Artworks 2 rescheduled for Wakefield 2003

By Chris Williams. Published: 6th Mar 2003, 21:11:05 | Permalink | Printable

Convenient. MW Software can't pack in enough new features

We're pretty sure we've covered Artworks 2 before; indeed we have however MW Software have emailed us today announcing that the initial release date of version 2 of the killer vector graphics package for RISC OS has been moved from the end of March to just before the Wakefield 2003 show, held on the 10th May.

"Initially, it was planned that ArtWorks 2 would be just a 32-bit version of ArtWorks 1.7, and thus largely identical to it apart from a streamlined user interface", MW Software's Martin Wuerthner explained in the latest Artworks Newsletter issued today. "Since then, the target has been redefined: I will seize the opportunity to add a significant number of new features at the same time, so ArtWorks 2 will be a real step forward."

This is great news plus we're informed that dynamic clipping and bitmap fills will also be released later as (commercial) plug-in modules. On top of this, MW Software has also launched this week the following plugin-modules for Artworks:

SVGExport
Finally released, the SVGExport module enables users to transfer ArtWorks graphics to Windows and Mac applications using the open universal vector SVG format.

Polygon 2
MW Software started out in 1996 with one of their first plugin modules being Polygon, a useful tool for easily creating regular polygon shapes in Artworks. Polygon has been updated this week to enable rounded corners in polygons, as seen in the screenshots from the above link. This opens up the ability to create shapes in a more flexible manner (geddit). Very smooth we think.

Also, Martin in his email praises the Aemulor.com team for their hard work in a developing a 26 bit emulator for Iyonix users, enabling them to use the current 26 bit Artworks on their 32 bit only machines. Martin has even found that even under emulation, when rendering complex graphics files, Artworks is 40% faster on an Iyonix than on a StrongARM RiscPC with a Viewfinder card fitted. With the Viewfinder card removed, the RiscPC is able to run Artworks faster than the Iyonix (remember, running Artworks over emulation), but obvious in an inferior screen resolution compared to the Iyonix. Aemulor users wishing to run Artworks should read this.

Links

MW Software

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Yay, it'll finally be better than !Draw :-)