You’re once, twice, three times an upgrade.
Christopher Martin has been busy of late. Not content with updates to FFmpeg, FFplay, amongst others, he has also released three updates to OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus.
These three are open source enhancements to Draw, with OpenVector and OpenGridPro themselves originally being developed by Jonathan Marten from DrawPlus, and released as commercial applications by 4Mation (as Vector, which featured layering and object library capabilities, and GridPro, which was customised for drawing grids and other regular layouts). They were subsequently made open source, and a 32-bit conversion was then produced by Spellings Computer Services. The sources have since been uploaded to riscos.info, after which Christopher Martin began working on them.
The update to version 3.39, released towards the end of April, features quick access to the Touch/Enclose/Centre drag-select setting through the ‘Select document’ sub-menu, along with a subtle change to resizing when grid-locking is enabled.
Version 3.40, which Christopher made available at the start of May, adds some new functionality to the applications:
- When editing a path in OpenVector, a new short-cut has been added: Instead of clicking with Adjust on a point, and then selecting “Set origin” from the ‘Edit’ menu, simply hold down the shift key when clicking with Adjust.
- When editing a path, it’s now possible to cycle through points that overlap by double clicking with Adjust.
- The Library window can now be re-sized, which can provide a greater visible portion of the list of objects it contains.
- When clicking Menu over the list of objects in the Library window, if nothing in that window is already selected and the pointer is over an object, that object will be selected.
And finally, a few days ago, version 3.41 was released. This version compensates for a bug in RISC OS, whereby text-to-path conversion can corrupt memory, leading to behaviour that’s unpredictable, as well as crashes. As a result, Christopher describes this as a highly recommended upgrade for all users.
[…] OpenVector and its brethren continuing to be updated by Christopher Martin, Richard Torrens has highlighted the existence of the OpenVector mailing list, which he has been […]