automagically look like they were done in Illustrator.

I use Canvas to do almost all of my design and low-mid level prototyping work once I'm past the pencil and paper stage. Canvas is sort of a jack of all trades graphics program that is a cross between Illustrator, Photoshop, and light version of InDesign. Not as capable than any of them individually, but tightly and smoothly integrated. Imports and exports a very wide variety of file formats.
For semi-interactive prototypes, I can output my work in a PDF which can have links so people can click on buttons and be taken to different pages in the PDF (which simulates changes in the UI).

I've tried Expression, Canvas, Flash, and Freehand. I stick with Illustrator. I enjoyed playing with Expression's natural-media tools, but as a Mac owner, I'll probably never see another version now that MS ate it, and I don't want to find myself depending on an orphaned app...

So far, I have not found anything it cannot do that I need, and it is cheaper than Illustrator. It's intuitive, stable, and powerful. I'm constantly surprised it doesn't get more attention.

I personally use Canvas from ACD Systemsformerly Deneba, since I mostly do deckplans for Traveller. Canvas is wonderfully well suited for doing deckplans, easy to use, and very powerful. But, it's too expensive ($250-$400) for casual use and only practical if you need it professionally (like I do).

I have used Mac Word v5.1 almost ever since it came out. After upgrading to Word v6.0 and having my system crash repeatedly, I stopped using it and went back to v5.1. I have never left it since.

I did, when Corel offered me a deal I couldn't refuse, purchase Corel Office for the Mac which had WordPerfect v5.1 in it. I would have to say that for some things WPv5.1 is better than Wv5.1. But in others - it is worse.

I also prefer Canvas v3.54 over WordPerfect, Word, or even PageMaker when it comes to laying out a page. Canvas v3.54 is really a 2D CAD system but you can use it to lay out many different types of pages. It has built in Kerning, as well as many other features which were not found in word processors of the time. (The current version of Canvas is really a combo of PhotoShop and PageMaker. Sort of like a high end PowerPoint program.)

I have also tried MacWrite Plus (crashes system), NisusWriter (good word processor but has its own brand of quirks), MacWrite (Ok - we are going WAY back now!), vi (excellent text editor), emacs (too many macros for me!), Alpha, LaTeX, BBEdit, and many other text editors/Word Processors. Word v5.1 on the Mac can beat them all (except vi and emacs) for ease of use, small footprint, and the ability to use any printer you want. (Remember on the Mac you had the one interface to many printers.)

When I moved from the Mac to the IBM a few years back I found that I really hated having to use the current version of MS-Word. I was always trying to get it to stop correcting what I was typing. (For example - Create an outline using lowercase letters. When you get to "i" MS-Word automatically changes it to "I". How stupid can a word processor be?) Anyway, with my purchase (on eBay) of some slightly faster Macs than what I originally had - I have switched back to Macs somewhat. Instead of using an IBM - I use Virtual PC. So I can now use both Word v5.1 as well as to move it over and incorporate the document into the later version of Word. So I get the best of both worlds now.

The drawbacks to Word v5.1 is that it did not do Kerning, fractional spacing, and antialiased fonts. So sometimes the fonts look jagged. By moving the document, once created, to the later version of Word - these advancements are then included into the document. So long as you do not allow the newer MS-Word program to upgrade the document - you can always go back to using the earlier version. The thing you have to watch out for is that the later versions really try very hard to trick you into writing over the older document. Which, of course, then makes it impossible for you to go back to the older method.

Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba) handles Vector and Raster/bitmaps within the same application beautifully. Canvas is primarily a technical drawing/illustration package with image/raster graphics and page layout support. In terms of functionality, Canvas is sort of a technical/precise version of Illustrator with 60-80% of Photoshop functionality and light InDesign/Pagemaker layout capabilities added in.

Canvas is a commercial application, but it's a must have tool for me as an interface designer.

My preferred design tool is Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba). Canvas is a technical illustration oriented, jack of all trades vector based graphics program available on the Mac and Windows. Canvas is sort of a combination of a technical/precise version of Illustrator, Photoshop light (works with a number of Photoshop filters) for bitmap manipulation, and Pagemaker light all in one program. Imports and exports a wide variety of formats. Of particular interest in this case is the ability to export PDF and HTML. You can define HTML links on objects so that you can use that do create low fidelity prototypes or walkthroughs.

I usually create design "sketchbooks" in Canvas that contain my wireframe mockups and send them to the developers (and anyone else) as a self contained PDF document.

A few in our company use PowerPoint in a similar fashion, but with much less ease, capability and style.

Another tool that you should look at is Denim which is a tool for informal, early stage web site and UI design. Fairly useful and keeps things at an informal "sketch" level. Really requires a graphics tablet though.

I'd highly recommend Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba Software). It's a mite expensive (~$350) but it excels at doing technical drawings/illustration particularly to scale. I've been using Canvas for doing starship deckplans for the Traveller game, and I can set the scale to be 1 X to be 1 Y and then have all of my drawings/measurements displayed in the Y units.

Canvas is pretty easy to learn though it has its quirks. On the plus side, while it is geared towards technical illustration, it's also a general purpose graphics package that can handle bitmap editing (subset of Photoshop functionality, and some photoshop filters work with Canvas), light page layout, and flow charting. Canvas imports and exports a wide variety of formats. I couldn't live without it for my work (user interface design).

There is a free 15 (I think it's 15) day trial version available.

He's got a very good point. If people want commercial software on linux, they're going to have to pay for it. If we want great free software, we're going to have to write it ourselves.

The strength of linux is that open source projects have no development or marketing costs. This is not the case for closed source software shops. This fantasy about big software companies releasing free closed source versions of their software can't last for long. They're only doing this now because the linux market is still growing, so offering free stuff gives them an opportunity to gain market share and recoup the costs later. This is exactly what Corel is doing by giving some products away for free while charging for their other products. They're trying to establish a brand.

Until these companies start adopting open source development methods, they will fail. It just doesn't make sense to spend tons of r&d money on an app to give it away.

ESR makes this very clear here. "When I speak at technical conferences, I usually begin my talk by asking two questions: how many in the audience are paid to write software, and for how many do their salaries depend on the sale value of software. I generally get a forest of hands for the first question, few or none for the second, and considerable audience surprise at the proportion." Corel is filled with people whose income depends on the sale of their software. And so is Deneba...

___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux

Anybody notice that "Highest Scores First" doesn't really work? I always have "Highest Scores First" selected but I still find 3s 4s and 5s below 1s and 2s. I wish it worked, it's a nice idea.

And about the story, don't they have backup servers so that when one fails, another one comes up? I guess the attack was big enough to take down all of their servers... How many hits could /. really get a second? Can't you put a transaction time limit on a web server? Or maximum number of requests answered/minute? And do it dynamically, so when you see the huge surge of traffic, you implement the time limit, and when it dies down again, restore normal operating conditions...

Well, I know what that's like, after we announced that Canvas was available, we were so /.'ed that we couldn't ftp our files out to a mirror...

___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux

Whoa there cowboy! Are you bitter or what! Lets cover a few things here...

1. Our linux version is _free_ you can download it now from our web page.

2. why do you ask if I'm trolling about our freedoms? Are you one of those open source people who think freedom is secondary to functionality? Sorry bud, not me.

3. Yes, my managers ask about API's. All of our owners are programmers that work on our projects and the director of R&D worked as one of the main developers of our linux version. Sorry your company is lame, mine isn't.

4. As for an emulation layer. Do you know what winelib is? It wasn't as easy as a recompile, but we had to modify about 1% of our code to get it to run.

5. As far as the GPL comment, I was talking about the standard API we, the linux community, decide on.

___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux

Hi Michael!

This is a huge problem for linux. We need a standard API for companies to seriously be able to develop software in linux.

Linux has a lot of problems, and this is not a member of that set. Strictly speaking, X is not part of linux. You might mean, "We had some problems getting our product to work in a linux environment," but I would appreciate if you would say that. It would be one thing if you were Netscape, and not some extreme late-comer with a high priced product. I disagree that having companies develop seriously for linux is any particular help (see: jouraling file systems, web servers, the OS itself), but, let me see if I can offer some solutions.

You can: buy a copy of.. MOTIF!

Or you can use GTK, (which runs on unix, windows, and beos) or Qt, (runs on unix and windows). As someone else pointed out, any distro that has X is prolly gonna include both of these toolkits.

Also, you fail to mention which sort of API you're looking for, but I'm assuming the gui-toolkit kind of thing. Please clarify a little if I'm wrong.

To preserve our freedoms by convincing corporations to free their software, we need to have a unified, standard, rock solid API for developing large scale applications.

Are you just trolling here? :P

way to implement Canvas, so of course they asked me about the API. The response - that there is no really standard XFree86 api that is supported by the linx community

Now I know this is a troll. Management asked you about an API? Uh uh, no way. Managers don't ask about things like APIs. :P And, duh, giving them the response 'there isn't one' is dumb on two counts. Dumb one, because it's just plain false - you can certainly use the athena widget set if you need guaranteed compliance, and dumb two because, even if it was true, you coulda just lied about it. Lucky for you, it wasn't true, just wrong.

ut, if we could've gone straight into the API and began hacking away, I'm sure those months could've been spent porting to a native app.

Look, are you suggesting that porting something from the MSFC to X should be as easy as a recompile? I mean, aren't you ignoring the fact that what you're REALLY facing is not 'lack of a standard linux/X api" but rather "the quagmire of bullshit one must deal with when porting ANY application to Win32 to Unix (or vice versa)?" I mean, come on, does your application run on some X emulation layer in windows? Noooo, it doesn't (wild guess, there), so it doesn't use any sort of X API, so having one for linux would have saved you exactly dick.

And of course whatever we decide on as a standard will have to be GPL'd..

From the canvas download page:

4.You may not modify, rent, resell for profit, distribute or create derivative works based on the Software or any part thereof.

So you can include it as part of your $375.00 gimp clone? No thankee.

Also, on mention of netscape, does anyone know how the original netscape did it? Did they write their own toolkit for each OS?

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blue

Feature List.

Looks like this thing can do lots, Page Layout, Graphics, Photos, Web Pages, etc.

EC
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of

Deneba Software ... plans to offer a free Linux version of Canvas 7 ... graphics software ... [which] will work only with Linux releases designed for Intel hardware, but Deneba left the door open to a PowerPC version if there is sufficient user demand.

...

However, porting the Intel version to the PowerPC shouldn't be difficult, [Peters] said, as long as the software is written in a high-level language such as C++ and limits direct interactions with hardware. Hsu said that Canvas is written in C++.

It appears that the release will not be open-sourced (to retain the competetive advantage on the profit Mac & Win versions), so does anyone want to comment on Hsu's implication that porting to PPC should be relatively easy?