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Adding Drawing Objects / Symbols

In any decent software package, drawing objects such as polygons, rectangles, rounded rectangles, and ellipses should have line and fill attributes. These properties should be able to be edited by double clicking on the object. Very importantly, you should also be able to set the default line and fill properties, as this saves an enormous amount of time in putting together a presentation quality map.

You should also be able to include custom symbols in the symbol set. Some software packages allow internal editing of symbols, while others, such as Surfer, which have more comprehensive symbol libraries allow for access via a  third-party font-editing program - These can be used to customize the default symbols or create additional custom symbols of your own. There are several TrueType font editors, however we have researched the following packages and would recommend them:

SOFTY: (www.magnagraphics.com/fonts) A shareware program. Quite basic, but usable.

TYPETOOL: (www.pyrus.com) A commercial program with some nice features and full technical support. (The "GSI Default Symbols" used in Surfer were created using TypeTool.)

FONTOGRAPHER: (www.macromedia.com) Considered by many to be the premier font-editing program.

A good software package should have both vector and raster (bitmap) fill patterns. This is because only vector patterns can have transparent backgrounds.