Very Computer

1. I would like to be able to save my tool palette layout.
I tend keep all the tool palettes open at all times on my second monitor
so I have one giant "super palette".
About every tenth time I open Canvas 6 only about 1/4 of the tools
palettes come up.
This is a pain since I then have to hunt them all down and arrange them
again so they all fit.
I would like this to be a saved configuration, like the toolbar.

2. Move the JPEG, and GIF import export filters out of the Colada plug-in,
and incorporate them into the main program.
I have no interest in loading Colada, but I do want JPEG and GIF options.
Enough said.
And if you guys are going to say something about how they aren't in the
Colada extension to begin with then please explain why they keep playing
hide and seek.

Canvas 6 seems to enjoy randomly changing tools in my Toolbar set.
About every fifth time I boot Canvas 6 it has changed the button for
Gausian blur into some other random filter.
This gets annoying after a while.

4. What is the deal with Object Info?
Once again at random intervals it chooses to vanish from my desktop and
even from any of the menus.
It is the most noticeable item in Canvas 6's game of musical tools.
Every time I boot Canvas 6 I have no way of predicting which of it's
plethora of tools will have vanished from the interface.

5.Can't you find some way of speeding up screen redraws?
I have a 266 mhz G3 card in a 7100, and 136 mb of RAM (with 78 mb of RAM
allocated to Canvas 6), and Canvas 6 sometimes slows down to a snails pace
when dealing with high rez  scanned images.

6. Please take a look at Vectorworks 8 from Deihl Graphsoft ( I know you
guys can afford a copy )
Canvas 6 could really do with a few of it's tools.
Especially the views memory feature that allows you to scroll through past
views of the drawing, as well as having a button in the lower left corner
that snaps you back to the home view of the full page in one click.

7. Overall I love Canvas 6 for it's flexibilty, especially when dealing
with manipulation of scanned images.
Canvas 6 and Vectorworks 8 are the 2 apps I use the most and I wish they
shared more tools.
Vectorworks has the worst Bezier tools I have ever used, but luckily I can
cut and past bezier curves from Canvas into Vectorworks.
Vectorworks has the most wonderful snap tools for automatically snaping
the mouse pointer to various objects and datum points.
Maybe the "Smart mouse" in Canvas 6 is supposed to do this, but I have yet
to get it to work.

8. A real clipart collection.
For god's sake, where did you guys get that revolting collection of clipart?
At least Canvas 5 shipped with a complete collection of OSHA warning
labels. Canvas 6's warning label collection is about 1/10th the size.
Why not just license some professional collections of background textures
and clipart?
No complaints about the Fonts, I like them.

And by the way, whoever designed the Gallery tool should be shot.
I have a 19" monitor and I like to take advantage of all that real estate
when viewing iconized clipart, yet the Gallery tool restricts me to one
narrow collumn.
Why not let me make the gallery window any size I want?
Why not use a more logical naming system for clipart so it can be found easier?
Canvas 5 shipped with a much better clipart browser.
At least it could be expanded to fill your screen.

Summing up...
Keep up the good work.
Canvas 6 is wonderful, but I get quite peaved with this musical tools game.
Can't we have a native I/O filter for Illustrator 8 and Freehand 8 ?
Or at least Illustrator 6 and Freehand 6.

The only reason I have Illustrator and Freehand installed is to open and
convert files so I can open them in Canvas 6.
 Also I would love a "Photocopy" tool for quick scan-filter-print operations.
This would allow me to preasign a set of filter operations between the
scan and print parts.
For instance on my system I routinely have to increase contrast by  50 pts
and reduce brightness by 50 pts to get a good greyscale xerox copy.

--
                     STAGESMITH PRODUCTIONS
                     Custom Metal Fabrication
              ABANA       AWS    IATSE Local 15/488
                         Renton, Washington, US

Glad to hear that you love Canvas 6!

I understand you already received a response via email from my support manager. I
agree with his assessment. It sounds like there are some pretty bizarre things
happening here.

Before we get into the heavy duty troubleshooting make sure you have installed and
updated to 6.0.1 with extensions off. Next test the first four issues without your
extensions and without virtual memory.

I understand your concern about being able to run your games without virtual. These
are not permanent solutions, only a mechanism for troublshooting the issues you are
experiencing. You will probably want to turn off your games before testing anyway.

If you are able to reproduce any of the first four issues with extensions off, I
will need to get some more information from you. Please contact me at

1 - Your Canvas serial number
- Which palette is disappearing?
- What position was it in?
- Was it near the top or bottom edge of the screen?

2 - Do you see other raster file formats in your File->Open and File->Save dialog
boxes? (i.e. Tiff, PCX, Targa, etc.)
- Launch Canvas with the space bar held down and make sure that the Image I/O tool
and I/O Filter driver tools are loaded.

3 - Where did you place the Gausian blur icon in the tool bar?
- Did you use the Gausian blur icon at any time before it changed?
- Did you add other tools after this one?
- What does the icon change into?
- Did you assign a hot key to the icon?
- Did you create a separator after the icon?

4 - By "Object Info" are you referring to the Object Specs palette? (Object->Object
Specs)?
- Does this palette reside on the second monitor?
- Whete is it located?

5 - Depending on the size of the image you may need to allocate more RAM to Canvas.
If there isn't enough allocated Canvas will use your hard drive as a Scratch Disk
which may slow things down considerably. As a rule of thumb, use this formula to
calculate the required RAM for any given image.

ImageSize * (number of undo levels + 1) + (15 MB for Canvas) of free RAM.

For example, a 4 Meg image with 4 levels of undos would be:

(4MB * (4+1)) + 15MB = 35 MB for Canvas.

6 - Canvas 6 does contain a views feature. A view in Canvas stores a magnification
level and location within a document so you can return to it later. You can use
Home View, Fit to Window, and create your own custom views. You can read about how
to use this powerful feature on page 35 of your User's Guide

7 - For information on the use of Smart Mouse for precise alignment, see page 357
in your User's Guide

8 - The clip art collection is licenced from a number of different sources. I will
forward your comments to our product manager

The Gallery tool is expandable in the Windows version, though it is a limitation on
the Macintosh. This has been brought to the attention of our developers and will be
addressed in a future version of Canvas.

There is a very simple way to locate the clip art images. Simply type in the entire
ID string into the Matches section of the Gallery tool and the Canvas will locate
the image of your choice.

Currently Canvas supports Illustrator 7 but Freehand is not supported at this time.

I will forward your request for the Photocopy tool you describe.

Tamian