
               >>>> Arts & Letters Express 5.0 <<<<
               Drawing on the Graphic Artist Inside

   Arts & Letters Express 5.0, from Computer Support Corporation, likes 
to brag about how easy it is to use. A European magazine ranked it above 
CorelDRAW in ease of use and performance. Well, the program is pretty 
powerful. You can use it to create professional logos, brochures, and 
complex artwork. As for easy to use, I disagree. Sure, after spending an 
hour or so with it, I became familiar with the basic controls and where 
they were. It doesn't take that long to learn how to do things -- but 
the interface still feels inconsistent and nonintuitive, and I'll get to 
why a little later.

   Now let's talk about the program and the neat things it can do.

   Arts & Letters Express, first of all, is a *vector*-based drawing 
program that goes head-to-head with CorelDRAW and Micrografx Designer. 
With it you can *draw* objects out of lines and curves (vectors) instead 
of *painting* with dabs of pixels (as you find in *bitmap* images). 
Editing bitmap images sometimes really is like working with real paint. 
If you want to change paint after you've slapped it down, you either 
have to remove it or paint over it. Vector-based images are much more 
flexible. Think of them as sets of stakes and strings, instead of paint 
droplets -- stakes and strings that mark off an image. It's easy to pick 
up stakes and move them around; and you have the bonus of *elastic* 
strings that can hold any shape. Vector-based images allow you to group 
their many parts together for across-the-board actions. You can also 
split apart a grouped vector image so that some part can be tweaked.

   Vector-based graphics editors are a boon to graphic artists, because 
vector images can be scaled up or down to any size, without incurring 
the dreaded jaggies or losing detail. (Try to scale up a bitmap image 
and you get the jaggies; scale it down and you lose detail.) This makes 
vector programs great for creating logos and other highly transportable 
artwork. Vector programs also are good for special effects, like 
"extruding" objects (a "3-D-izer" to give objects depth) and fitting 
text to a path.

   Arts & Letters Express has other special-effects features in its 
arsenal. It can do polymorphic tweening (generating in-between shapes) 
and warps (fitting text and images to any shape "envelope"). With warps, 
you can make the word "WAVE" curvy like a wave.

   Graphic artists will appreciate the ease with which they can draw 
using the line and Bezier curve drawing tools. The "snap to" feature 
makes it easy to connect new lines and curves to ones you've drawn 
previously; this allows you to construct complex drawings with the most 
simplicity! (I know, that sounds weird.) In a vector drawing, you want 
as few points (stakes) to define a shape as possible. It looks cleaner 
and is easier to manage that way.

   Graphic artists and casual users alike will enjoy the clip-art 
collection. The CD includes about 10,000 clip-art images. There's no 
book of thumbnails to flip through -- but the program offers thumbnail 
views of each and every image, broken down by categories such as 
Transportation and Animals. Cartoon images, holiday drawings, 
battleships, athletes and businesspeople are all present and accounted 
for, and most in color. You'll probably find what you're looking for.

   Some of the clip-art images are in a unique category called "Flex 
Art." They're built modularly so you can adjust them. A ferocious 
tyrannosaur image, for example, has a hinged jaw -- so you can open his 
mouth really wide, or make him clamp down on, say, a politician-type 
person from over in the business group.

   The color controls let you fiddle with your image like you do with 
your TV screen. You can adjust brightness, contrast and color, and 
replace hues. You can even generate color separations, which is 
necessary if a commercial printer is to print your creation in full 
color. The variety of ways in which you can fill enclosed objects will 
gladden your heart. Solid colors, gradients (many flavors) and patterns 
can be used as fills.

   The charting feature is easy to use to create charts and graphs. You 
can even put pictures in them (making pictograms). Just enter your 
numbers using a spreadsheet-style window.

   One of my favorite Arts & Letters Express features is the bundled 
booklet called "Logo Designer: User's Guide." It's all you'd expect, 
with advice on fonts, graphics and even trademark rights. What fonts 
would be most appropriate? What type of paper would work best with your 
design? (E.g., if your design has fine detail, avoid textured paper.) 
How do you design a logo so that it looks good whether blown up large or 
reduced very small? This booklet is a must-read for novice graphic 
designers.

   Arts & Letters Express's text-handling features are on a par with 
CorelDRAW's. It's easy to type, align and generally transform text. I 
don't like the interface controls for text handling, but I'll get to 
that. On the box it says you get 1000 fonts on the CD-ROM. That's true, 
but the "rub" is that the CD-ROM disc with the fonts isn't included in 
the package! You must register to get the fonts. But registering is 
easy, because the Computer Support people include a floppy disk with a 
survey-like registration program. Just run the program, answer the 
questions, mail in the floppy disk, and you'll get your fonts disc.


>>[ The Interface ]<<

   Now, why I think the interface is nonintuitive. Computer Support, I 
think, tried to simplify Arts & Letters for the average user. You know, 
that person who's interested in experimenting with graphics to see what 
he can turn out for the church newsletter. Express is supposed to be the 
friendly Arts & Letters. The best thing about the interface -- and this 
is friendly, I admit -- is the live help line at the bottom of the 
screen, which defines whatever your mouse cursor is currently pointing 
to. This helps when you're trying to make sense of the buttons and their 
myriad fly-out options.

   But if the people at Computer Support Corporation had really wanted 
to make Arts & Letters Express friendly, they would have reduced the 
number of steps it takes to do things. Hole-cutting, for example. Hole 
cutting is a neat special-effects feature, and it's one of the reasons I 
picked Arts & Letters Express to review. Hole cutting lets you "make 
hollow" something on top so that something on the bottom can show 
through. For example, say you've got a rectangle that's filled with a 
pink pattern. On top of that, there's a green rectangle. On top of that 
you've typed the letters PCM. You want the letters PCM to have the funky 
pink pattern of the first layer. That would look pretty cool.

   In order to make this happen, you must "convert to freeform" both the 
letters and the green rectangle underneath. (Select each object, then 
select "Convert to Freeform" from the Draw menu.) Then you must select 
each object again and choose Merge from the Effects menu. Merge pops up 
a dialog box with only two options: Cutout (hole) and Clipping path 
(mask). Now, why, I ask you, is there even an option called Merge, a 
general-sounding option, when it only leads to two esoteric functions? 
Why not give cutouts and masking their own menu options? (And if you 
didn't know otherwise, wouldn't you assume "Merge" meant to merge 
different pieces of the image together? Nope, that's Group, from the 
Arrange menu.) A really friendly program would let the user block-select 
the two upper layers and then click on a Cutout menu option; the program 
would be friendly enough to do behind the scenes whatever "converting to 
freeform" and other chores are required.

   When things don't work as they are described in the manual, I get 
mad. I confess -- software can make me frustrated, angry and emotional. 
I feel like kicking something. The thing that made me want to drop kick 
everything in sight was that the hole-cutting procedure, as described in 
the manual, didn't work for my test text, "PCM." I followed the steps 
exactly and kept getting the message, "All selected objects must be 
closed freeform shapes." This after I'd done the "convert to freeform" 
bit; and I couldn't do it again because the option had become grayed 
out, signaling I'd already done it! I found the procedure will work with 
letters like T and I, but not P, A or O. Ironically they aren't 
considered "closed" freeform shapes, even though they have an enclosed 
area. The manual is no help at all here. Neither is the online help. I'm 
sure it's possible to make cutouts for letters with enclosed areas, but 
it probably involves a lot of extra steps, and the doc writers wanted to 
keep the manual *simple*. Arrrgh.

   And what's with the fonts dialogs? You click on the fonts button once 
and you get a list of fixed-size fonts, with no WYSIWYG examples. Click 
on the Custom button, however, and you get a second dialog box holding 
scalable fonts with WYSIWYG examples, spacing options, bold/italic 
settings, etc. Why two sets of fonts? Why the embedded dialog? Why not 
have the second, larger and more useful dialog be the only dialog?

   And why are there two pointer tools? Most every other graphics 
program lets you block select with the arrow-pointer tool. Not this one! 
You have to click on the *finger*-pointing tool first. Why fight 
people's expectations?

   I've griped and carped enough. I don't want to leave the impression 
that I dislike the program. I really do like Arts & Letters Express. The 
drawing, extrude and text-to-path features kick butt. Blame my vinegar 
on the heat wave that's blanketing the Midwest -- and my stupid air 
conditioner, which has gone on the fritz.

   A *free* test-drive version of Arts & Letters Express 5.0 is 
available on a CD-ROM disc. If you want it, just call (214) 661-8960 and 
ask; or, fax your request to (214) 661-5429. Along with the test drive 
of 5.0, you'll receive a fully functional copy of Arts & Letters 3.0. If 
you decide to order 5.0 after receiving the test-drive disc, you get a 
$100 discount; your purchase price will be $99 instead of $199.

{Arts & Letters Express: Computer Support Corp., 15926 Midway Road, 
Dallas, TX 75244, (214) 661-8960; $199. REQUIRES: 386SX+ CPU, 4MB RAM 
(8MB recommended), Windows 3.1, CD-ROM drive.}

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