Alan Reeve
By Bill PikeBill: Diamond Paint was quite impressive when you demonstrated it at yesterday's meeting. You seem to have duplicated just about all Functions of most ST paint programs, and many more functions than most existing 8-bit programs. Is that a fair assessment?
Alan: I think so. The feature that I like the best is the cut and paste. I haven't seen that on any other 8-bit system. You can cut sections out of a picture and paste them onto another picture. You can even load and save that section as clip-art.
Bill: About how many pages will Diamond Write let you work on in a 48K Atari?
Alan: A 48K machine will be fairly limited, maybe one page (there's not a whole lot of memory in there). In a 64K machine you'll he able to work on about five pages. A 130K machine has 64K of memory available, so you can get 30 or 40 pages. And it includes a Spell Checker.
Bill: You were talking yesterday about the possibility of coming out with multi-font capability on one document.
Alan: You can use multiple styles, you can only use one font but you can have multiple styles of that font on each document.
David: Will the program support graphics files?
Alan: That is one of the limitations of this program. There just isn't enough memory on the 8-bit Atari.
David: Then you could mix and match fonts also?
Alan: The big limitations of the program comes from the memory, fonts take up a lot of memory. I really don't think that the user wants his memory cramped up with a lot of fonts when the text is already limited.
Bill: It appears that Writer is fully implemented and does a lot of stuff that other word processor programs won't do.
Alan: The really nice thing is that you can use the slider bars to go up and down thru your document and you can use the mouse to position the cursor.
UPCOMING APPLICATIONS
Bill: You were saying that you are thinking of putting Reeve Software's NewsStation together for Diamond. Were you also thinking about NewsStation Companion or Publishing Pro?
Alan: Just NewsStation right now. When the NewsStation is done we just might include NewsStation Companion.
Bill: What are your hopes? Some people say the 8-bit computer is dead and others say the 8-bit machine has never been fully utilized. It sounds like Diamond is starting to fully revitalize the 8-bits.
Alan: The Atari 8-bit system is more than powerful enough to handle 90 to 95 percent of most people need. But people usually want the biggest and best...
| DIAMOND CARTRIDGE | $79.95 |
| (Programmer's Kit and Diamond Paint included) | |
| DIAMOND WRITE | $29.95 |
| DIAMOND NEWS-STATION | $29.95 |
29W150 Old Form Lane
Warrenville. IL 60555.
(312) 393-2317.