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2
3Announcing the release of CGM Draw 1.3.
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5CGM Draw is a freely available library for generating CGM files from a
6C program.  It has been tested on Solaris, Ultrix, Linux, IRIX, AIX,
7OpenVMS, and DOS.  CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) is a vector
8graphics format that can be read by many popular packages.  With CGM
9Draw your code can quickly draw images complete with lines, arcs,
10rectangles, polygons, and text.  CGM Draw is ideal for creating CGM
11files on the fly when you have a rapidly changing data set (such as in
12response to database queries.)
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15Documentation for cd is included with the package, and is available from
16http://speckle.ncsl.nist.gov/~lorax/cgm/cd.html
17General information about CGM is available many places on the web, including
18http://speckle.ncsl.nist.gov/~lsr/cgm.htm
19This distribution may be retrieved via ftp from
20zing.ncsl.nist.gov in the directory "cgm"  It will have the
21name cd followed by the version number.
22The current version is 1.3 and is at:
23ftp://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/cgm/cd1.3.tar.gz
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26Whats new in this version:
27-Polygon Sets, you can define multiple polygons and draw them all with
28 one simple command.
29-Markers, set points in CGM's
30-Expert functions, to give you more control of the final CGM if you need it.
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32
33What is CGM:
34CGM is a widely used method for representing 2D vector
35pictures.  Many industry users have decided to use CGM as the means of
36representing, storing, and interchanging pictures in all their documentation
37(e.g., Air Transport Association will use CGM to represent illustrations, US
38Petroleum industry has also adopted it).
39CGM is already and established, open standard.  In 1987
40ISO approved the first version as an international standard, and the
41current version (which extends the original) was approved in 1992 (ISO
428632.)  Many programs are already capable of creating CGM files.  Major
43illustration packages already can save their files in the CGM format
44(CorelDraw is one example) and many word processing programs (WordPerfect
45and Word) can include CGM files in their documents.
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47
48What types of pictures is CGM suited for:
49CGM is ideally suited for pictures with geometric shapes, line drawings,
50and text.  Here are some particular applications that CGM would do well
51with:
52    Charts and Graphs--For instance charts of recent stock market data, or
53graphs of web server usage.
54    Technical illustrations--Diagrams for products or engineering drawings.
55CGM pictures can be zoomed in on to show small details.
56    General illustrations--Such as those you see in books or comic strips.
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