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EazyDraw Version 2.6.0
April 8, 2008
Expanded Additions Pack
Several New Tools and Capabilities
This release is highly recommended for all Tiger and Leopard users, both French and English languages.  New Tools: Spokes, Free Hand, Parallelograms.  New Capabilities: Cross-Overs, Boolean Combine, Pinned Lines, Tangents.
Expanded Additions Pack
Three new libraries for Network Diagraming have been added to the Additions Pack. New detailed, fully native EazyDraw Digital Vector Maps are now part of the Additions Pack
Additions Pack (PDF Manual, Libraries, and Tutorials)
The EazyDraw Additions Pack is available for $15, one year subscription.  It includes the read along users manual (350 pages) in PDF form, EazyDraw libraries, topic specific tutorials, and example drawings.  Go to the Additions Pack web page to learn more about this addition.
EazyDraw download is a 13 meg universal binary optimized for both the Intel and PowerPC Mac processors, run on Leopard or Tiger, Panther and Jaguar version available
The download is a disk image file (dmg), its size is 22 Meg.

Hot Topics

AppleWorks Import
iWork '08
Network Diagrams
French Language
Additions Pack
Ungroup PDF
Walls and Ribbons
Digital Maps
Claris Draw

EazyDraw Version 2.6.0 ---- April 4, 2008

Three new tools for drawing Spokes, as in spokes of a wheel, added to the Stellate palette. Cross-overs for schematics to indicated connections or lack thereof, boolean Combine submenu for Union, Intersection, or difference of two graphics, New Parallelogram tools on Charting palette.  New Free-Hand tool on main tool palette.  New Pinning capability on Format main menu, Draw Tangents and/or normals to curves from the Tape Measure tool (type "t" or "n" ).  Improved Knife when cutting cyclical math curves (sine waves).

Cross-Overs

New Cross-Over palette is found on the Tools main menu.  This feature provides a method to indicate the state of two crossing lines or paths.  The indicators are used to show schematically whether or not the crossing paths are physically connected.  The easiest way to think of the concept is that of a "jumper" that would indicate one path "jumping-over" another and not making a connection.  Several indicator shapes are provided: jumper, bridge, gap, and other.  There are also indicators such as a "dot" that can be used to indicate the opposite state, that of a physical connection. 

The location of the indicators may be controlled parametrically or automatically placed and crossing points of lines and paths.  In the Automatic mode, the Painting Order is used to determine which path is logically "over" another, only to top path will indicate the specified Cross-Over state.  Documentation is complete; use search phrase "cross over" to learn the details of this new capability.  Copy - Paste special supports this attribute and the Cross Over palette has a Library Properties button to allow a Cross-Over property to be added to a user library.  The Cross Over palette also has a mini-palette form that is user configurable.  The new palette is fully localized for the French language user interface.

Boolean Combine

A boolean Combine submenu is provided for forming a new graphic from two graphics source graphics.  The Union, Difference and Intersection operations are found on this new submenu about 2/3rds the way down on the Tools main menu.  These are compound operations that cut two overlapping closed graphics, then recombine the sub-paths according to defined logical rules.  Documentation is complete; use search phrase "combine" for detailed definitions of these operations.

Free Hand (Pencil) Tool

Added a new Freehand pencil path tool to the main tool palette.  The new tool provides simple freehand drawing, the path placed on paper will follow the cursor with minimal smoothing.  With this tool one does not need to lift and click the mouse to drop vertices, as is the case with the other Bezier path tools.  The fitting of the mouse trail to the created path is sensitive to the degree of zoom of the drawing.  Therefore if a more detailed (jagged) path is needed, zoom in.  If a path is too jagged, zoom out.  After completion the Smooth or Round commands found on the Tools -> Transform menu may be used to improve the continuity of the path, if necessary.  The new Pencil tool takes the place of the radius - orthogonal path tool, the orthogonal path tools are still available on the Technical tool palette (near top).

Tangents and Normals

Added a new capability to draw tangents and normals (perpendicular) to a curve.  For straight paths this was done using the guides capability but it wasn't possible to get a precise automatic line oriented with respect to a curved path.  Use the Tape Measure tool to access the new capability.  When ever the tape measure cursor is indicating the slope of a curve at a given point (the light green cursor read-out) simply typing "t" or "n" will add a tangent or normal line to the drawing.  The line added has the center and angle pinned so resizing will not loose the precise orientation.  It is recommended to review the EazyDraw.

Pin and Lock

Newly expanded Lock capability, now referred to as Pin and Lock actions.  There are two new submenus at the bottom of the Format main menu with new individual selections for locking a graphic.  The lock menu now allows a graphic to be locked independently against moving and deleting.  The new Pin submenu allows the fixing of the center, length, or angle of a graphic. 

The Pin selections are of primary interest for simple lines, using these choices will offer several new useful interactive editing forms for a simple line.  The Pin Center selection works with lines, rectangles, and rectangular shapes such as those found on the Charting palette.  When the center is pinned, interactive on-screen size changes are made relative to the rectangle (or line) center.  The Pin state of a graphic is indicated by a new handle mark shown at the center of the graphic, no mark indicates no pinning.  The new lock-against-delete state is indicated by round rather than the normal square handles.  Documentation is complete; use search phrase "pin" to access.

Parallelograms

Added 4 new charting tools. Three new forms of parallelograms were added.  We were missing two geometries of the orthogonal parallelogram form, two more of these were added, now all forms of this shape are possible.  A free form parallelogram tool was added, it easily creates any possible parallelogram. A new "Bow Tie" shape was added to fill out the row of 4 tools.  They behave and draw in the normal fashion, no new documentation needed.  Full support on the Graphic Details Drawer is complete.

Spokes

Added 3 new stellate tools for drawing spokes.  There are 3 forms, a simple straight spoke, a Bezier shaped spoke, and a rounded rectangle spoke.  They are found at the bottom of the Stellate palette.  They behave and draw just like other stellates.

Ungroup PDF - For Import from Canvas X

Made several improvements to the PDF ungroup.  These focused on ungrouping PDF file generated from the Deneba Canvas application.  The PDF ungroup now detects use of tile-pattern-fills in the PDF translates these to EazyDraw patterns.  The text generation from Canvas is rather non-standard with individual character placement, this situation is now handled and the text streams are recombined into EazyDraw text boxes and positioned with normal typesetting attributes.  This means that more text from these files is imported, sized, and positioned correctly.  The import is somewhat slow due to this construction.  Optimization will be added in the future after we have have more feedback and testing on the basic ungrouping correctness and accuracy.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

Improved Knife, when cutting cyclical math curves, specifically all variations of sine waves and the triangle wave form.  Before the knife tool would cut the cyclical math curve correctly but the resulting two or more curves were reduced to Bezier curves, loosing their cyclical control functionality.  Now a cut sine wave will result in two new sine waves.  The period and phase of each new cyclical function is adjusted to exactly match the original wave form.  This improved functionality does not apply to the discontinuous cyclical wave forms, square wave, pulse and saw-tooth; these still drop back to Bezier paths when cut.  If one of the resulting cut wave forms would have less than 1/2 of a cycle, the waveform is still reduced to a Bezier curve.

Changed behavior of superscript and subscript commands (both from Text menu and Attributes bar).  Previously these commands only changed the baseline of the target text range.  Now the commands change the baseline and decrease the font size by 2 points.  The inverse command (No(rmal) on the attributes bar and "use default" on the text menu) returns the baseline and adds 2 points of font size.  The independent raise or lower baseline commands behave as they did before.

Corrected inconsistency with the Knife tool when cutting a simple line.  It was possible to drop the vertex of a line with the knife, the result would be a line with only one point. This inconsistency is now corrected, it is not possible to drop-cut either of a line's two vertices or end points.

Corrected problems adjusting the size of some Free Transform interactive graphics, that contained rectangles or charting shapes nested in group graphics.  These now all scale properly.

Corrected possible scaling problems with the new Cut Circle graphics that were introduced with version 2.5.0.  Previously they would scale properly in a group, but if the containing group was removed by an Ungroup the Cut-Circle graphic's resize handles would be misplaced.  All is correct now.  Cut Circles are the graphics found on the Technical Tool palette, second row from the bottom.

Corrected problem introduced with EazyDraw version 2.5.2, version 2.5.0 and earlier did not have the problem.  It was a rare problem causing EazyDraw to launch incorrectly.  It could only happen to users that were upgrading from an earlier version of EazyDraw.  The trigger of the bug was custom (or inadvertent) additions to the colors found in the "eazydraw.clr" color list (in Colors folder found in the home Library folder).  If fewer than 8 custom colors were added, the problem would occur upon launch. - very rare situation.  All fixed.

Corrected problem importing MacDrawPro and ClarisDraw drawings with bitmap images (JPG, TIF) on Intel machines.  Some bitmaps that would import correctly on PowerPC processors were not interpreted correctly on Intel CPUs (byte swap issue for those who understand what that means).  All corrected now.

Corrected problem exporting TIF images.  It was possible to have a dark line at the top of the image.  The line was only a present when using a white background, transparent backgrounds were drawn correctly.  The problem was introduced with version 2.5.0, and the dual-rep TIFF capability.  It is corrected now.

Corrected problem importing MacDrawPro and ClarisDraw drawings with custom colored patterns.  The patterns would import correctly but after saving the EazyDraw file and re-opening the Patterns would return to the default black and white pattern.  This is now corrected.

Corrected problem rotating text with a filled text box, filled with solid color, pattern, or gradient.  In this situation the rotation would not restore after a save and re-open of the file.  This is now corrected.  Another aspect of the problem was that text would be inverted (up side down) while rotating, this is now corrected as well.

Corrected issue importing ClarisDraw files related to long text fields.  A new format variation was encountered and included in the text interpretation.  This may help some users that were having trouble getting all their text to import.

Improved the Ungroup PDF for older versions of PDF that are commonly generated on Windows machines.  Text size was not translating properly, one would see a corrupt text box with reported font size of 1.0 - this situation is now handled with the PDF conversion.

Corrected arrow at the end of a rounded or radius connector.  The end arrow was not pointed in the correct direction.  It now behave correctly.  This only happened with the one particular form of a orthogonal connector that was drawn the had its corner shape changed via the Connector palette.

Corrected problems rotating some graphics 90 degrees clockwise and 90 degrees counter clockwise with the flipping menu commands or attribute bar buttons.  Text was not flipping the actual text, only the text box. Other graphics were being changed to raw Bezier paths unnecessarily, for example a rectangle was not maintained as a rectangle with the flip action.  All is correct now.

Corrected problem changing the text color from the toolbar button.  If the text had multiple styles of typeface, a subscript for example, the color would only change up to the point of typeface change.  Corrected now.

Corrected possible problems exporting to Keynote drawings that were imported from a Classic drawing application such as MacDraw, or ClarisDraw.  In the old classic environment it was possible to "color" a line with a pattern color.  This is not acceptable to Keynote and while EazyDraw would handle the situation, upon export to Keynote a block was encountered that would prevent the file save.  All is fixed.

Corrected problem saving the color of a Grid Graphic, the ones found on the bottom of the Technical Tool palette.  The color would revert to black, or default unless an outline was showing for the grid.  Now the color saves and restores correctly.

Optimized the internal code for opening a new drawing.  Opening a drawing or creating a new drawing was beginning to take a noticeable amount of time, especially on PowerPC processors or any processor on Tiger.  The drawing initialization code was optimized, now there is no noticeable time to open a blank drawing.  Opening larger drawings will still require a time in proportion to the size and complexity of the drawing.

Removed the support for creating and updating file icon previews in the main file open dialog.  This was an older feature of relevance on Jaguar and Panther and no longer needed.  The QuickLook technology in Leopard has superseded the older file icon technology that was used for these previews.  On Tiger and Leopard support for the old feature would unnecessarily "touch" files while browsing the Open dialog, thereby changing the File-Modified dates - an undesired consequence.  Removing the feature all together corrects the issue.

EazyDraw Version 2.5.2 ---- February 14, 2008

Customizable Toolbar improvements, Ability to convert a Blend to component paths, Improved MacDrawPro Import, Improved ClarisDraw Libraries Import, Fixed possible customizing toolbar lock-up.

Customizable Toolbar

Several improvements were made to the main window toolbar - when used in the Text label mode without icons.  In this mode the palettes such as the color picker and gradient picker are presented as menus.  These menu presentations were significantly enhanced to provide reasonable submenu organization for a more efficient user experience.

Lock-up during customizing toolbar

Corrected possible random behavior when customizing a toolbar.  Extremely rare problem which would occur during customization of the toolbar on one drawing if another drawing was closed a minute or two before the customization action.  The bug would take several random forms, possibly hanging the window or not completing a customization task but most in most cases there would be no visible sign of the problem, just a message in the system log files.  All is fixed now.

Convert Blends

Added the ability to convert blends into individual paths or lines.  This lets one use the blend capability as an interactive form of advanced duplicate, for linear duplication tasks.  The blend function can generate a family of curves transitioning across a small set of defining curves.  The new capability, found on the "convert to" submenu, allows the full family of curves to be "ungrouped" for individual management and editing.  This is also useful for complex illustrations, the individual paths may behave better for scaling and distortion as a nested grouped component.  The individual curve may in some cases draw more quickly as well, in the case where thousands of curves might be in use.

Graphic Details Limits

Added minimum limits for several parameters on the Graphic Details drawer.  It was reported that a zero-radius circle would cause KeyNote to crash when exported.  This problem is found with several other graphics, for example a zero width rectangle.  Therefore minimum limits are now in place for several parameters.  However, in some cases very small values might be required, for example a small dot of a circle.  To allow entering very small values EazyDraw sets the minimum limit in accordance with the zoom of the drawing.  Therefore, if a very small value is needed for a parameter it may be necessary to zoom in on the graphic before entering the value.

Import ClarisDraw Libraries

Corrected problem importing ClarisDraw libraries.  The problem was related to library graphics that included text.  This is now corrected, we have imported several large complex libraries that have been submitted by users.  The ClarisDraw Library import is now quite robust.

MacDraw File Convert

Corrected import issue with MacDrawPro drawings.  The problem was with certain forms of Bezier paths that contained vertex points with no control points.  This seems to be a rather rare construct, one needs to know to option click a control point in the reshape mode in MacDrawPro in order to even create one of these curves.  So the problem probably did not appear for most users.  All is corrected now.

EazyDraw Version 2.5.1c ---- January 27, 2008

Attributes Toolbar, Charting and Graphing Tools, 512 based Icons, improved PDF ungroup, Multi-Rep TIFF export (for developers), Hex Grid for Game Design, New Scale Worksheet.

Attributes Toolbar

Improved performance of the new Attributes Bar, when text is selected.  Users of slower PowerPC CPU's reported sluggishness when using the Attributes Bar.  The updating of the attributes for text has been optimized to minimize CPU load in this situation.  Please note that the Attributes Bar has the newer Leopard appearance, to maintain Tiger compatibility EazyDraw needs to simulate the buttons and their detailed gradients when running on Tiger.  This takes a fair amount of CPU load, and may be noticeable on an older PowerPC.  PowerPC - Tiger users should consider upgrading to Leopard or turning off the Attributes Bar.  Of course, for performance and stability the Leopard upgrade is strongly advised for all situations.

New Default Toolbar

We have a new default toolbar configuration.  This configuration compliments the Attributes Bar better than the previous toolbar, some elements previously in the default toolbar are now present in the Attributes Bar, allowing other elements to be added to the main toolbar.  If you have used EazyDraw before you will not see the new default configuration and you may want to customize your toolbar or customize and move the new default configuration to your toolbar.

French Localization

Additions and corrections for French localization.  Dash and Arrow palettes formatted better for the French labels and wording.  Export panel localized fully now.  Fully tested on Tiger and Leopard using the French user interface.  Corrected issues with Open AppleWorks files, using French interface, the open dialog would not show the option to select another file type for Open: now all works properly.  Further work on the French PDF manual is now available, this project is still not complete.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

Corrected a possible "unexpectedly quit" that could occur when applying a transfer property (shadow, or gradient for example) from a library.  These are the property library elements that are placed in a user library using the small LL icon found on parameter palettes.  The unexpectedly quit would happen when applying the property from the library to a graphic in a drawing.  All is corrected now, the Library property transfers all work as documented now.

Improved the Keynote export.  Support for arrows has been added.  Corrected possible position errors for lines when exporting just graphics rather than full drawing area, now lines are precisely positioned in all situations.

Fixed a problem on Dash panel, the default list of defined named dashes was not provided.  Now the menu has 8 named dash patterns properly listed and available for use.

Fixed pasting images into MS Word and other older technology applications that prefer the Classic PICT data format.  Images often would paste up-side-down.  A vertical flip was added, this should correct the issue, if unwanted flips are noted please report the problem.

Changed behavior of including an anti-aliasing border when exporting bitmaps.  If anti-aliasing is on and you select to just export graphics, or selected graphics, a 2 pixel border is included to allow anti-aliasing of outside edges of the graphics.  This is not desirable in some cases such as creating a background image for a web site where the image may be tiled, as an undesired white border will be present on each tiled image.  The border is not included if you export "Full Drawing Area" and now it is also eliminated if anti-aliasing is turned off.  Previously the border was still included when exporting just graphics without anti-aliasing, this was logically inconsistent.

Corrected rare annoyance associated with the pattern and gradient toolbar tools.  The problem was that the use of one of these tools could inadvertently change the temporary default for a pattern or gradient, then new graphics would have a gradient or pattern.  Then it would be necessary to open the Gradient panel and turn off gradient so that new graphics would draw without the gradient, (or pattern).  This was rare but annoying.  All is fixed now.  The toolbar tools can be used freely without worry of this happening.

Corrected problem on EazyDraw Preferences, restore all to Factory would not close the pull down panel.  This is fixed now.

Corrected problem with the new modified circle graphic, it was possible to set the minor radius larger than the radius on the Graphic Details drawer.  This could then prevent the file from opening.  This is corrected, and files saved with this error are now senses and corrected so that they are opened properly and the inconsistency is corrected.

Corrected possible problem using independent scales for different layers.  If the scale panel was not open the grid could draw incorrectly when linked to rulers.  All corrected now.

EazyDraw Version 2.5.0 ---- January 4, 2008

Attributes Toolbar, Charting and Graphing Tools, 512 based Icons, improved PDF ungroup, Multi-Rep TIFF export (for developers), Hex Grid for Game Design, New Scale Worksheet.

Attributes Toolbar

A new Attributes Toolbar is now available.  It is a mini toolbar located at the top of the drawing area, above rulers and below the main toolbar.  It is accessed from a menu selection at the bottom of the View main menu, you can turn it on / off from there.  The preference control for showing the toolbar on new drawings is found on the Page Layout palette.  Documentation is complete (EazyDraw Help, but not the PDF manual at this time) use search phrase "toolbar" to learn more, we refer to it as the "attributes toolbar".  This toolbar is actually a family of toolbars, they are context sensitive, they change when graphics are selected or deselected.  The tools shown are chosen to be relevant to the selected graphics on the drawing.  This feature is similar to the mini toolbar found in the iWork '08 suite (Pages '08 and Numbers '08), use of these tools should be natural for iWork08 users.

Scale Worksheet

There is a new Scale Worksheet, access it from your Scale palette or the new attributes toolbar.  The worksheet helps arrive at a proper scale for a scaled technical drawing.  It interactively displays the relationship between your choice of paper size and the dimensions of the project.  A great help for both a novice that may need assistance in understanding how a scaled drawing will work, and the expert planning a project and presentation format.

512 icons

All new 512 based icons for the application, drawing files, and library files.  These were drawn with EazyDraw and saved in the updated OS X, Apple Icon Image format so that they look great on Leopard.

Charting and Graphing Axis Tools

New charting and graphing tools on the Technical Tools palette, near the bottom, are now complete.  These now have full support on the the Graphic Details drawer and Help documentation is now complete .  There are 4 new axis and grid tools to be used as integral components of a graph or chart.  They consist of an integrated tick-mark, a compound text label graphic, rectangular grid, and hexagon grid.  They can be used to build axes and labels for chart graphics.  These have been highly optimized to display quickly.  It is better to use one of these compound graphics, especially for text-label sequence, compared to a conventional group array of text or tick marks. To learn more use these search phrases in EazyDraw Help: "graphing tools", "text labels", "grid tools".

Unjoin Bezier

Added new command to Unjoin a Bezier path or curve.  This will separate segments of a complex path at points where the path jumps (MoveTo segments) from one stroked portion of the path to another.  This is useful and recommended when complex paths have been imported into an EazyDraw drawing.  This situation is found when text is converted to Bezier or stylized.  It also occurs with ungrouped PDF files, and is common for PDF files that originate from AutoCad.  You may think of it as one more level of ungrouping available in these situations.  An example might be a semi-colon, this would let one separate the two marks of the semi-colon.  It is found on the Tools main menu, Convert submenu.  If a complex path is not converting as desired, use this new Unjoin then attempt the convert.

Hex Grid

Hex grid tool on Technical Tool palette is now complete with Graphic Details support.  The grid can be rotated and fully adjusted with respect to the origin.  The sides can be extended or shortened for different appearance.  When fully extended an isosceles triangle grid is attained.  Documentation is complete.

Multi-Rep TIFF Export

Added the ability to export multi-representation TIFF files.  This format is the new Apple standard for application images and icons.  The format is a tiff file but it actually contains two tiff images, one at the requested DPI resolution and a second at 4x the DPI resolution.  These will become important as Leopard moves onto higher resolution displays (think HD) in the future.  This is of primary interest to software developers drawing buttons and icons for Mac and web applications.  There is an example of one of these TIFF files in the examples folder, Preview displays the files and shows the two resolutions.  TIFF Export now provides color space control.  RGB, RGBA, CMYK, and CMYKA are supported.  The DPI for TIFF saved files is now saved with the file so that the file opens with a proper nominal size in Adobe applications.

Improved PDF Ungroup

Improved the speed of PDF ungroup, the improvement can be quite significant (100-1000 fold) for some complex PDF images.  Corrected problem opening a drawing that was the result of a PDF ungroup - the first time after the ungroup; opening would take a very long time for large PDF - fixed now, opening time is normal for the size of the file.  Improved PDF ungroup in several respects, it now handles PDF files that originated from AutoCad more intelligently, more quickly, and with better results.

Problems Addressed

Corrected a detail point on the export of TIFF graphic files.  Now the physical size of the image is properly represented with respect to the Dots Per Inch (DPI) that was specified when saving the file.  The correction does not actually change or improve the bitmap image, but other applications such as Photoshop will now show the image at a more representative size.

Corrected entering lengths in the Graphics Details drawer when units and fractions were in use.  In some cases the length entered, if it had a fraction, could become about 10 times larger than the value entered .  This is fixed now.

Improved the Convert To Lines for complex paths.  Now disjoined jumps in a complex path do not confuse the conversion.  Previously one could see extra lines added at these jumps.

Corrected problem on Graphic Details drawer, when entering the radius for an Arc and completing with a Tab key, if Tab was hit again the radius would go to zero.  Problem is now corrected, two tabs hit in succession now simply advance the entry point to the next then the next text fields on the Graphic Details drawer.  All fixed now.

Corrected bug setting text alignment for larger text blocks with multiple font styles and sizes.

Corrected problem with palette layout selection at launch of EazyDraw.  The problem was that a user defined palette layout for launch would be respected only on every-other launch.  Corrected now, any selection for Palettes At Launch, EazyDraw preferences, is now respected each launch.

Corrected rare problem that was possible on Leopard, not Tiger, that would result in a bad drawing window opened when EazyDraw was launched.  The bad window would not display and not respond to key clicks and could not be closed.  This is fixed now.

The French PDF manual has been updated, it is still not complete, the work is still in progress.  The newest version has updated figures and more pages complete.  It is in the International folder.

Improved AppleWorks import, main improvement relates to images that were imported into AppleWorks.  In some cases the size of the image was not correctly reproduced in the EazyDraw drawing, more situations are now handled properly.

Corrected problem resizing groups that had no width or height, for example two horizontal lines grouped together.  This would produce different results, often the group would disappear.  This is now corrected, if a group has virtual (not including line widths) zero width (or height) the selected group will not show the two handles or for width (or height) adjustment.  Resizing will only apply to the other (non-zero) dimension.

Corrected problem with the undo of a group action, in particular when the grouping action involved a group (group of a group).  The new group would un-group just fine, but the Undo action would change the Group-Edit for the group that was originally placed in the group.  In other words: the sub-group would not return with the same Group Edit, upon undo. After the undo the original group would not have resize handles as the Group Edit would be placed to Solid. Now all works properly, Undo of grouping a group returns everything to original states.

New Features EazyDraw Version 2.5 see below

EazyDraw Version 2.5.2 Improvements ---- February 14, 2008

Customizable Toolbar improvements, Ability to convert a Blend to component paths, Improved MacDrawPro Import, Improved ClarisDraw Libraries Import, Fixed possible customizing toolbar lock-up.

New Default Toolbar -- Update your toolbar!

We have a new default toolbar configuration.  This configuration compliments the Attributes Bar better than the previous toolbar, some elements previously in the default toolbar are now present in the Attributes Bar, allowing other elements to be added to the main toolbar.  If you have used EazyDraw before you will not see the new default configuration and you may want to customize your toolbar or customize and move the new default configuration to your toolbar.

French Localization

Additions and corrections for French localization.  Dash and Arrow palettes formatted better for the French labels and wording.  Export panel localized fully now.  Fully tested on Tiger and Leopard using the French user interface.  Corrected issues with Open AppleWorks files, using French interface, the open dialog would not show the option to select another file type for Open: now all works properly.  Further work on the French PDF manual is now available, this project is still not complete.

Keynote Export

Arrows are now supported for the KeyNote export.  Added minimum limits for several parameters on the Graphic Details drawer.  It was reported that a zero-radius circle would cause KeyNote to crash when exported.  This problem is found with several other graphics, for example a zero width rectangle.  Therefore minimum limits are now in place for several parameters.  However, in some cases very small values might be required, for example a small dot of a circle.  To allow entering very small values EazyDraw sets the minimum limit in accordance with the zoom of the drawing.  Therefore, if a very small value is needed for a parameter it may be necessary to zoom in on the graphic before entering the value.

Text Only Toolbar Mode

Several improvements were made to the main window toolbar - when used in the Text label mode without icons.  In this mode the palettes such as the color picker and gradient picker are presented as menus.  These menu presentations were significantly enhanced to provide reasonable submenu organization for a more efficient user experience.

Lock-up during customizing toolbar

Corrected possible random behavior when customizing a toolbar.  Extremely rare problem which would occur during customization of the toolbar on one drawing if another drawing was closed a minute or two before the customization action.  The bug would take several random forms, possibly hanging the window or not completing a customization task but most in most cases there would be no visible sign of the problem, just a message in the system log files.  All is fixed now.

Import ClarisDraw Libraries

Corrected problem importing ClarisDraw libraries.  The problem was related to library graphics that included text.  This is now corrected, we have imported several large complex libraries that have been submitted by users.  The ClarisDraw Library import is now quite robust.

MacDraw File Convert

Corrected import issue with MacDrawPro drawings.  The problem was with certain forms of Bezier paths that contained vertex points with no control points.  This seems to be a rather rare construct, one needs to know to option click a control point in the reshape mode in MacDrawPro in order to even create one of these curves.  So the problem probably did not appear for most users.  All is corrected now.

Attributes Toolbar

Improved performance of the new Attributes Bar, when text is selected.  Users of slower PowerPC CPU's reported sluggishness when using the Attributes Bar.  The updating of the attributes for text has been optimized to minimize CPU load in this situation.  Please note that the Attributes Bar has the newer Leopard appearance, to maintain Tiger compatibility EazyDraw needs to simulate the buttons and their detailed gradients when running on Tiger.  This takes a fair amount of CPU load, and may be noticeable on an older PowerPC.  PowerPC - Tiger users should consider upgrading to Leopard or turning off the Attributes Bar.  Of course, for performance and stability the Leopard upgrade is strongly advised for all situations.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

Corrected a possible "unexpectedly quit" that could occur when applying a transfer property (shadow, or gradient for example) from a library.  These are the property library elements that are placed in a user library using the small LL icon found on parameter palettes.  The unexpectedly quit would happen when applying the property from the library to a graphic in a drawing.  All is corrected now, the Library property transfers all work as documented now.

Improved the Keynote export.  Support for arrows has been added.  Corrected possible position errors for lines when exporting just graphics rather than full drawing area, now lines are precisely positioned in all situations.

Fixed a problem on Dash panel, the default list of defined named dashes was not provided.  Now the menu has 8 named dash patterns properly listed and available for use.

Fixed pasting images into MS Word and other older technology applications that prefer the Classic PICT data format.  Images often would paste up-side-down.  A vertical flip was added, this should correct the issue, if unwanted flips are noted please report the problem.

Changed behavior of including an anti-aliasing border when exporting bitmaps.  If anti-aliasing is on and you select to just export graphics, or selected graphics, a 2 pixel border is included to allow anti-aliasing of outside edges of the graphics.  This is not desirable in some cases such as creating a background image for a web site where the image may be tiled, as an undesired white border will be present on each tiled image.  The border is not included if you export "Full Drawing Area" and now it is also eliminated if anti-aliasing is turned off.  Previously the border was still included when exporting just graphics without anti-aliasing, this was logically inconsistent.

Corrected rare annoyance associated with the pattern and gradient toolbar tools.  The problem was that the use of one of these tools could inadvertently change the temporary default for a pattern or gradient, then new graphics would have a gradient or pattern.  Then it would be necessary to open the Gradient panel and turn off gradient so that new graphics would draw without the gradient, (or pattern).  This was rare but annoying.  All is fixed now.  The toolbar tools can be used freely without worry of this happening.

Corrected problem on EazyDraw Preferences, restore all to Factory would not close the pull down panel.  This is fixed now.

Corrected problem with the new modified circle graphic, it was possible to set the minor radius larger than the radius on the Graphic Details drawer.  This could then prevent the file from opening.  This is corrected, and files saved with this error are now senses and corrected so that they are opened properly and the inconsistency is corrected.

Corrected possible problem using independent scales for different layers.  If the scale panel was not open the grid could draw incorrectly when linked to rulers.  All corrected now.

New Features EazyDraw Version 2.5

Attributes Toolbar, Charting and Graphing Tools, 512 based Icons, improved PDF ungroup, Multi-Rep TIFF export (for developers), Hex Grid for Game Design, New Scale Worksheet.

Attributes Toolbar

A new Attributes Toolbar is now available.  It is a mini toolbar located at the top of the drawing area, above rulers and below the main toolbar.  It is accessed from a menu selection at the bottom of the View main menu, you can turn it on / off from there.  The preference control for showing the toolbar on new drawings is found on the Page Layout palette.  Documentation is complete (EazyDraw Help, but not the PDF manual at this time) use search phrase "toolbar" to learn more, we refer to it as the "attributes toolbar".  This toolbar is actually a family of toolbars, they are context sensitive, they change when graphics are selected or deselected.  The tools shown are chosen to be relevant to the selected graphics on the drawing.  This feature is similar to the mini toolbar found in the iWork '08 suite (Pages '08 and Numbers '08), use of these tools should be natural for iWork08 users.

Scale Worksheet

There is a new Scale Worksheet, access it from your Scale palette or the new attributes toolbar.  The worksheet helps arrive at a proper scale for a scaled technical drawiing.  It interactively displays the relationship between your choice of paper size and the dimensions of the project.  A great help for both a novice that may need assistance in understanding how a scaled drawing will work, and the expert planning a project and presentation format.

512 icons

All new 512 based icons for the application, drawing files, and library files.  These were drawn with EazyDraw and saved in the updated OS X, Apple Icon Image format so that they look great on Leopard.

Charting and Graphing Axis Tools

New charting and graphing tools on the Technical Tools palette, near the bottom, are now complete.  These now have full support on the the Graphic Details drawer and Help documentation is now complete .  There are 4 new axis and grid tools to be used as integral components of a graph or chart.  They consist of an integrated tick-mark, a compound text label graphic, rectangular grid, and hexagon grid.  They can be used to build axes and labels for chart graphics.  These have been highly optimized to display quickly.  It is better to use one of these compound graphics, especially for text-label sequence, compared to a conventional group array of text or tick marks. To learn more use these search phrases in EazyDraw Help: "graphing tools", "text labels", "grid tools".

Unjoin Bezier

Added new command to Unjoin a Bezier path or curve.  This will separate segments of a complex path at points where the path jumps (MoveTo segments) from one stroked portion of the path to another.  This is useful and recommended when complex paths have been imported into an EazyDraw drawing.  This situation is found when text is converted to Bezier or stylized.  It also occurs with ungrouped PDF files, and is common for PDF files that originate from AutoCad.  You may think of it as one more level of ungrouping available in these situations.  An example might be a semi-colon, this would let one separate the two marks of the semi-colon.  It is found on the Tools main menu, Convert submenu.  If a complex path is not converting as desired, use this new Unjoin then attempt the convert.

Convert Blends

Added the ability to convert blends into individual paths or lines.  This lets one use the blend capability as an interactive form of advanced duplicate, for linear duplication tasks.  The blend function can generate a family of curves transitioning across a small set of defining curves.  The new capability, found on the "convert to" submenu, allows the full family of curves to be "ungrouped" for individual management and editing.  This is also useful for complex illustrations, the individual paths may behave better for scaling and distortion as a nested grouped component.  The individual curve may in some cases draw more quickly as well, in the case where thousands of curves might be in use.

Hex Grid

Hex grid tool on Technical Tool palette is now complete with Graphic Details support.  The grid can be rotated and fully adjusted with respect to the origin.  The sides can be extended or shortened for different appearance.  When fully extended an isosceles triangle grid is attained.  Documentation is complete.

Multi-Rep TIFF Export

Added the ability to export multi-representation TIFF files.  This format is the new Apple standard for application images and icons.  The format is a tiff file but it actually contains two tiff images, one at the requested DPI resolution and a second at 4x the DPI resolution.  These will become important as Leopard moves onto higher resolution displays (think HD) in the future.  This is of primary interest to software developers drawing buttons and icons for Mac and web applications.  There is an example of one of these TIFF files in the examples folder, Preview displays the files and shows the two resolutions.  TIFF Export now provides color space control.  RGB, RGBA, CMYK, and CMYKA are supported.  The DPI for TIFF saved files is now saved with the file so that the file opens with a proper nominal size in Adobe applications.

Improved PDF Ungroup

Improved the speed of PDF ungroup, the improvement can be quite significant (100-1000 fold) for some complex PDF images.  Corrected problem opening a drawing that was the result of a PDF ungroup - the first time after the ungroup; opening would take a very long time for large PDF - fixed now, opening time is normal for the size of the file.  Improved PDF ungroup in several respects, it now handles PDF files that originated from AutoCad more intelligently, more quickly, and with better results.

Problems Addressed

Corrected a detail point on the export of TIFF graphic files.  Now the physical size of the image is properly represented with respect to the Dots Per Inch (DPI) that was specified when saving the file.  The correction does not actually change or improve the bitmap image, but other applications such as Photoshop will now show the image at a more representative size.

Corrected entering lengths in the Graphics Details drawer when units and fractions were in use.  In some cases the length entered, if it had a fraction, could become about 10 times larger than the value entered .  This is fixed now.

Improved the Convert To Lines for complex paths.  Now disjoined jumps in a complex path do not confuse the conversion.  Previously one could see extra lines added at these jumps.

Corrected problem on Graphic Details drawer, when entering the radius for an Arc and completing with a Tab key, if Tab was hit again the radius would go to zero.  Problem is now corrected, two tabs hit in succession now simply advance the entry point to the next then the next text fields on the Graphic Details drawer.  All fixed now.

Corrected bug setting text alignment for larger text blocks with multiple font styles and sizes.

Corrected problem with palette layout selection at launch of EazyDraw.  The problem was that a user defined palette layout for launch would be respected only on every-other launch.  Corrected now, any selection for Palettes At Launch, EazyDraw preferences, is now respected each launch.

Corrected rare problem that was possible on Leopard, not Tiger, that would result in a bad drawing window opened when EazyDraw was launched.  The bad window would not display and not respond to key clicks and could not be closed.  This is fixed now.

The French PDF manual has been updated, it is still not complete, the work is still in progress.  The newest version has updated figures and more pages complete.  It is in the International folder.

Improved AppleWorks import, main improvement relates to images that were imported into AppleWorks.  .  In some cases the size of the image was not correctly reproduced in the EazyDraw drawing, more situations are now handled properly.

EazyDraw Version 2.4.2 ---- November 23, 2007

Layer and Zoom shortcut menus, Smooth-Shape-Round menu command.  fixed: Selecting groups and library graphics with drag, paragraph line spacing.

Layer and Zoom popup menus

The main drawing window now has a Layer shortcut menu and Zoom indicator menu.  They are found at the lower left corner of the drawing window.  The Layer menu only has 2 selections if there is only one layer.  You can open the Layers drawer from the menu, or change the Active layer and make changes to the Enabled actions without opening the Layers drawer.  The Zoom popup menu shows the zoom value and may be used to change the zoom of the drawing as seen on the screen, if a graphic is selected a "zoom-in" is centered on the selected graphic.

Smooth, Shape and Round

Three new menu commands found on the Transform submenu of the Tools main menu.  These apply 3 different degrees of rounding and smoothing of the corners of a polygon or other straight Bezier path graphics.  These are useful for creating free hand shapes from straight line graphics.  For details refer to EazyDraw help, search phrase "smooth transform".

Problems Addressed

Corrected problem selecting Groups, Interaction restrained graphics, and graphics from a user library.  The bug was introduced with version 2.4.1, it would not let these grouped graphic objects select via the simple click and drag of the default rubber-band select tool.  All is fixed now.

Corrected problem changing paragraph line spacing.  One could change the paragraph line spacing for a complete text box.  But the ability to change an individual paragraph by selecting the paragraph in the text edit mode was not working.  All is corrected.  To change the line spacing of an individual paragraph, select the text box then select the desired paragraph and make the desired change with the line spacing parameter on the Paragraph palette.

Fixed the Zoom Toolbar Button, the zoom percent was showing 100x too large of a number.

DXF users should note that a drawing may import but be drawn at a large scale and thereby show only on blank page.  We will address this soon, in the interim use these tips.  Add many pages to your drawing (maybe even 100 across and 100 down) using the Page Layout panel, then zoom way out and you may find your content.  It also helps to open the Layers drawer and pull it out the extra bit to show the graphic counts, this can help you to find graphics that may not be showing due one reason or the other.

EazyDraw Version 2.4.1 ---- November 1, 2007

AppleWorks and DXF Import, Leopard Version with Cover Flow and Quick Look support, Distribute Along, New Tools-- Axis, Tick Marks, Grid, Hex Grid, and D'Slots.

Additions Pack

The full release with documentation and EazyDraw libraries has grown to over 32 MByte.  With this release it has become necessary to split the disk image and provide the Libraries, Tutorials, PDF manual, and the more elaborate example drawings as separate download.  The full product offering is now two 16 MByte downloads.  We have named the additional content download the "EazyDraw Additions Pack", it is available for a nominal charge, the Additions Pack web page has all of the details.  This is not an issue with CD or Boxed Version purchases, the product split only applies to the demo and download versions of EazyDraw.

Leopard Version

This version is fully compatible with Mac OS X versions 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard), more specifically OS X versions 10.4.3 and newer.  This version of EazyDraw is a Universal Binary, runs native on both Intel and PowerPC processors.  EazyDraw runs best (fastest) on Intel.  We have older versions for Jaguar and Panther users, see the support web page for links.

AppleWorks 6 Import

At the request of the AppleWorks and iWork user community EazyDraw has added a full import of AppleWorks 6 drawing files.  The AppleWorks Import page describes the import capability in detail.  The Dream Work Flow web page has more information concerning using EazyDraw to finish out the iWork '08 suite with full drawing capability.

This release introduces support for native AppleWorks drawing files, AppleWorks version 6.x.  This is a full import, all AppleWorks content is converted corresponding EazyDraw shapes and accents.  Use the normal Open panel, the Insert menu, or drag and drop a file onto an open EazyDraw drawing window to convert an AppleWorks drawing to its EazyDraw counterpart.  Support is provided only for the Drawing and Painting files.  Drawing files contain vector information and may be fully edited as a normal EazyDraw drawing. Painting files are imported, and they will look better when displayed with EazyDraw's true OS X foundation, but they are bitmaps and are not editable as vector content.

The import supports colors, patterns, wallpaper and gradient accents.  The Open panel has an option to direct EazyDraw to install these accents as proper OS X colors so that they may be used by EazyDraw and other Cocoa applications on OS X.  EazyDraw paired with iWork now provides an excellent migration path from AppleWorks to iWork '08, Leopard and future versions of OS X.  More Info: AppleWorks Import .

DXF Import

This release introduces support for AutoCad DXF technical drawing files. DXF import is provided with this release.  This is a full AutoCad DXF import that supports a broad range of AutoCad drawing constructs.  It includes support for layers, DXF hatches, dimensions, colors, dashed lines, arrow heads, and text.  Each of these elements is converted to the corresponding graphic content of a native EazyDraw drawing.  Use the normal "Open" panel to import the DXF drawings.  The DXF filter is selected from the popup menu at the bottom of the Open panel.  The drawing needs to have the ".dxf" extension.

The import is compliant with the specifications for DXF versions 2004, 2000/LT2000, RT12/LT2 as defined on the Auto Desk web site. Autocad 2004 running on

We are asking that users provide us with feedback to any issues noted with the import.  If a drawing does not convert we would like to receive the dxf original drawing by email - all content of supplied drawings will be kept in confidence and the drawing will be deleted from our systems after the conversion problem is isolated.  If a conversion should cause EazyDraw to unexpectedly quit, we would like to receive the system log file that reports the failure.  Thanks in advance for all assistance.  EazyDraw is intended to comply with the 2-d portions of the Autodesk standard definitions for the DXF format, we will use AutoCad running on Windows as the "gold standard" for evaluating import and export of these files.

Leopard

This version is Leopard ready.  This version has had extensive testing on Leopard (OS X version 10.5) and is fully compatible with OS X versions 10.4 (10.4.3 and newer) and 10.5.  The leopard finder has new viewing features called Quick Look and Cover Flow.  Using Quick Look you can view a drawing without even opening it up.  You can actually see your drawings, not just an icon that represents the file.  Browsing a drawing in Cover Flow is like flipping through the music labels in iTunes.  There are changes to the EazyDraw native file format that are required by Quick Look and Cover Flow.  Your existing EazyDraw files will need to be opened, touched (at least one minor change) and re-saved so that the new information is added to the drawing file.  This needs to be done to engage the more advance previewing technology that Leopard uses to provide the real time images.

The file format change, as always, is fully backwards compatible.  There is no problem viewing newer or older files with a newer or older version of EazyDraw.  Files in their original, 2.3.x and older state, display and open properly on Leopard - the only limitation is the lack of support of Quick Look and Cover Flow, the old file icon is shown instead of the content image.  Bottom-Line, you will likely want to open and re-save your EazyDraw files because these new features quickly become an expected must have on Leopard.  The upgraded file format is saved when running on Tiger (10.4), it is not necessary to be on Leopard (10.5) to begin saving EazyDraw files with the improved Leopard Finder support.  This means if you a user still running Tiger (with this version or newer of EazyDraw) and send a file to associates running Leopard, they will be able to preview the drawing with Quick Look and Cover Flow.

Distribute Along

New "Distribute Along" menu commands are now available; at the request of many Canvas users that have migrated to EazyDraw.  The feature is accessed via menu commands.  "Distribute Along" is found on the Format main menu, Align and Size submenu.  This action will distribute any number of graphics along the path of a master graphic.  The master graphic is the first one selected, it is marked in the standard way with a center mark that is not shown for the other graphics of a multiple selection.  An example would be to distribute several rectangles along a line. To do this select the line first then the rectangles, then select the desired Distribute Along action from the menu.  There are individual menu commands for positioning various defining points of the distributed graphics, for example Top Left, or Center.  The Grid reference point may be used, see the documentation on "Align To Grid" to understand the use of this user defined reference point.

The process requires a determination of the Order of arrangement for the distributed graphics, this is managed by menu item selection; nearest, or top-to-bottom for example.  It is also possible to orient the distributed graphics, these selections are found at the bottom of the new submenu.  The orientation is relative to the tangent of the master graphic's path - at the point of distribution.  Documentation is not complete for this new feature.

New Tools

Expanded support for drawing graphs and charts is found on the Technical Tools palette, near the bottom.  We have added 4 new axis and grid tools to be used as integral components of a graph or chart.  They are found on the bottom row of the palette.  They consist of an integrated tick-mark, label graphic, rectangular grid, and hexagon grid.  They can be used to build axes and labels for chart graphics.  They are fully operational in the drawing and interactive editing mode.  Documentation is not complete at this time, experiment with the interactive handles to become familiar with the use and capabilities of these components.  They have been highly optimized to display quickly.  It is better to use one of these compound graphics, especially for text-label sequence, compared to a conventional group array of text or tick marks.  They are not yet supported on the Graphic Details drawer and documentation is not complete.

Added new D-Slot tools to the Technical Tool palette.  These are shapes made by combining a circle and one or two straight sides.  They are a rather common shape that is often constructed with a circle and two rectangles or other drawing tricks.  The shapes provided make it much easier to construct and manage these shapes when needed.  They are fully operational in the drawing and interactive editing mode.  They are not yet supported on the Graphic Details drawer and documentation is not complete.

Bug Fixes

Corrected minor issues with the French Localization.  The ability to add standard tools to a library palette was not working in the last French language release, this now works.

Fixed a bug that could happen when dragging a library element from one library to another.  The problem would happen only in the Name mode.  This is now corrected.  The problem was still present in version 2.4.0, but corrected with version 2.4.1.

EazyDraw Version 2.3.3 ---- October 2, 2007

Of primary interest to French speaking users.  The French user interface has had more testing and provides a full localization of the menus, parameter palettes and user messages.  The translation of the PDF manual (over 350 pages) is in progress.  The distribution disk image has the first 60 pages of the manual.  The translation should be complete by January of 2008.

This is an important release for French speaking users.  All menus and user interface palettes are provided in French.  The French user interface has been tested extensively, it was released at the Apple Expo in Paris.  Additionally the first 5 chapters of the PDF manual are available in French.  The full French version of the PDF documentation should be available in a few months.

Expanded capabilities of LinkBack editing.  The editing now handles closing the active LinkBack edit window when the drawing was edited but not saved or published.

Updated the Services interface.  EazyDraw now responds more intelligently to a wider variety of items that one might find on the Services menu.  In particular the services provided by LaTexIt are now fully supported.  You may enter LaTex code in an EazyDraw text box and call LaTexIt from the services menu.  The LaTex code is then sent to LaTexIt and the returned fully typeset result is pasted into your drawing, replacing the original text.  This replacement is provided with full LinkBack support, that means that you may edit the original source text by simply double clicking the LaTexIt result in the EazyDraw drawing.  To learn more, study the LinkBack documentation in the EazyDraw Help system or the PDF manual.

Added a selection submenu to the View main menu.  These menu commands correspond to the buttons on the Selection Tools palette, enclose, touch enclose, back, .... . This was requested to allow the assignment of shortcut keys to the different selection modes and tools.  Unfortunate that we did not think to do this sooner, but it in place at this time.  These were tested with the Menu Keys preferences dialog, everything works as expected.  It is now possible to short-cut assign these functions.

Corrected problem opening a drawing that had independent layer scales.  This bug crept into one of the recent releases.  The independent scales for the layers reverted to the scale of the Paper layer.  In some cases this change would not be noticeable, unless one explicitly revisited a layer with a different scale.  All works correctly now.

Made several corrections to grouping of attached dimensions, that are included in the group.  Previously these had a tendency to become detached from the target graphic.  This would mean that if the group was ungrouped, the the dimensions would need to be manually re-attached.  This debugging sessions lead to other subtle corrections of grouped dimensions and connectors.  All should work much better now.  One behavior change: when moving a dimension the attache ends of the dimension are no longer "active", they will not attach to target graphics.  One needs to move an end explicitly to have it seek and attach to objects.  This means that if a dimension is attached at one end, a move will leave that end attached and only move the free end.  Again: to attach, or detach a dimension end, the end needs to be move as a single point explicitly.

Fixed problem with the default setting for the Snap To Grid position.  This was always going to top-left, even if you had changed your default setting.  Corrected now, behavior is the same as the default management for other panels.

Added the ability to remove the title prefix to a text stamp, time stamps and page stamps.  If un-checked there will be no descriptive prefix to the time stamp (or page stamp).  The time shown will be just the raw time as applies to the stamp, last save or last change ... .  This would mean that the user prefix should be used to avoid confusion.  So this is now fully under user control.  The default is still to include the hard wired label prefix.

Made minor improvements to the ClarisDraw and MacDraw imports.  The corrections related to rotated arcs, the rotation was using the EazyDraw conventions and the results were incorrect.  These stay at their intended locations now.

EazyDraw Version 2.3.1 ---- April 18, 2007

Corrections and improvements with version 2.3.1:

Updated the Spotlight plugin for EazyDraw. It now supports indexing and searching of the EazyDraw library files as well as all EazyDraw file types. If EazyDraw is installed in your Applications folder, OS X will find the updated plugin automatically, no need reboot or perform any specific installation actions. Note for advanced users: if you wish to run EazyDraw from another location you may need to move the Spotlight importer from the EazyDraw Bundle's Contents folder to the system library.

The default drawing toolbar tools have been updated. We now include the Text Color smart color menu button in the default tool set. The Text Color tool has proven to be very valuable as the other methods of setting text color (via Font panel and Color Picker, or Graphic Details and color picker) are time consuming and not easy to find for the more occasional user. The Text Color toolbar tool is a simple convenient solution to this issue. Users that are upgrading will not automatically see the change, you will need to perform a "Customize Toolbar" and re-install the default set to pick up this improvement.

Corrected problem with Cycle Palettes and Reverse Cycle palettes. This action would fail to work properly in some cases. Both cases now work as they should.

Corrected problems with setting the line width for Dimensions. There are two line width setting for a dimension, one found on the Dimensions palette controls the bounding box that may be shown around the dimensions measurement numbers. The other is the line width of the attach lines that extend from the dimensions target graphic, this line width is managed using the "Color and Style" palette. The problem was that the latter setting would not always copy with a dimension and would not be held in the Dimension default settings. This is now fixed and dimensions with thin setback lines will work smoothly. We also changed the default for this line width to one-half of a point, a thinner line.

Corrected problem Tape Measure tool. If the Graphic Details drawer had not been opened for a drawing the tape cursor would not report positions and lengths as it should. This was introduced with version 2.3.0 (not present in the previous major release). All corrected now. Note that you now have control over the formatting of the tape cursor read-out (decimal precision or use fractions). The settings for Graphic Details now control the format of the tape cursor. Deselect all graphics and you will see the format controls in the Graphic Details drawer.

Improved ability to position dimension text for narrow dimensions. Before, the text could not move outside the limits of the measurement lines which was a problem if the measurement was very small and did not provide room for the numeric text. Now the "Shift" and "Slide" parameters are enabled and may be used to position the numeric text without limitation.

Corrected problems using German comma decimal character settings for OS X international preferences. The comma-decimal character was not properly recognized on the Dimensions palette, this is now corrected. There were problems on the Graphic Details drawer with Undo, when using commas as decimal points. The value would enter correctly with the comma rather than decimal point, but the undo action would not restore the original value -- all is correct now.

Corrected problem displaying Text on the the Graphic Details drawer. The height was not displayed properly, it was showing the same value as the width. This is now fixed.

Corrected problem with highly elliptical arcs. Previously these could jump when trying to interactively adjust the major axis direction for the arc (or pie shape). Now these adjust smoothly in all cases. We also decreased the minimum minor axis percentage from 15% to 4% so one may now create thinner arcs without using both the major and minor axis adjusters.

Fixed Opaque Copy, the check mark in the Edit menu was not setting correctly in all cases. The function was working properly but the check mark indicator was not reliable. The function now works and displays properly.

Corrected problem with toolbar (the one on a drawing window) not executing palette commands (draw a rectangle for example) unless the associated tool palette was open. This was introduced with version 2.3.0, it is now corrected and the tools work properly again.

EazyDraw Version 2.3.0 ---- March 26, 2007

New with version 2.3.0 EazyDraw

User created Libraries are now available.  Direct import of Claris Draw libraries is now operational - use the normal "Open Library" command found on the File main menu.  EazyDraw help documentation is complete use the search phrase "user library" to access the online help for this topic.  You may create your own libraries with the "New Library" option found on the File main menu.  You may open directly Claris Draw libraries, they then may be saved as EazyDraw libraries.  Any graphic may be inserted in a library with drag and drop from an EazyDraw drawing or with the Add button ( a + key ) found near the bottom of the Library palette.  There are 3 modes for a library, Name, Element, and Icon.  The first two are largely self explanatory, the Icon mode converts the library palette into a normal EazyDraw tool palette, just like Charting the Stellate palette.  In the Icon mode, apply your tools in the normal "select tool, click on drawing, and drag" fashion. Library elements work closely with the new Transfer palette - see next paragraph.

Custom Tool Palettes

User libraries now accept tools dragged from EazyDraw create tool palettes and the new Arrange (align) tool palette.  This allows one to create a fully custom tool palette by populating a library with the desired tools.  Switch the library to the Icon mode and then the palette may be re-sized to a desired form vertical or horizontal.  These tool palettes now accept parameter sets, there is a new small gray icon found on the top right of parameter palettes drag that icon to a library tool palette and the new tool will apply the parameter set when clicked.  Custom library/tool palettes will accept user drawn icons, use the Name library display form to drag and drop any graphic on the icon-button found lower right of the graphic display at the top of the library palette in when in the name form.

Transfer Attributes

A new Transfer palette is added to the EazyDraw user interface.  It controls the behavior of a graphic when it is dragged and dropped (or copy->pasted) to another drawing.  This palette is designed primarily to be used with Library graphic elements, but is also works on any graphic in a normal drawing.  The concept of transfer provided to control how and which attributes of a graphic are carried with the graphic when it is added to a new drawing.  For example a shape may be added to a drawing from a library, but an associated gradient fill may not be desired and hence turned off for the Transfer.  A major application of this capability is to apply a graphic's attributes rather than the graphic.  For the previous example, the converse is possible - the Gradient Fill of the library element may be applied to target graphics, independent of the actual graphic or its shape.  Documentation is complete for this new palette, use the search phrase "Transfer" to access the EazyDraw help pages on this subject.

Numeric Format

This version has significantly expanded inspection and data entry capability of the Graphic Details drawer.  There is now full user control over formatting of the numeric text data fields on the Graphic Details drawer.  It is now possible to control the number of digits of precision, and several other formating options such as the inclusion of units, use decimal or fractions, and presentation of lengths as feet and inches for English units based drawings. Input of data now allows specification of units including feet and inches.  For feet and inches input, use the single and double quote punctuation notation.  For any other units, use the abbreviations such as cm, mm, m, in, ft, etc.  Full control over the definition and presentation of angles as Degrees or Radians is provided with several other formatting options for angles. Help tips for numeric values on the Graphic Details drawer now show values as alternate units or with added precision, control is provided on the Tips tab of the new Graphic Details formatting panel.  The new capability is accessed by opening the Graphic Details drawer and de-selecting all graphics.  When the drawer is open and no graphics are selected, the new formatting options are available on the Graphic Details drawer.  Documentation of this new capability is complete for the EazyDraw Help content, click the question mark - Help button that is shown on this new Graphic details panel to access full documentation.

New PDF Manual

New PDF manual now available.  Printed bound 350 page user manual for the EazyDraw application.  This manual is written in a read-along style and provides an easy to follow introduction to computer drawing with OS X.  The manual is a detailed reference for more advanced techniques such as creating scaled drawings and configuring the user interface.  Requires an easy-chair and lamp.  The price is $29.10 and includes shipping by Priority Mail in the U.S., air post to other countries.  It is available as an electronic download, this sells for $10.  Both are available from the EazyDraw online store .  The manual is included with the Boxed version of EazyDraw.

Improved Tape Measure

Improved the live cursor that is shown when the Tape Measure Tool is used.  The decimal precision and display format of the cursor values are now configurable.  Before they were fixed to a standard precision, usually 3 decimal points.  Now you may select decimal or fraction display, include units, and use feet-inches if desired.  The format use is now the same as you specify for the Graphic Details drawer.  To set them, open the Graphic Details drawer and deselect all graphics.  Help documentation is provided use search phrase "Tape Measure" to learn more.

Runs on Leopard

EazyDraw is now operational on Mac OS X version 10.5, Leopard.  Previous versions of EazyDraw would not launch on Leopard, this problem is now corrected.  Caution is advised when using EazyDraw on Leopard as we have only minimally tested EazyDraw with the preview beta of Leopard.  If issues are noted by beta testers, our tech staff would appreciate notification.

Problems Solved

It is now possible to see on screen the length and angle of a line as you draw it.  The Tape Measure Tool is improved to now show more meaningful values as you draw or edit lines, rectangles, and paths.  Before the cursor normally displayed the location on the drawing.

Further work on selecting graphics and clicking and selecting text.  Added an explicit menu command for entering the Edit mode for text.  This will aid more inexperienced users in consideration of the more traditional click and select behavior.  Corrected a few more bugs reported on libraries, improved importing of Claris Draw libraries.  Double click a library file now works, entering a duplicate name for a library element caused a crash - corrected.  Documentation complete on the new Transfer palette.  Corrected problems importing PDF content from TexShop and other components of the MacTeX distribution.  The problem manifested itself as ghosts of extended PDF images.  TexShop exports a full PDF document with each image clip, the export information specifies a small clipping box to limit the visible portion of the document to the specified clip area.  EazyDraw was not respecting the clipping information in all cases.  All is correct now, inserted PDF content displays only the intended visible portion and exports present the proper visible area.  A note: if your master TexShop PDF typeset original is large, each clip is a copy of the full master original, so if several clips are inserted the EazyDraw drawing can become a rather large file - it will compress though due to the repetition.

Added two fail-safe checks to assure that EazyDraw is operating correctly.  Two situations have been encountered where 3rd party software has damaged OS X and subsequently caused unstable behavior in EazyDraw.  One issue is with SpellCatcherX, it may damage the OS X spell checking technology and subsequently cause EazyDraw to fail to successfully save a drawing.  Second issue is a possible damaged system Font panel caused by the application Sketchup; Sketchup erroneously supplies a private color swatch (Class: SketchupColor ) to the public Font panel, this in turn causes other applications that use the OS X system Font panel to fail without warning, this manifests itself as an unsuccessful launch of EazyDraw which causes erratic behavior of EazyDraw.  Both problems cause similar erratic behavior for Safari, Mail, TextEdit and other OS X Cocoa applications.  EazyDraw can not recover from these problems, but it now posts a "serious error" warning message.

Corrected some problems and improved the setting of Grid line widths.  Now the Grid Line Width parameter found on the Grids and Guides palette controls the grid for both display and printing.  The minimum display line width is now computed in a smarter way so the users who desire faint thin grid lines may achieve that look.  Bottom-line, the fat grid lines seen under high zoom should be corrected.  If they do not look as you would like, make adjustments to the Grid Line Width parameter.  Settings are independent for Major and Minor grids.

Improved the Keynote export capability.  Reversed the order of slides when exporting layers as slides, this makes the workflow from ClarisDraw to EazyDraw to Keynote consistent with respect to slide ordering.  The Keynote export fixes involved insulating EazyDraw against corrupt zero size graphics.  This could happen when importing from ClarisDraw.  Now EazyDraw replaces these in the KeyNote export file as a red rectangle or red crossed lines.

Added ability to control the scaling of dash patterns and arrows to the Morph panel.  Now these may be checked and applied just as Line Width is provided as a control for a general scaling.

Corrected problem using the "Close" menu command on the convert menu, or double clicking an "open" end point to close graphic.  Previously this command would always generate a simple polygon graphic, even if the input graphic was curved.  This caused problems with subsequent actions applied to the mis-defined "curved polygon".  Now close properly generates either a simple polygon or a closed-curved Bezier path.

Changed the behavior for selecting graphics in some situations.  You now may need to be closer to path of graphic with an outline.  This helps prevent large looping graphics from selecting and moving when trying to select interior graphics with a click and drag motion.

Improved and changed the behavior for converting some graphics to images.  Groups and Free Transforms had several potential problems that were corrected, now all of these convert properly to an image.  Now convert to image depends on the degree of zoom at the time of the convert.  If you are zoomed in, the image will be higher quality (and of course larger so be careful with larger graphics).  If zoomed out the image will be lower quality or more of a thumbnail.  This helps a lot with Text and larger groups.  This means that you may convert a large text box to a simple image and improve speed with a level of quality that is now under your control.  Larger groups will convert to image in the same fashion, this can be used to improve responsiveness for very large drawings.  The technique of converting to an image should be more useful now.

Corrected problem entering dash lengths in mm or inches.  The problem did not happen when the palette was set to use Points as the unit of measurement.

Corrected problem with the creation of orthogonal paths and connectors.  The problem happened when finishing with a double click, and the path was ending on a vertical leg.  The last leg was dropped when finishing with a double click.

Removed the Gray Scale option for EPS export.  This does not seem to be supported by Preview or other applications.  To create a gray scale EPS, use Color Modification or the color space selection on the Layers drawer to convert the drawing to gray monochrome color, then export as RGB from the EPS export panel.  In order to avoid problems with the Export, one must now select either RGB (safest) or CMYK for color space upon export.  We can no longer accept the "as drawn" option for color space because there may be one gray scale color in the export and the original problem is then present.  We will revisit this issue with the upcoming Leopard release.

Corrected bug applying Free Transform to graphics with inserted Text.  The Free Transform worked correctly but the Apply step which removes the transform and permanently transforms the underlying graphics had trouble in these cases.  Corrected problems with EPS export.  In some cases export content was shifted and possibly clipped.  These are now corrected.

Corrected problem with the Revert To Saved command.  This became broken on more recent versions of Tiger.  It is now working correctly again.

Corrected problem rotating Text counter clockwise.  Text flipping, on the Transform submenu, was rotating clockwise for both the clockwise and counter clockwise menu command.  Now all works as it should.

Corrected problems rotating, from the Transform Flip submenu, group graphics with text and PDF content.  Results were not as complete as were obtained from the rotate tool or the full Morph panel.  Now all forms of rotate behave as expected with embedded grouped text and PDF content.

Added ability to apply and Interactive Scale, Uniform Scale and Freeze to text graphics.  Interactive state is found on the Interactive submenu of the Format main menu.  These were not allowed before.  Users found a work-around to first apply Free Transform interactive level then apply Freeze or other interactive states.  This extra step is no longer needed.  A potential problem with Free Transform Text when the Align-To-Grid palette was open was also fixed.  Freeze, removes all resize and scaling ability from a graphic.

Added conversion capability to convert normal text to annotation text and the reverse, convert annotations to normal text.

Area is now reported on the Graphic Details drawer.  This is found near the bottom of the Graphic Details drawer.  It reports area when a single graphic is selected that has a defined area.

Added ability for Select All to focus on graphics of a particular type.  If a creation tool is selected, then Select All will select all graphics of the active Tool's type.  For example, to select all text, click the "T" for Text tool button then execute a Select All.

Corrected problem specifying the location of dimensions for Walls.  The "Inside", "Center", or "Outside" selection on the Walls palette was not working.  The only way to set this parameter was via the Graphics Details Drawer.  This is now fixed and both methods of setting this parameter now work.

Corrected problem exporting EPS.  It was possible that the export would drop graphics near the top or left of a drawing when rulers enabled.  This is now corrected, no missing graphics on EPS export.

A double click on a vacant area of a drawing now automatically adds a Text Box and enables the new Text Box for text input.  In short: double click to add text.

Corrected problems relating to the new bitmap shadows when applied to an image or photo, such as a JPG or PDF.  This would also show up if the image was encapsulated with an Interaction level.  In many cases the bug would cause the drawing to lock up and become unusable.  It is now corrected and all forms of shadows can now be applied to image graphics.

Further improvements on handling double click on a file to launch EazyDraw.  If the file was complex or contained dimensions, EazyDraw the drawing window could be corrupted.  The display of the window was incomplete .  It is now corrected and all files should open properly upon double click, with EazyDraw running or launched on double click.

Corrected possible problem with Gradient Fill palette and the recently added Named Gradients popup menu.  In rare situations this popup menu would be de-activated.  Now works properly.

EazyDraw Version 2.1.3 ---- November 2, 2006

New with version 2.1.3 EazyDraw

Free Transform capability to apply shear, skew, stretch and rotate distortions to images and other graphics.  Soft bitmap shadows, an added shadow method for very high quality drop shadows.  Expanded Arrows support for user defined arrows; plus the ability to apply shapes as "brushes" along the path of any graphic, including a progressive sequential distortion transform applied to successive shapes along a path.  The new custom Arrow menu is provided with over 20 new Factory arrow shapes.  Revamped Dash palette that allows the user unlimited capability to define any sequence of line-space dash patterns.  Added the ability to save named, Arrows, Dashes, Gradients, Shadows and Transforms.  Significant performance improvement for large drawings and working with groups of thousands of graphics.  Smart Zoom toolbar button that displays the zoom percentage in the user customizable toolbar.  All new features are fully documented in the online help and explained in more detail here on this website.

Universal Binary

EazyDraw was provided as a Universal Binary early in 2006, the notation is repeated for clarity.  This is a Universal Binary version for use on new Intel based macs or PowerPC processors.  Intel users should NOT- open using Rosette, Rosette is a "compatible" mode to be used with applications that have not been compiled for native use on Intel.  Running EazyDraw Intel-Native is 5-10 times faster than running under the Rosette emulator, launch times are also significantly slower in the emulator mode.  Unive