Revision History Page

Version 2.0.0
April 12, 2006

Requires Mac OS X 10.4.3 or newer (Tiger).
Panther users should use version 1.9.0.

Version 1.9.0
Nov 21, 2005


New Measuring Tape Tool, Guidelines, and Interactive Cursor; improved multi-scale / multi-layer drawing capabilities and further optimization for Tiger.
 

Panther Version.
This is the newest version of EazyDraw which supports Panther - Mac OS X version 10.3.

Summary of additions since version 1.8.1

New Interactive Cursor provides readout of canvas position or precise graphic metrics such as intersections or point and tangent of a curve. The new Measuring Tape Tool measures drawing distances in free form or snaps to graphic positions to provide exact relative distances. Intelligent guidelines will position columns, rows, seek intersections or vertices and orient to extended lines, parallels or perpendiculars; great for geometric and technical drawing. New scaling options provide improved support of imported MacDraw and ClarisDraw scaled drawings.


The new Live Cursor is provided with the "Tape Cursor" tool that was added to the top of to the primary tool palette it is represented by a measuring tape icon. This tool combines a live numeric readout with the normal Arrow select tool. The X and Y (over and down) coordinates are shown in a small floating window attached to the cursor. Selecting a graphic and placing the cursor on or near the graphic will provide various measurements of the graphic -- interactively, on screen. Position over a handle to obtain a precise readout of the graphic position. For many graphics the relative position of the cursor (ie right or left side of a line) will provide different measurements (ie length/slope or X,Y value). This mode remains active until the Arrow tool is explicitly clicked . For documentation enter search phrase "Tape Cursor" .

The new Guideline selection is found on the Grid and Guides submenu of the Format main menu or on the Grid Palette. When Guidelines are checked, moves and edits of graphics are aided by automatic soft snap to provide alignment with other graphics on the drawings. Guidelines are sought from the graphics that are visible on the drawing screen. If there are too many guidelines interfering, or if the desired graphic's guideline is repressed by others - zoom in closer to the region of interest. A new Cloaking submenu provides methods for managing which graphics provide guidelines. The snap vertices capability has been expanded and optimized as well. The default state has this guidelines and vertex snapping unchecked. Full documentation is available: search phrase "guidelines" .

Option Clicking with the Measuring Tape Tool provides an on-screen tape measure. This is a free form measuring tape for measuring distances on the the drawing. To measure distances between graphics, select both graphics and click near a point of interest, the Measuring Tape will "snap" precisely to the graphic and measure distances from the point of interest. When the cursor is placed near a second point of interest another "snap" provides the desired precise measurement. For documentation enter search phrase "Tape Measure" .

A new submenu is provided on the Format main menu for Cloaking the guideline aspects of a graphic or layer. When snapping to guidelines (or vertices) it is common that too many guidelines are present and they interfere with establishing relationships to the desired master graphics. This submenu provides a method for excluding a graphic(s) or layer(s) from presenting guidelines and vertices. This can eliminate guideline clutter. Alternatively a few select graphics could be used as master guidelines by performing a "Select All" - Cloak, then select the desired master graphics and "Uncloak". Documentation is complete: search phrase "cloak".

Full Layers may be cloaked. The layer must be visible to be enabled on the submenus found on the Cloaking submenu (Format main menu). There is a separate menu for guidelines and vertices. A guideline layer may be established by cloaking all other layers: not the guideline layer. Then explicit guidelines may be drawn on the Guideline layer.

The "Hand" tool has been changed to perform a Panning action for the entire drawing. Now if the hand tool is selected, a click and drag on a drawing window will move the focused visible viewing rectangle, in the same fashion as the scroll bars action. Previously this tool was a dedicated graphic moving tool. SInce the Arrow tool is normally used for this action, it was decided to change the Hand tool to the more conventional Pan function.

A new "Align To Grid" palette is added to the Tools main menu. This palette provides fine control of the exact snapping position for a graphic, or group. This is useful for group graphics (ie a symbol) positioned and aligned with grid snapping, and necessary for electronic schematic drawings. Documentation is available: search phrase "align to grid".

Two methods are now provided for changing the scale of a drawing or layer. If a scale change is performed, on the scale palette, a user panel is shown on the drawing which asks which form of scale change is desired. Previous versions of EazyDraw scaled all graphics when performing a scale change. The new panel provides for this form of scale change, or a change of scale with no corresponding "re-draw" of the graphics. This new form is especially useful when importing MacDraw or Claris Draw scaled drawings as this method provides a means to simply set the correct scale for the drawing or layer.

Several new "Enabled Actions" for layers are now found on the popup menu on the Layers drawer. It is now possible to Show or Show/Select graphics on layers "above" or "below" the active layer. This can improve efficiency when working with multiple layer drawings. This convention was used with MacDraw and ClarisDraw and is a familiar practice for users of these applications that have switched to EazyDraw.

A new parameter is provided for walls (doors, windows, ect). The parameter will enable or prevent the automatic matching of wall ends and wall thickness when two of these objects are snapped together. This is important, for example, when connecting a 6 inch exterior wall with a 4 inch interior wall of a building plan. The new check box is found on the Graphic Details drawer, it is called "Auto Mate". When snapping, both wall segments must have their respective Auto Mate states checked for automatic mating of corners and wall thickness. Another method for preventing "mating" of two segments is for one segment to have it's end fully closed. If either end is fully closed wall thickness matching is not performed, even if Auto Mate is checked for both segments.

Improved capabilities for multi-layer drawings, when selecting objects on the non active layer. Now actions such as duplicate will insert the new graphics on the same layer as the original, rather than all duplicated graphics going to the current active layer. Several undo actions were incorrect if the originating graphic was on the non-active layer, these situations now work properly. Also several grouping and ungrouping actions, of graphics on the layers other than the active layer, would introduce undesirable alterations of the painting order. Now these situations are properly performed and undo of these actions completely returns all graphics to the proper state and layer.

Extended the contextual menu concept to provide the menu when the mouse is held down, without movement, for about 1 second. This will provide the same menu that pops up when a control click is performed on a drawing. Contextual menu access with simple hold down of the mouse.

A minor change for Exporting bit map graphics that have anti-aliasing capability, TIFF and JPG. When exporting just graphics, not the full drawing, a 2 point (1 /32 of an inch) margin is now added to the exported image. This margin is needed to provide shading pixels that are used for anti-aliasing curves that are near the edge of the image. Previously smooth curves like an arc could have a "flattened" clipped appearance in the exported bit map. This artifact was caused by the lack of "border" pixels to apply the anti-aliasing effects. This change will add a very minor extra border (white or transparent) around the exported image.

Added default persistence for the "Hide Extensions" and "Thumbnail Preview" selections on the "Save As" panel. In the past these needed to be set with each new drawing, as they reverted to an invariable default state for each new drawing. Now EazyDraw remembers the settings properly for the individual drawing and user selections are automatically remembered when changes are made to the selection. The preference for the state of each check box is the last value overtly selected by the user. To establish your personal preferences, simply make the selection(s) and the changes are automatically saved with the primary preferences for EazyDraw.

Changed the way Arcs and Pie shapes are created. Now a minimum size arc of 10 degrees is initially applied to the shape during the first click and drag step of the creation process. It is still possible to create smaller sweep angles during the second step of the creation process or as an editing step after creation. However, small zero degree sweep Arcs and Pies will not be so likely to happen by accident. This inadvertent zero degree sweep angle situation was confusing new and occasionally experienced users who would then see only the blue angle control handles and assume they were the Arc rather than controls for the Arc's elliptical major and minor axis parameters.

Further improvements to "Ungroup PICT", related to PICT's containing bitmaps. Additional bitmap formats are now understood and converted to TIFF properly.

Corrected a few minor problems with some of the lesser used parameters on the Dimension palette. All contextual help elements for this panel were improved.

Corrected a confusing behavior when adding layers to a drawing. Previously the new layer would initialize at the current default scale which is not expected in many cases. Now the new layer is added to the drawing with the scale and units of the current active layer for the drawing, fully independent of the current scale preferences settings.

Corrected problem when forming groups of graphics that contain text. The text would move to the center of the group, if multiple graphics contained text all text would overlap at the center of the new group. This is corrected now, inserted text remains with the proper graphic elements of the newly formed group.

Corrected problem selecting and editing Bezier curves, when zoomed in by a large amount. In some cases the graphic would not select, and if selected clicking on a handle would deselect the graphic rather than allowing interactive editing with the handle. This is now corrected.

Correct problems with the rotate tool, related to horizontal and/or vertical lines also sometimes when rotating groups that contain groups. In some cases when using the rotate tool large black rectangles would fill the area of the rotating graphic and these would not be redrawn correctly, leaving black artifacts on the drawing screen. The problem has been corrected with this release.

Corrected problem moving multiple graphics to a new layer, via the Graphic Details drawer. Previously only the first graphic of a multiple selection was moved, the others remained unchanged. Now all graphics move and undo works correctly, even if the various graphics are derived from different layers.

Improved the dimension report for length of Arcs. The length of an Arc or Pie graphic is now reported precisely. Lengths reported for other curved Bezier graphics has been improved to provide accuracy of about 1 in 10,000 or 100,000.

Corrected some problems encountered when printing without selecting a paper size. In some cases this would cause Landscape printing to not format properly on the printed page. Now, when this happens, a warning message is provided. The message urges the proper selection of a supported and available paper size using the Page Setup palette.

August 11, 2005

Summary of additions and fixes for each release
Version 1.8.0

Over 50 new customizable toolbar buttons.
Multiple drawing scales - important for Architectural drawing.
Keynote export to Apple XML  Keynote file format.
Integrated GZIP support for compressed files.
Improved EPS export with  LaTeX - PSFRAG support.
Improved performance for large complex drawings.
Optimized for Tiger.

This version has been built for Tiger and tested on Panther, there should be no problems running on either of these versions of OS X. This version does not run on Jaguar. Jaguar users may continue using version 1.7.1.

Major additions to the customizable document toolbar. Over 50 new buttons are available for addition to the toolbar. Upgrading users should be sure to visit the Customize Toolbar option, because the user's current toolbar selections will not be changed when EazyDraw is upgraded. Many of the new toolbar buttons are "smart" menus. They are "smart" in the sense that they will adapt to the last used pop-down menu selection. To repeat the last used menu selection, simply click the tool - no need to fully open the pop-down menu and scroll down to the desired selection. Tiger users may add more than one copy of several of these smart buttons to the toolbar, ie duplicate buttons are allowed (Tiger only). This can be useful for elements such as the Fill Color menu button, since the button is smart the duplicate buttons will evolve with the work flow to represent different colors, thereby providing toolbar buttons for more than one color. If this explanation is hard to follow- it is easy to learn by trial, experiment by adding two Fill Color buttons to the toolbar. There are new pop-down toolbar menus for all the drawing tool palettes. This means it is now possible to add any drawing tool (rectangle, star, parabola, ect) to the toolbar. The smart buttons are fully functional, double clicks will make the tool "stick" as they do on their normal tool palette. Documentation is not complete at this time for the new buttons and the smart tools capability.

Added the ability to have more than one scale for a drawing. It is now possible to define fully independent scales (or rulers) for different layers. Each layer will have one scale for all graphics on the layer. This capability is enabled using the new check box for Independent Layers on the Scale Palette. This new feature is fully documented in the EazyDraw Help, use the key phrase "Independent Layers" for a full explanation of using multiple scales.

Corrected several issues with EPS export. In some cases the bounds of the exported eps drawing would not be correct, or clip too close to the graphic. Two problems with the bounds setting were corrected, it is no longer necessary to return to document zoom of 100% to properly export eps. In some cases the EPS file would not open with other applications, there is an issue related to multiple color spaces (rgb, cmyk, grayscale, etc) in a single pdf or eps document. A new popup menu on the EPS export panel allows specification of a single color space for the export - this can avoid errors of "unable to open" when trying to read the exported eps file in other applications. A check box for support of LaTeX psfrag with EazyDraw generated EPS documents was added to the export panel. When checked, an invisible ASCII string, containing all printable ASCII characters is inserted in the exported EPS document. The inclusion of this string forces the creation of a one-to-one character lookup table which enables psfrag to properly translate the tag symbols inserted in the EazyDraw drawing. This is of interest only to users of LaTeX and PSFRAG.

Added export format for Keynote. The new selection is available on the export types menu. There is a menu selection to determine how slide(s) are created. You may convert layers to corresponding slides, or use page layout to draw individual slides on successive pages. A third selection allows one slide to be created from the current visible content of the drawing window. If a new file name is entered, a full new Keynote presentation file is created with the slide(s) defined. If an existing Keynote file is identified for the export, the EazyDraw slide(s) are appended to the end of the presentation. To access the APXL content, use the normal technique of opening the keynote file bundle's presentation.apxl file with a text editor. Page Setup has a new virtual electronic publishing printer name for Presentations and two predefined page sizes (800x600 and 1024x768) for common visual projecting equipment.

Integrated support for compression of both EazyDraw file formats is added with this version of EazyDraw. The compression format used is the standard GZip format with the file extension ".gz" . This is a standard open format supported by OS X, Unix, Windows, and other operating systems. A new "Compress" popup menu is found on the "Save As" panel, lower right. Select "GZip Compression" to zip the EazyDraw drawing file as it is written to the hard drive. These files will be typically compress to 10% of their natural size. This is useful for emailing EazyDraw files. The EazyDraw binary format, with GZip compression will provide the smallest file size. The EazyDraw binary format is used for large drawings (> 1000 graphics) that may require significant time to save to the hard drive in the normal EazyDraw graphic format. Please note that contrary to intuition, the zipped or binary format should not be used for archiving data: the full uncompressed EazyDraw Graphic Format is a human readable XML like Property List and should be used for long term archival, see the help documentation for a full explanation.

Optimized the action of moving a graphic(s). For large complex drawings the moving action was slow and "jumpy". This has been optimized 100-fold or better. The moving motion should now be responsive and smooth even for complex drawings and graphics on slower CPU's.

Expanded the utility of the Graphic Details drawer to monitor position and size of a graphic as it is created, the first drawing step. Previously the geometric information was updated in a live fashion only when editing a graphic. Now the information displayed on the Graphic Details drawer has live real time updating when creating a graphic, editing a graphic and during a move of a graphic.

Improved snapping to vertices (Grid and Snap Palette) to include intersections of curves as well as vertices, end points and centers. The scope of graphics for snapping to objects on other layers has been expanded to include graphics on all visible layers, previously on graphics on selectable layers were used as candidates for snapping. A visual clue is now provided when snapping occurs, the handle of the graphic being moved will now flash green when snapped to a vertex or intersection. The snapping remains a simple positioning aid, the snapped graphic is not attached or appended to the other graphic or intersection.

Expanded the use of the "Interactive" menu, found near the bottom of the Format menu. You may now apply scale, uniform scale, and the other interactive restraints to Images (pictures) and groups. The Uniform Scale - functionality is especially useful when it is necessary to hold the aspect ratio of an image or composite group graphic while changing the size. The Graphic Details information for Interactive Constrained graphics has been improved and specialized for all cases.

Added the ability to dimension from the "inside" or "outside" of Walls (walls, doors, windows, and bay-windows). The control is found on the Graphic details drawer, when the wall is selected. The choices are Center, Inside, or Outside. The convention for "inside" or "outside" is defined for a room drawn in the clock-wise direction.

It is now possible to change the Font family of all text in a group. Previously, it was necessary to ungroup and make the font change individually.

Corrected several refresh and drawing update aspects related to the Tiger release. Version 1.7.1 would occasionally leave drawing trailings when moving graphics or scrolling the drawing window. Everything is now responding properly on Tiger and Panther.

Corrected direction of arrows at the end of an Orthogonal Radius path. The arrow was drawn on a 45 degree angle rather than along the direction of the path. It now draws correctly.

Corrected the Horizontal and Vertical flip command for Doors. The flip was not taking into account the Hinge side for the door. All works as expected now.

Corrected problem duplicating graphic(s) across layers, or more specifically: selecting graphic(s) on a layer other than the active layer and executing a duplicate to produce new graphic(s) on the active layer. This would create the graphics but then problems could arise when working with the duplicated graphic(s). In particular the new graphics would not delete. The duplication now works properly and the new graphic(s) may be deleted without a problem.

Added an improved contextual menu (right, or CTRL mouse click) for Text graphics. The contextual menu for a selected text graphic now provides for changing font face (favorites only), font size, and several text and paragraph style actions.

Corrected problem with Top - External dimension tool. This was drawn as an internal dimension rather than an external dimension - now draws correctly.

Corrected direction of Rotate 90 degrees CW and CCW on the Tools transform menu. This was rotating in the wrong direction for Text and several graphics found on the Charting tools palette. The bug would also cause incorrect behavior for Undo after the rotate.

Corrected possible problem for moving very thin horizontal or vertical lines when "zoomed out" and with preferences set for using a Faint Image for the Move Image (see EazyDraw Preferences). This could result in the moving line disappearing during the move. Now in this instance, if the line could disappear, a dashed line is used for the move image.

Corrected problem with drag and drop of PDF content. When dropping PDF information on an EazyDraw drawing window the image would have low quality and be upside down. This has been corrected, PDF is "dropped" with full vector quality. This problem only happened with drag and drop of PDF snippets, dropping PDF files worked properly and Copy->Paste of PDF also worked properly.

Corrected problem with EPS export, fringes of the exported eps image were sometimes clipped by the export. Now the borders are properly established. Mac OS X version 10.4.1 or newer may be required to correct this situation in all instances.

Added a new form of Text Stamp. You may now insert a File Path text stamp into a drawing. This will insert a text defining the full file - folder path of the drawing. This is a "live" stamp, if the file is moved the stamp will change to reflect the new location.

It is now possible to scale images and pictures uniformly. This may now be accomplished through use of the Interactive menu (Format main menu) to include Images. Selecting Uniform Scale will hold the aspect ratio of the image constant while changing the size with the on screen handles.

Corrected problem with the copy then paste of very small circles or ovals. This process, when total oval size was less than 1 pt, would result in pasting of a smaller oval. Repeating the process would result in ever decreasing sizes for the pasted ovals. This is now corrected, the pasted oval is exactly the same size as the original in all cases.

Corrected problem snapping Ellipses to the grid. They would not align properly with the grid. This was also a problem with many of the shapes on the Charting palette, but much less noticeable. All of these shapes now snap and align properly.

Corrected a problem with entering width and height of objects in the Graphic Details drawer. Certain sequences of entries could result in invalid numbers for the values.

Corrected problem converting Stroked Text to Bezier Paths. The stroke setting for the converted Bezier paths was lost in the conversion.

Corrected problems that would occur if a 0.0 or very small value was entered for either Scale term on the Scale Palette. An entry of 0.0 was not checked properly and would cause infinities in scaling the drawing's graphics. This action would corrupt the file and initiate unpredictable behavior for drawing actions for the file. This situation is now checked and prevented. Both scale values are limited to the range of 0.001 to 10,000,000.

A minor change to the behavior of selecting or deselecting graphic(s). Now, just selecting or deselecting the graphic will not mark the drawing as "changed". This means the "Save" menu action will remain disabled - until a more significant real change is made to the drawing.

Corrected a problem with the Spell Check tool bar button. When the Spell Check button was added to the toolbar (using Customize), the button would not enable, it always remained disabled. Now it enables in synchronization with text in the document, or text objects selected.

Corrected possible problem with spell check of Annotation text. The red highlight markers for misspelled words was not being shown in all cases. Problem corrected, spell check works properly on Normal and Annotated text.

Corrected interface problem with the stepper button on the Stellate tool palette. The problem caused the number of stellate points to increase (rather than decrease) with the up-click of the stepper, when a stellate shape was selected. The action now decreases or increases the number of points correctly.

Corrected problem with dimensions of Feet/Inches in Fraction form. There was an extra "inches" or "feet" appended to the dimension string. The dimension would read: "1 foot 2 5/8 inches inches" . This has been corrected.

 

NewVersion 1.6.2: MacDrawPro Import, Walls-Doors-Windows, Elliptical Arcs, Many Color Gradients, Interactive Scaling.

MacDrawPro import is provided with the version. This is an initial release. Please report any issues noted. To the best of our knowledge and test results all aspects of a MacDrawPro drawing are imported and properly converted, including layers, patterns, gradients, and text. MacDrawII import has also been significantly upgraded. This addition lays our foundation for ClarisDraw import which is next in the queue and should be available in 4-6 weeks.

Four new Wall tools (walls, window, door, and bay window) have been added to the Technical tool palette. These are useful for architectural projects and map drawing. The new graphic shapes work well with the "snap vertices" feature, note Snap Vertices is not the factory default setting. Features are created by using the wall elements in a "building block" fashion. When two sections are "snapped" to form a corner or intersection their end shapes automatically form to create the proper union of the components. The help documentation includes detailed information on the use of these new tools, help search phrase: "how do I draw walls".

Gradient Fill has been expanded to allow more than two colors and a new "Burst" effect is now provided. There is now no limit on the number of colors that may be used in a gradient. The Burst effect is provided with 3 predefined shapes (rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle). Other user defined shapes may be installed with a simple drag and drop on the new burst configuration view. The new features are documented, search key word - "how do I draw a burst gradient fill".

Arcs and Pies have been improved to allow elliptical forms. There are 3 new editing handles that provide control of the major axis and degree of elongation of an arc or pie shape. This new feature is documented in the Help content, search phrase: "how do I draw an arc".

Interactive on drawing scaling is now provided. This new feature is accessed near the bottom of the Format main menu. The Interactive sub menu provides differing degrees of edibility that may be applied to a graphic (graphics with a Bezier path). If a scaling interactive is applied, the editing handles are expanded to provide on screen scaling resizing. This should save use of the "Morph" panel for situations requiring free resizing of a graphic. For complete documentation use help search phrase "interaction" or "scaling".

Improved the layer drawer to make it easier to change Active/On/Off status of a layer. There are now simple check boxes that may be accessed with a single mouse click to make these changes. The drawer view may now be resized and the columns reordered. There is a new column showing the number of graphics on each layer, the drawer needs to be extended past the default open size to view the column showing the number of graphics.

Added support for very thin line widths. Important for technical drawings. When drawing to a screen a minimum (display determined) line width is used to prevent the line from disappearing. When drawing to a printer the line width entered is sent to the printer (minimum values or printer DPI are NOT checked by EazyDraw) as entered. The line width will need to be set appropriately for the printer/plotter device. The line width slider now resets it's range when a numeric value is entered.

Corrected problem rotating text exactly 90 degrees. The problem would cause the text to disappear.

Corrected behavior when converting stretched text to Bezier Paths. The stretched size is now maintained with the conversion.. Previously the converted glyphs would revert to their (usually smaller) original font size.

Added the ability to specify the line width of the Grids. Support for proper handling of very thin line widths is included.

Corrected potential problem with Arrows, Dashes, and Annotations applying inadvertently when opening saved drawings.

Corrected problem with duplicating and copying Spirals, flattened spirals were not reproducing the flattened aspect properly.

Corrected a hang situation that was possible when "reversing text". This would happen if the selected text had more than one range of font attributes. Now works properly.

Corrected problem setting line cap style.

Corrected numerous problems with MacDrawII import, including: issues with dashed lines, pen widths, and closed polygons. Added support for rectangles with "rounded ends".

Corrected problem with converting to and from fonts with extended unicode characters that do not map exactly back to the English alphabet keyboard characters. Webdings converting back to Times was an example problem font conversion. This issue is corrected. It is advised to study up on Unicode if you are finding font conversions to cause problems.

Corrected problem pasting text from Carbon Applications. Text would paste but not behave properly until moved or resized.

Corrected a hang problem with inserting centered text in a graphic, typing an entry the deleting all the characters. There was a hang when the last character was deleted. This is corrected now.

Corrected large offset for copy paste of a horizontal or vertical line. Now the normal offset or repeat offset for multiple paste.

Corrected conversion of an Arc to a Pie, counter clockwise was not being honored.

Possibly corrected a rare unexpectedly quit that could occur upon closing a window (or quitting). This problem seemed to surface when several inter application copy-paste actions had been executed. This has been difficult to reproduce and isolate, if recurrence is noted please report.


New with version 1.6.1

New Text and DTP capability:

Note some of these capabilities are not available to Jaguar users.

Version 1.6 introduces new text / desk top publishing capabilities. There is a new text main menu and expanded Item Details support for text, fonts, and unicode character input. The new features are documented in the EazyDraw interactive Help information. The Menu Reference or Table of Contents to guide you to the documentation pages for the new features.

Text graphics have 3 new interactive resizing handles. They are blue in color, located on the lower right of a selected text graphic. Use these to stretch the text, rather than resize the text container. For detailed documentation use key phrase "stretch text".

The Graphic details drawer provides 4 new detailed views for inspecting and altering text content. The new Character view provides access to a font's extended unicode characters. Automatic keyboard mapping for Symbol, Dingbats, and other mapped fonts is now provided.

New menu command for Reverse Text (Text->Stylize->Reverse Text). This action will apply the text color to the text layout area and change the color of the text to the fill color (background) of the text layout area. If no fill color is specified, the text color is changed to White.

New menu command to Bezier Text (Text->Stylize->Bezier). This action converts a text layout area to Bezier Paths and adds all the character paths to a new Group graphic with Fixed Group Edit attribute. After this action the text may be stretched and morphed as normal Bezier graphics.

New menu command to Punch Text (Text->Stylize->Punch). This action is similar to Reverse Text, except the text content is rendered in a "Stencile" style, transparent through the background mask. If the text was on a white, or no background a black background is provided, the color of the background may be changed using the Fill Color on the Color and Style Palette. The resulting graphic is actually a Join of the bounding text area rectangle and the individual text character curves with winding rule for the Join is set to Even-Odd. To understand the mechanics review the search phrases "Join", "Winding Rule", "Group", "Group Edit" in the Help documentation, there is also a Tutorial file covering Join and the Even-Odd Winding rule.

Several other new text menu commands were added to the Text main menu.

Performance Improvements

Significant performance improvements are provided by version 1.6, especially for technical drawings. A test conducted with a full home plan, heavily dimensioned, provided by a user: select all move and drop with version 1.5.1 took 22 seconds (PowerBook G4), on 1.6 same action required under 2 seconds.

New Preferences Options

New preferences selection for determining the size and position of new untitled drawings. The popup menu for this parameter is found on the the main preferences window - upper right. You can now select different sizes and configurations for the default new canvas window. It is also possible to fully tailor the configuration. Use the search phrase "Default Window SIze" to connect with a help thread documenting the new parameter.

Added preference selection to control the move (or drag) image. This is the image used when moving graphic(s). You may now select a full image, faint image, bounding dashed rectangle or a combination of these. The dashed rectangle can provide additional guide/position information. Using just the rectangle can provide a slight responsiveness improvement if large numbers of complex graphics need to be moved together.

Other New Features

Added more control and inspection capability for GIF images in an EazyDraw drawing. The added capability is accessed with the Graphic Details drawer. You can now step through each image of a GIF animation file. You may also view the animation live by checking the "Animate" box. A sample file is provided in the examples folder.

Added a rotation option to the Linear Duplicate capability. This allows the duplication array to have a "spin" applied. This is useful for forming sets of objects such as the spokes of a wheel.
Corrected color space conversion to CMYK for gradient fill. Gradient Fills now properly blend CMYK colors.

Further additions and testing of new features on Text main menu. Font changes now apply directly to annotations and dimensions.

Problems Fixed

There were changes in the internal format used to save the open documents and their locations upon quitting EazyDraw. This means that the first time the new version is used the previous open documents will not be restored to their previous screen position. The change is automatically implemented in the system preferences history, meaning that subsequent quits and restarts will perform properly.

Fixed Graphic Details drawer interaction with Dimension values. Now any change of the size on position of a graphic on the item details drawer is properly reflected in the a dimension datum attached to the graphic.

Fixed conversion of text to Bezier when the text included new-line characters. This problem was introduced with Panther. This text now converts properly again. We now automatically group the individual text glyph paths into one group graphic, with the Fixed Group Edit attributed in effect. This is the normal next two steps after a conversion, so we now make it automatic. If the individual paths are desired, they can be accessed with a simple Un-Group (CMD-Shift-Right Paren). This also keeps the Bezier Editing handles from obscuring the converted text. This is also very convenient if it desired to stretch and scale text, as the Fixed Edit attribute allows interactive continuous resize of the group of typeset text characters.

Corrected export PDF problem. This was a rare but possible problem related to Bezier path with two exactly overlapping vertices.

Corrected hang up that resulted upon copy of text containing unicode characters that do not map to Classic MacRoman Encoding. The hang or possible unexpected quit would result if this information was read by a Carbon Application that does not support unicode. In plain english: copy of text with symbol font to MSWord or PowerPoint. The hang/crash is now avoided and question marks are filled in for the Carbon App's unsupported characters.

Added a dimension format for Fraction-Ft-In. This will display the dimension length in feet, inches, fractions of inches (as compared to decimal inches).

Corrected undo error when resizing group graphics and the resize results in a flip of the graphic.

Improved Classic PICT export/copy/paste for arcs and sectors (pie shapes). The curves for these shapes are now rendered with high quality in Classic Carbon Applications that import this format. See 1.5.1 release notes for more information.

Improved logic for selecting text for editing. Text overlapping with other objects was not selecting easily. A double click on the text area is all that is needed to select the text and enter the editing mode. This is now working properly, the selection applies to all text objects, even if they overlap or are obscured by other graphics. The symptom was that in some case several double clicks would not succeed in placing a text object in the editing mode.

Fix problem with rulers overwriting scroll controls, and a occasional single column of bad pixels left next to the vertical scroll control.

Fixed problem with Select All for multiple layers when Enable Actions setting (popup near bottom of Layers Drawer) was set for Select Others. Now works as it should.

Fixed problem scaling drawing from the Page Setup panel. For some print drivers the proper scaling and portion of the drawing was not applied. Corrected.

Fixed exact position of the center view point on reopened drawings, previously the position of the opening view might be slightly different than when the drawing was last saved. Position is now exactly the same.

Fixed a bug on dimensions where the arrow line would overwrite the numeric text, when the span of the dimension was very small. Now the arrow line is not drawn over the text in this case.

Changed slightly the internal definition of !00% overlap for gradient fills. Gradients at 100% overlap should just become smooth and continuous, some gradients were developing speckles and anti-alias effects at this setting. This may slightly effect appearance existing drawing's gradients, the change should improve the appearance.

Fixed a bug with changing the number of sides of an equilateral polygon via the Item Details drawer, when the number of sides was 3 or 4. The stepper was not working properly for this change in this case, corrected.

Fixed subtleties with undo of Join, Weld, Crop, and Frame. The undo - redo was not precisely consistent, corrected.

Fixed typing text problem, the typing font and style would revert to the default style when replacing text of a different font or style. This would occur with the first word of text entry, upon deselect and reselect of the word. Change to respect the font and style of the text being replaced.

Fixed bug with copy and paste of images that were flipped upside-down upon paste via a Classic PICT format.

Fixed bug sending graphic with inserted text to front or back, text was dropped. All correct now.

Added support for snap to grid when pasting graphics into a drawing. This works when dropping graphics as well. Now the the snap to grid is respected for the paste action, if snap to grid is in effect, the pasted (dropped) graphic(s) will be snapped to the appropriate grid. If more than one graphic is pasted only one graphic is used to define the snap positioning, the relative positions of the pasted graphics takes precedence over the grid points.

Fixed copy->paste location for pasting into another drawing. The drop point is now honored precisely. Corrected this process when the source and destination drawings have different zoom values at the time of operation. The cursor point on the graphics(s) is placed precisely on the drop point in the destination drawing. If grid snapping is enabled the lead object (first selected -- not top or bottom in painting order) is placed on the grid and the relative spacing of other objects is maintained.

Added documentation for Conversion of Text to Bezier paths, the new Group Edit level drawing / group attribute, operation of the Arrow Nudge keys and their key modifiers.

Fixed occasional unexpectedly quit bug that would occur after closing a window that had been the source of a copy operation.

Fixed small jump by graphics at the end of a move operation. The jump was small but noticeable especially when working at higher zoom values. Now the graphic(s) drop precisely at the position designated by the interactive move.

Fixed bug with copy paste of groups containing text objects. In some cases the pasted text would move relative to the other objects of the group.

Fixed Frame enable on the Grouping menu. The menu would not enable when framing an image as the base graphic.

Fixed occasional problem of Bezier curve handles - Jumping - or shooting out - by a large amount on undo.

Fixed copy special style that would occasionally not work unless the style palette was not open. This correction applies to all paste special of attributes def