Following up Philip Chumbley comments, those of us using MetaCard as a
multimedia presentation tool very much need to be able to import vector
objects. MetaCard, like SuperCard has a relatively primitive vector drawing
environment. In SuperCard this was easy to overcome by drawing vector
objects in a CAD program, and saving them as PICT files, and subsequently
importing the pict file into SC, where it retained its vector
characteristics. Unfortunately, the SC to MC converter doesn't import
vector objects (except text, as fields), otherwise there would be a "back
door in". I approached Scott Raney about a request to include vector
import capabilities into MC, and his take on the issue was that 1) because
there is no cross-platform standard for vector objects, any such work by MC
Corp. was premature, and 2) adding this capability was of fairly low
priority to most users of MC.
I work on a Mac, and although' abandoned by Apple, thought that the PICT
format might be a place to start, since it accommodates both vector and
bitmapped formats in one file, and most Mac CAD programs still allow you to
save files in a PICT format. Scott seemed to think, depending on the
complexity of the vector objects one wanted to import, that this would be a
reasonably straightforward task for someone familiar with MC. I put out a
brief feeler to Tuv Snyder about it, and subsequently got involved with
another person who, in his words:
"has open-source C++ code that parses PICT files (and extracts bitmaps from
them). Translating that code into MetaCard should be reasonably
straightforward, and would be fairly easy for somebody who knows both C++
and MC."
This other person (a former SGI guru, and husband of a faculty member in my
department), who was between jobs, has since taken a position, and doesn't
have the time to donate to this effort, but forwarded the code to me. I
would be delighted to send that to anyone who might be able to help out
with writing an external to donate to the MC community in this effort.
Unfortunately, I don't program in C++, so I can't help from that angle.
With the advent of Revolution, and the migration of many folks for SC to
MC, I hope that the need to import vector objects into MC will move this
request up the "feature request list" - any comment on that, Scott?. I
urge others who need this to speak up, and as I said would be happy to send
anyone the C++ code mentioned above.
Dr. Christopher D. Condit, Associate Prof., Dept. of Geosciences
Morrill Science Center, Univ. Massachusetts, 611 North Pleasant St.,
Amherst, MA, 01003-9297
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 413-545-0272
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/condit.htm
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