Hi my name is Mike Flanagan
I have used Classic for many years and have now converted to elements 2 having investigated elements 1 for a couple of months.
I am one of your older users. I started programming in 1981, when I was able to borrow an Apple 2 which was lying unused in a cupboard. I was excited by computer graphics but nothing could achieve what I wanted until I got hold of an Acorn BBC micro. This at last could create reasonable graphics but at low resolution.
I came across a graphics board which could produce Broadcast standard TV. This was long before digital tv’s. I subsequently moved to an Acorn Risc machine which I initially had as a prototype. This had a processor which became the Arm processor. This might ring a few bells because developments of this are in almost every phone and all Apple devices.
With at last a really powerful (for the time) system. I set up a company - Cadsoft Graphic systems. I designed a computer system with a preview screen and separate output screen and wrote the software. This could display photographic images and text based slides with many transitions. I sold the system to major players in the Conference industry, which were still using 35mm photographic slides with banks of 35mm projectors to achieve transitions. Captions could be overlaid over live video and all transitions were in real time. To achieve this much of the software was written in assembler language to compensate for the 60 M hertz processor.
At a conference a backstage operator had a preview on their monitor and could alter the running order to suit a speaker whist maintaining the output screen to a projector. Software included a caption generator which could produce fully anti aliased text against photographic background in real time. Transitions also occurred in real time. Most computers at that time had blocky text and required time to regenerate after a change. Other Cadsoft software could drive a camera system to produce 35mm slides and photographic colour prints from a dye sublimation printer.
The Cadsoft system was used for major conferences for Microsoft, Saab, Vickers, Next and many others.
I knew some of the team who developed the original Risc (now Arm) processor in Cambridge. Eventually Acorn decided to stop manufacturing computers and subsume itself into Arm. Cadsoft depended on Acorn mother boards and when these ceased the company also had to cease trading.
I have kept an interest in graphics and web design but now only use it promote our self catering unit.
