In the QuickDraw-graphics arena, not even MacDraw Pro's solid talents can match the features, accuracy, and depth of Canvas 3,0. This version of Deneba's jack-of-all-trades drawing program includes an impressive collection of new tools that invite serious comparison with high-end graphics-and-design programs. Noteworthy additions include powerful new alignment and measurement tools; improved text and type handling; new graphics features, such as gradient fills and plug-in tools; support for multiple graphics-file formats; and support for System 7's publish-and-subscribe.
Modular Design
With its plethora of tools and palettes. Canvas 3.0 risks a serious case of "featuritis.” However, Deneba has immunized Canvas against the disease by taking a modular approach to the program’s design. At installation, you can decide which of the program's many bells and whistles you want to introduce to your Mac by calling up the Tool Picker, which lets you specify which tools will be loaded at startup. In fact, you can define numerous tool sets to customize Canvas for specific tasks.
If you choose to install everything (which you may be sorely tempted to do), be prepared to devote almost 5 megabytes of disk space to Canvas. Deneba recommends a minimum of 2 megabytes of RAM to run the program.
In its ability to wring the utmost out of every pixel on-screen. Canvas is unsurpassed by any other graphics program. Although Deneba has eschewed the popular trend of placing all tools in floating palettes (as with previous versions. Canvas 3.0's tools are located at the left side of each window), clicking on almost any tool pops up a subsidiary palette that you can tear off. In fact, Canvas 3.0 has so many palettes that it's easy to completely obscure your drawing window, even if you're using a 19-inch monitor.
With its supremely customizable arrows and measurement features, Canvas has always been a popular tool for technical illustration and design layout. You can create technical drawings with even more precision and speed with version 3.0's Smart Mouse drawing aid and new dimensioning tool.
Canvas' Smart Mouse senses when the mouse is close to edges or center points of nearby objects or to vertical or horizontal alignment, it then snaps the mouse to these locations automatically. The package provides a slew of constraints for Smart Mouse, and you can also define custom constraints and keep multiple constraints active simultaneously. Smart Mouse uses helpful icons and lines that show you which constraint type is affecting it at any given moment. Smart Mouse certainly lives up to its name — as you draw and arrange objects, they seem to know where you want them to go even before you do.
The dimensioning tool draws lines for objects and measures not only the length of straight lines and edges hut also the radius and diameter of selected ellipses or degrees in an angle. You can customize the dimensioning formats, and the package includes a variety of industry-standard measuring systems. The dimensioning tool works spectacularly with Smart Mouse, making it a snap to draw shapes and align them with measurements. These dimensioning lines are "live" and change their numbers accordingly as you modify objects.
The parallel-lines tool provides options for drawing multiple parallel lines along a defined path, adding yet another powerful feature to Canvas' already impressive collection of custom arrows and dashed lines.
You can also define hatch patterns and apply them to any object. The program comes with several predefined patterns that use industry-standard symbols for materials such as glass and concrete.
Type Tricks
Canvas 3.0 has some new type tricks up its sleeve. This version lets you define slanted margins for text boxes and set text to run around or inside any object in your drawing, A floating MacWrite-like text ruler sets tabs, alignment, and leading. You can stretch type vertically and horizontally and kern and track it. hut only in fractions of points, not in the more useful em units.
One small disappointment is that you can set tabs, leading, and alignment only for a text box as a whole. Canvas lacks the paragraph-level formatting that MacDraw Pro provides.
You can bind text to a path and wrap text inside or around any object. Canvas 3.0 can also convert Type 1 and TrueType fonts to editable Bezier outlines, so that you can apply and reapply the program's venerable 1- and 2-point perspective distortions to create some impressive type effects quickly and easily.
Canvas' Bezier drawing capabilities are greatly improved in this version, making them not only vastly superior to MacDraw Pro's Bezigons but also putting them on a par with those of Adobe's Illustrator or Aldus' FreeHand. Canvas allows you to mirror the editing of control points (moving toward or away from their anchor point simultaneously) or change the length of an anchor without changing its angle.
The Blend command creates multiple intermediate objects to make smooth transitions between two or more objects, and you can blend multiple objects in one fell swoop, a feature that not even high-end drawing programs provide.
Although Canvas can't quite match the masking and compound-object features of PostScript drawing programs, its Combine command comes close enough for most purposes. Combine converts multiple selected objects into a new object. A variety of options let you turn multiple shapes into it single outline, create new shapes based on how they intersect, remove areas that overlap, eliminate areas that don't overlap, or even slice off shapes at their intersection.
Gradient fills can be directional, radial, or based on the shape of the object you're filling. You can select only two colors for a blend (unless you get clever with redefining your picture's palette). In this regard, MacDraw Pro’s blends, which use up to four colors, are superior.
If you've ever tried to draw a 22-point star by hand, you'll appreciate Canvas' object tools. The program lets you draw cubes, stars, grids, registration marks, and polygons with great flexibility and precision, You won't find these invaluable tools available in MacDraw Pro or in any other drawing program, for that matter. These tools alone make Canvas 3.0 well worth its price.
Although Canvas can import, save, and edit 24-bit TIFF and PICT images as paint objects, its painting tools are only adequate for creating simple images or for lightly touching up more-complicated ones.
In addition to the 256-color palettes of earlier versions, version 3,0 supplies custom color libraries and ships with several libraries of Pantone colors. You can also define and save your own custom color libraries.
Be Selective
A handy new Selections command allows you to find all the objects in a drawing that match a particular combination of attributes, such as color, pattern, and line weight. You select attributes from a dialog box by using simple pop-up palettes. Unfortunately, you can’t search for custom colors and searches for colors in text blocks aren't always reliable.
Canvas can import and export tiles in CGM, DXF and IGES formats (for exchange with DOS and CAD programs) as well as in Illustrator 88 and Illustrator 1.1 formats. You can save files in StartupScreen and EPS formats or as process separations in several formats, including the multifile Desktop Color Separation format. Canvas can also read, but not write, MacDraw I and II files. Overall, Canvas does an impressive job of retaining detail when it converts files to other formats, especially to EPS or Illustrator formats. As a result, Canvas is an excellent complement to high-end drawing programs — you can use its unique tools to start drawings and then export them as Illustrator files to a more advanced PostScript program.
Canvas can print four-color process separations, although it has no spot-color option. You can also use Canvas' extensive layering support in conjunction with the program's Slide command to create on-screen slide-show presentations.
Canvas 3.0 is a System 7-savvy program that supports Balloon Help and publish-and-subscribe. Unfortunately, because of the way publish-and-subscribe is implemented in System 7, you can publish graphics only as PICTs, which means that you may lose some detail in your drawings (a hindrance that's no fault of Canvas). There's no way, at present, to embed PostScript into published PICTs, nor are any other tweaks available for producing better output
The Bottom Line
When Deneba Software first shipped version 2.0 of Canvas, the software arrived in a very large box containing a medium-sized user guide, a cute and bulky miniature easel and lots of foam padding. Version 3.0 also comes in a big heavy box, but this time, there’s no filler. With all its features. Canvas demands the hefty documentation that takes up most of the room in the box.
As a midrange drawing tool. Canvas 3.0 is clearly superior to rival MacDraw Pro, and it even offers some features that aren't available in more-expensive professional-level packages. The list of Canvas' varied talents is long, but highlights of the new version are Smart Mouse and the dimensioning tool for technical illustration, new Bézier drawing tools, and the unique Object Tools palette. At $399, Canvas is a bargain and can easily serve as the only graphics program most users will ever need.
Taub, Eric. (January 1992). Canvas 3.0. MacUser. (pgs. 48-49).
Deneba Systems, Inc.
Applications
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2014-07-29 / 
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Canvas_3.0.6_Update_f.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
