DRAWING WITH FLAIR AND STYLE

A graphics tablet is a device which has an electronic pen and a special surface on which to draw. As the pen is moved across the surface, software translates the position of the pen and reproduces it on screen.

Saga Systems has allowed Sinclair User an exclusive preview of Style, a package of interface plus drawing software, priced at £29.95 inclusive, and a graphics tablet priced at £69.95 plus VAT. This compares well with other Spectrum tablets.

Initially the interface and software can be used with an ordinary joystick, and at a later stage, you can splash out on the graphics tablet. As a bonus the interface doubles as a Kempston compatible joystick interface.

The interface contains a two channel analogue-to- digital converter, so the technically minded could use it with their own analogue joystick or, with their own software, to input sound.

The software with the interface is comprehensive and easy to use. All the usual features are included - freehand drawing, straight lines, points and circles as well as elastic banded boxes and triangles.

You can zoom in on any part of the screen and magnify it by a factor of eight for detailed work, erase bits of the picture, fill them with ink, or add text. In order to keep track of where the character squares are, when colouring the drawing, a grid can be overlaid to highlight them. You must remember not to overlay the grid once you have started adding colour, otherwise the colours will be removed.

To colour the picture you can either change the attributes globally - over the whole picture - or locally, at the pen position.

The software has some nice features. Once it has been loaded you are presented with a menu, to which the program always returns without losing the picture. The pen is used to select the option - icons are used on some which makes selection easier.

Once you are in the desired mode, for example, freehand drawing, a cursor is displayed on the screen as you move the pen around. There is a button on the left of the graphics tablet and when you press this the pen starts to draw.

Two brush effects are available; either a solid line or stipple. Drawing solid lines is quick, while shading has to be done more slowly. Fill also has two modes, either solid or using alternate lines.

No product ever does everything you want in the way you want it to, and Style is no exception. Saga is aware of this and is open to suggested improvements, which might well be included in later versions.

Whether you just want to draw pictures for your own amusement, or to produce the ultimate loading screen then Style is a good way of producing them. The software is not up to the standard of some drawing programs now available but it is readily usable and continually improving.

For further details contact Saga Systems Ltd, Gran Haig House, Woodham Road, Woking, Surrey. Tel: 04862 22977.

DOING IT WITH STYLE

There are quite a few graphics utilities on the market at the moment, but one that particularly caught our attention (mainly because it came in the biggest box} was Style from Saga Systems.

Style costs £29.95, and though that might seem a bit steep, you do get a Kempston compatible joystick included in the price. The interface is required because the onscreen cursor that you draw with is controlled by either a joystick, or Saga's own Graphics Pad which can be bought separately for an additional £79.95. That might seem expensive, but it is still the cheapest pad around.

The pad is a ceramic tablet, rather like the old 'Etch-a-Sketch' toys. You can 'draw' onto this pad using the 'pressure pen' that is built into it, and your hand movements are translated directly onto the screen. This is much easier to use for freehand drawing than the clusters of keys that most graphics utilities use, though you do lose some of the pixel-fine precision of keyboard control as your hands are unlikely to be absolutely steady. However, Style does have a Zoom facility that allows you to magnify sections of the screen and tidy up any stray pixels caused by handshake.

To be perfectly honest, Style isn't the most versatile graphics utility that we've seen. The functions that it offers are all fairly standard; Box, Circle, Fill, and a few others. These are all quite well executed, especially the Box and Triangle options which allow you to move shapes around the screen, and to try out different sizes of shapes before you 'drop' them into place.

Where Style really scores, in conjunction with the Graphics Pad, is in ease of use. There are no massive manuals to plod through, and the icon driven menu is very simple to use. I find that most graphics packages require you to master some fairly finger tangling combinations of keys to move from drawing mode to another. With Style, all you have to do is press one button to return to the main menu, then position the cursor over the relevant icon (a small circle for 'Circle', a squiggle for 'Freehand' etc.) and the program automatically returns you to your picture and is ready to carry out the next command.

The instruction leaflet says that you can read it while Style is loading, and will probably not need to use it again. And, surprisingly, that proved to be the case. After just a few minutes trying out the icon menu I was happily doodling away on the Graphics Pad, drawing squiggly lines and boxes all over the place (it doesn't take much to keep me happy).

Actually, the ability to draw squiggly lines using the Pad is one area where Style does score over its competitors. I've always found trying to draw smooth curves on the screen, just using the clusters of keys that most utilities use for cursor control, very difficult. Keyboard control does allow you more precision, but slows you down a lot. The Graphics Pad loses some of that precision (though, as I've mentioned, the Zoom facility does allow you to tidy things up), but allows you to draw much more freely, as if you were drawing onto a sketch pad. For artistic failures like myself, who find keyboard control too fiddly, this is a big plus (though at a total cost of almost £110 it's not cheap).

I do have one criticism of Style though. The instructions admit that the freehand drawing option is 'virtually useless' when using a joystick. Now I've always considered freehand drawing to be one of the most important facilities offered by graphics utilities (there are, after all, slow but adequate commands for circles and lines in BASIC), and the inability to use this facility without the additional cost of the Graphics Pad strikes me as a rather significant flaw - especially as the other options available are relatively limited when compared to other, cheaper utilities.

To make the most of Style you really need to use it in conjunction with the Graphics Pad, and I must admit that I found using the two together very enjoyable. Admittedly the combined cost of Pad and software together seems high, but you simply won't get any kind of graphics tablet for a lower price.

I've noticed that the advertising for Style mentions that it is used by software houses and educational establishments, and these are probably the sort of customers that Style is primarily aimed at (because they can afford it), and I think that schools in particular would find it genuinely useful. For the home user though, I can only say that I enjoyed using Style and that it's at least worth trying out if you're sufficiently interested in graphics to consider the investment.

For further details. Saga can be contacted at 2 Eve Road, Woking, Surrey (04862 22977).