CompuServe Messages

Howszitgoin Jerry & Hi from DownUnder RE: VB vs Toolbook I assume VB = Visual Basic – Yes? It would seem from your comments you are (a)person with some programming knowledge (b)committed to a WINDOWS authoring package (c)interested in POWER authoring tools via a scripting method Assuming the above is true. I would rank the WINDOWS packages like this **Authorware Professional – very powerful & very expensive Macromedia in San Fran – about $5000 (lookout for additional runtime costs, I think Macromedia likes to charge a fee if you are selling YOUR runtime app's – check it out with them!) **Icon Author – very powerful & not as expensive AimTech (Nashua, Nh 03063) VB & TB (scripting) **HSC InterActive – powerful & relatively cheap HSC are in Santa Monica (310-392-8441)- about $400ish **ImageQ – powerful and cheap Image North (ph 519-570-9111/800-363-3400) – about $400ish **Action – Ok and cheap Macromedia – about $200ish **Animation works – Ok and cheap Gold Disk Inc in CA – about $150ish The above are mostly ICONIC – use a drag'n'drop method to pull images/graphics/animations/text/sound etc in. The choice between VB & TB is not so clear. It depends on how well and how quick you program and how productive you want to be (a beginner can be productive very quickly on a iconic system, yet would take days to have the same demo going using a scripting app'.) So VB vs TB? If you are a gun programmer, I'd go for VB (it's non intuitive) but it's powerful…If you want an "out of the box" solution chose TB.. If you want to get really productive quickly chose one of the above (**)..how much money do you want to spend?..Best value for money seems to be Image Q (cheap, easy to use) and SHOULD handle your power requirements..If money's not an issue (is this ever the case?) buy Authorware Pro (power) and VB..and use both! The above is ranked considering: power, cost and productiveness Two good books are "A Guide to MULTIMEDIA" (NRP)(comes with a TB authored example) & "MULTIMEDIA – Making it work" (comes with crippled TSHOW-DOS). Just a comment about WINDOWS authoring systems: 1. Not every machine has Windows (yet?) but every machine has DOS 2. Windows authoring software is good but EXPENSIVE when compared to DOS authoring software (ie: Authorware Pro $5000 vs Media Master $700) 3. The good thing about Windows is that it is a defacto standard – and that's good. Windows has a certain look (palette) about it, (ie: grey buttons & menu bars etc) and that's good also. HOWEVER try to import a graphic file or FLC file in and Windows will try to change the color palette of the incoming file to maintain that standard look of Windows…That's a drag…YES, you can reserve the first 16 colors & YES you can NOT allow Windows to change the color palette info of the incoming file but then Windows will change it's look – defeating the purpose of all Windows App's looking the same.. If you digitise the face of say a girl and use all 256 colors (the palette will be mostly brown's for the skin and black's hair) to truly represent that image and it will look good (check Thresea.Gif Ani Pro) If this image is imported into an environment that doesn't have those 256 on screen (ie Windows) it will: Change the incoming graphic and won't look as good Change the menu bar palette. Yesterday I imported a FLC of a Viewpoint (human Skeleton) model breathing into Authorware Pro, it changed ALL the colors to GREEN ???$%^&*##@$%…Darn it, skeletons don't have green bones (well not humans ones anyways) Moral of the story is screwing with any palette info is time consuming (and you've got to think ahead) DOS based system don't look a certain way. Make the interface any colors you wish even to suit the current palette info.. SOLUTION: Windows start up rez and color depth is 640x480x16 colors (Like your clients) WHY don't we run in Windows in HICOLOR mode (256, 32000, 16mill)…you think Windows is slow now. This is like an exercise in seeing just how slow can you get your PC to go. It will grind away………yawn…..snore zzZZZZ. And it rasies some more questions about this defacto standard. Can your clients run their clone video card in Hi- re? Are they run in Hi-re now? Do they how to get it into HI COLOR mode? 4. Try to import some digitised video into Windows. Yes you can use AVI but try to UP-SCALE the window size from it's postage stamp size (200×160 pixels) and watch it video tear all over…WINDOWS does suffer from a lot of overheads (DOS & WINDOWS together) DOS based authoring dosen't have anywhere near the overheads of WIN3.1 (use mem and check yourself) Maybe NT will save us (ie: no DOS at all) JUST NT —->YES But I don't have 16Mb of ram yet just to get the dam thing to run. Do your clients Anyway, I'm not WINDOWS bashing (windows is very convenient) and I use windows and Dos authoring sytems. BUT DOS is cheaper, faster alternative that retain a lot of power. I think Windows will take over BUT for now DOS can do it better ….It intresting to note, that a company in OZ is using GRASP to illustrate windows app's like Corel Draw, words etc. The GRASP demo looks like and acts like Windows and runs faster…and run from c:> Let me pose two short Questions: Questions: FLIGHT SIMULATOR IS A MICROSOFT PRODUCT, WHY DON'T THE CLEAVER PROGRAMMERS AT MICROSOFT HAVE FLIGHT SIMULATOR RUNNING UNDER WINDOWS??? WHY ARE THEY STILL (at the moment) RUNNING UNDER DOS? WHY DO AD's for "WINDOWS ACCELERATOR CARDS" FILL OUR MAG's? Cos' everyone is trying to get some speed out of it. When everyone has blazing 786's with 32Mb of RAM and super accelerated video cards, Windows will be great, Although software developer will probably be writing app's to outstrip that hardware as well. Anyway hope it helps: There's lot of info you probably didn't want here, but I feel much better now, I'm going to take my medication now. – bye