** 0.5 page review/380 words **

XChange

Outline graphic conversion or vectorial vermicelli? Shiuming Lai untangles the mess...

XChange comes from the stable of temptingly-priced utilities published by FaST Club. Its sole purpose is to convert between some of the most commonly encountered vector graphic formats on the Atari, Mac and PC platforms. In principal this is a good idea, as a considerable number of Atari applications tend to use custom formats (Calamus, Outline Art and so forth) and only have limited support for other standards.
After the title screen comes the program itself which, due to a partial 3D implementation looks a bit odd! In use all the action takes place from one window. Operation is a doddle - select a source path and a destination path for the conversion. A popup list allows the selection of format conversion, and files may be converted singly or in a batch.
Since the last release, the paper manual has been ditched in favour of an ST-Guide hypertext file, which is quite sensible because there isn't a lot to it. Exporting Outline Art v3.0 (24-bit colour) files is now possible too.
As you'd expect, the supplied example files converted without problems but the routines don't seem to have been updated. Embedded text in Adobe Illustrator/EPS files is still ignored and the same applies for bitmap data (also found in WordPerfect Graphic files). Even worse, XChange crashes with Postscript files generated by Kandinsky v2.5 and files generated using Powerview on a UNIX machine - although the same files display fine using Ghostscript. There's also no GEM metafile support.
The recent addition of Outline Art v3.0 export combined with a price drop makes XChange better value, but its currently only a partial solution to file conversion.

** Product box **
Product name: XChange v1.5
Publisher: FaST Club
Telephone: +44 (0)115 945 5250
Fax: +44 (0)115 914 0545
Email: stclub@cix.co.uk
URL: http://www.cix.co.uk/~sta/
Cost: £9.95 + £1.25 P&P
Requires: 512Kb memory, 640x400 resolution (ST high) or higher
Pros: Fast
Cons: Not up to date, slightly quirky interface
Score: 70%
** End boxout **

** Images and captions **
** KANDNSKY.GIF **
Kandinsky's lack of Postscript import (and some common Windows formats too) can be partially resolved by using the accessory version of XChange

** OPTIONS.GIF **
Pick a conversion and Bob's your uncle

** STGUIDE.GIF **
Saves trees