CHAPTER 1 Introduction

Let's see a demo

Figure 1-3 gives an idea of the power of this mixing of glyphs and structured graphics. This figure shows a screen shot of a drawing editor called Fdraw3 that was developed using Fresco. With Fdraw a user can create graphical glyphs such as lines, circles, and polygons, as well as layout glyphs such hboxes. The structure of figure 1-1 is easily created using Fdraw.

In figure 1-3, rather than composing polygons to create a car, Fdraw is shown manipulating instances of itself. Huh? A user can create an instance of Fdraw (which is a glyph) and then manipulate this glyph (draw it, scale it, rotate it) as though it were any other graphical object. What's important is that these instances of Fdraw are fully functional. The user can focus in on an instance, even if it's rotated, and use it to create lines, circles--indeed, even new instances of Fdraw.

The Fdraw program is publicly available on the X11R6 distribution.

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