
                                  ORCS Review

                                 By Owen Rogers

     There's a  lot  of  hype  these  days  about  resource  programs  like
     Interface 2 but how about those of us  who haven't got 30 to spend on
     an expensive one. Well one of the best cheaper alternatives is ORCS, a
     public domain program. When you first  run the program you are greeted
     with a nice little desktop with  all  your drives, drop down menus and
     buttons across the bottom. You  can  keep  two  files open at the same
     time should you need to and they can  be placed on the desktop or in a
     window.

     The program does work in low rez  but  all the dialogs are too big and
     you can only see half of  them.  In  medium  rez it works okay but the
     buttons on the icon editor are  squashed together. However the program
     looks brilliant in Hi Rez or even with SeBra, the mono emulator.

     The interface is very simple  to  use  although there are few mistakes
     when the author converted it  into  English  from German. After you've
     opened a file you just drag the  objects you want onto the open window
     and double click to edit them. Dialogs, menus, alert boxes and strings
     are easy to create as well as images. All icons and images are made in
     the icon editor. The usual drawing functions such as lines, boxes, etc
     are available and you  can  import  the  usual  formats.  If you own a
     Falcon then sadly it doesn't support colour  icons. Also it is easy to
     edit dialog and alert boxes. You  can  colour  in the boxes and change
     the buttons to all the usual  things  such as exit, selectable, etc. I
     would recommend this program as it so  easy to use. Even a beginner at
     GFA like myself can do the  most  complicated things with just a touch
     of a button. The program is much  better  than Atari's own RCS2 and is
     probably as good as HiSoft WERCS.

     However, every program has it faults and so does this one. For a start
     if you want to import a file from ORCS into RCS2 sometimes objects are
     not displayed or an error  message  appears  telling you that there is
     something wrong with the file. The  same thing happens when you import
     a RCS2  file  into  ORCS.  Also  the  program  does  not  work  in low
     resolution very well. Furthermore, when you  want to place things into
     dialog boxes like buttons you cannot place them in the exact spot. The
     biggest problem is the lack  of  English documentation. The program is
     in English but you have to work out how to use it. But other than that
     I would recommend this program.

                      Owen Rogers                 _________
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                                                  |  92%  |
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