ArtWorks 2 news

26-Apr-10: ArtWorks 2.X, the successor to ArtWorks 2.9 was released at the Wakefield Show and is available for purchase now.
05-Oct-09: A brief test revealed ArtWorks 2 and the free ArtWorks Viewer to start up on the Cortex-A8 based Beagleboard. Various features cause crashes though, so ArtWorks is not officially supported on the Beagleboard yet. The ArtWorks Viewer mostly works but cannot render all types of bitmaps in ArtWorks files.
01-May-09: ArtWorks 2.9 released and available for purchase.
29-Apr-08: Pre-release of ArtWorks 2.8 with PDF import (more details) available for purchase.
11-Apr-08: ArtWorks 2.8 announced featuring PDF import supporting multiple pages, CMYK colours, clipping and transparency (Details).
31-Dec-07: ArtWorks 2 was voted Best commercial software of 2007 by Drobe readers.
10-Aug-07: ArtWorks 2.75 upgrade released (ArtWorks 2.7 users only: download upgrade).
05-Jul-07: AWViewer/AWRender 2.10 released with multi-page and full screen support (free download).
15-May-07: ArtWorks 2.7 (more details) released and available for purchase.
10-May-07: AWRender 2 available as a free download for everyone. It enables third-party applications to display ArtWorks files with transparency!
05-Jan-07: ArtWorks 2.63 upgrade released (ArtWorks 2.6 users only: download upgrade).
02-Aug-06: ArtWorks 2.62 upgrade released.
11-May-06: ArtWorks 2.6 (more details) released and available for purchase.
11-May-06:AWRender 2 released. It enables third-party applications to display ArtWorks files with transparency!
08-May-06: AWViewer 1.80 released.
06-Feb-06: ArtWorks 2.57 released (ArtWorks 2.5 users only: download upgrade).
04-Nov-05: ArtWorks 2.52 released (ArtWorks 2.5 users only: download upgrade).
20-Oct-05: ArtWorks 2.5 released and available for purchase.
06-Jun-05: AWViewer 1.76 released (download).
19-May-05: ArtWorks 2.41 released with over 40 improvements.
24-Feb-05: ArtWorks 2.34 released (ArtWorks 2.3 users only: download upgrade).
18-Jan-05: ArtWorks 2.33 released.
29-Nov-04: ArtWorks 2.32 released.
18-Oct-04: ArtWorks 2.3 available for purchase.
30-Sep-04: Various bug fixes released for all ArtWorks 2 users, see the ArtWorks 2 Support Area).
23-Sep-04: ArtWorks 2.3 announced, featuring graduated transparency and CMYK ink simulation. See the feature list.
27-Jul-04: Graduated transparency with graduation profiles announced.
01-Jun-04: AWViewer 1.74 released (download).
24-May-04: ArtWorks 2.22 released (ArtWorks 2.2 users only: download upgrade).
11-May-04: ArtWorks 2.2 released! It features ClipView - dynamic clipping for all object types.
11-May-04: AWViewer 1.71 with ClipView support released.
16-Jan-04: The Christmas offer has ended.
15-Dec-03: Check the ArtWorks 2 Christmas offer
16-Oct-03: ArtWorks 2.10 released.
14-Oct-03: ArtWorks 2.09 released.
04-Sep-03: ArtWorks 2.07 released.
21-Jul-03: ArtWorks 2.06 released.
19-Jun-03: ArtWorks 2.05 released.
19-May-03: Credit card ordering available for ArtWorks 2 via Co-Comp and SWREG.
13-May-03: Credit card ordering available for ArtWorks 2.
10-May-03: ArtWorks 2 released at the Wakefield Show.
08-May-03: ArtWorks 2 CD duplication started.
07-May-03: ArtWorks 2 coding completed.
22-Apr-03: Discussion of ArtWorks 2 feature suggestions on the ArtWorks SmartGroup.
07-Apr-03: ArtWorks 2 on the Iyonix renders the AP June 2002 cover (as shown on the left) more than FIVE times faster than a StrongARM RiscPC+ViewFinder and more than 3 times faster than ArtWorks 1.7 run on the Iyonix under Aemulor 2.10. You can find some details and a clarification here.
25-Mar-03: First successful test run of the 32-bit ArtWorks on the Iyonix.
11-Mar-03: First fully functional ArtWorks kernel built from ArtWorks source code.
16-Jan-03: Download the 32-bit safe AWViewer release containing AWRender Plus with support for deep sprites and text areas.

Benchmarks

A first benchmark shows a stunning speed-up when running ArtWorks 2 on the Iyonix, in particular in conjunction with Crystal and demanding tasks. Rendering Henk Huinen's famous "raindrop" illustration, featuring as the cover of the June 2002 issue of Acorn Publisher at highest WYSIWYG level and 65% scaling (1280x1024 pixels screen mode):

Iyonix/ArtWorks 2 (16M colours): 31 sec.
Iyonix/ArtWorks 1.7 using Aemulor (16M colours): 1 min 45 sec.
StrongARM RiscPC/ViewFinder (16M colours): 2 min 40 sec.
StrongARM RiscPC without ViewFinder (256 colours): 2 min 37 sec.

Thus, ArtWorks 2 running natively on the Iyonix renders the illustration three times faster than the emulated ArtWorks 1.7 and most importantly, it renders more than 5 times faster than a StrongARM RiscPC can manage at that resolution.

Please note that this overproportional speed-up does not mean that the Iyonix is five times faster than a StrongARM RiscPC. The surprising extra speed-up is caused by the way Crystal works: Due to the fact that Crystal updates the screen at configurable fixed time intervals while rendering complex illustrations, a higher proportion of time is spent updating the screen on a slower machine than on a faster machine. Therefore, these figures cannot serve as a general machine benchmark. For the record: For the above benchmarks, the screen update interval of Crystal was set to 2 seconds (the default value).

If you think that publishing the 5 times speed-up is cheating, then please note that I am not comparing a RiscPC to an Iyonix here. I am comparing a real-world task in two graphics design setups. As far as the end user (i.e., the graphics designer) is concerned, the important thing is productivity. When working on Henk's illustration a graphics designer using ArtWorks 2 on the Iyonix can enjoy the same quality of service (rendering to a 1280x1024x16M screen with a 2 seconds update interval) while getting control back 5 times faster than someone using a standard RiscPC based setup, which means that the ArtWorks 2/Iyonix setup provides the basis for a significantly higher productivity.

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Last modified: 07-Dec-10