Introduction
             by John Gymer

          The Birth of Canvas

    Canvas is the result of a twenty
month project which I started after
three years of programming. After
learning the basic principles of
programming on an Atari 130 XE system I
decided it was time to upgrade to the
ST. Much of the first year was spent
getting to know the new system using
Computer Concepts' Fast BASIC, in which
the original version of KArt
(Kingfisher Artist) was created. KArt
consisted of an Artist program which
swallowed up all of a 520 ST's memory
as well as being slow and very limited.
A second program, Animate, was a
dedicated sequence editor and animator
for use in conjunction with Artist.
    January 1988 marked the birth of a
new version of KArt which was written
in DevPac 2 Assembler. Much paper work
had to be done beforehand, though, for
the menu layout and program structure.
It must be noted that KArt II was not
based upon any other package, although
it appears very similar to Degas.
Indeed, KArt II was almost entirely
designed on the basis of what I might
expect to require as far as graphics
were concerned. The 'Degas-like' menu
layout seemed the most appropriate
method of selecting options as it was
quick and very obvious whereas a GEM
set-up would be less flexible.
    August 1989 marked a milestone on
the road to completion when all the
menu options and mode operations were
completed. From there onwards it was
just a matter of smoothing the rough
edges and adding the last options.
Finally, in December 1989, KArt II was
renamed 'Canvas' and prepared for
production.
            Acknowledgments
    Canvas was a long-winded project
which I could never have achieved
without some sort of help. Thanks to
Kevin Cowtan of Illusions for helping
with the HBls. The following sources of
books and magazines helped me most and
I feel they should be mentioned:
Atari ST Internals from Data Becker
Publishing, The Concise Atari ST 68000
Programmer's Reference Guide from
Glentop Publishing, Page 6 Atari User
Magazine, ST World Magazine and Atari
ST User Magazine, not to mention the
odd peices of technical help from my
brother Dave and assistance in
bug-hunting from Simon.
    Canvas was entirely written using
Hisoft's DevPac Version 2 although some
of the data was calculated by Computer
Concept's Fast ST BASIC - thanks to
both Hisoft and CC.