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PCPaint was one of the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint programs, released in 1984. It followed after Microsoft Doodle, released in 1983 with the Microsoft Mouse version 1 drivers for DOS, and around the same time as Digital Research’s Draw program. It was developed by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram. It was later developed into Pictor Paint.
A demonstration of PCPaint
| |
| Original author(s) | John Bridges Doug Wolfgram |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Microtex Industries for Mouse Systems |
| Initial release | 1984; 40 years ago (1984) |
| Stable release | PCPaint 3.1 / 1989; 35 years ago (1989) |
| Operating system | DOS |
| Type | Graphics software |
The hardware manufacturer Mouse Systems bundled PCPaint with millions of computer mice that they sold, making PCPaint one of the best-selling DOS-based paint program of the late 1980s.
During the dawn of the IBM PC age, Doug Wolfgram purchased a Microsoft Mouse and decided to write a drawing program for it. The interface was primitive but the program functioned well. Wolfgram traveled to SoftCon in New Orleans where he demonstrated the program to Mouse Systems. Mouse Systems was developing an optical mouse and they wanted to bundle a painting program so they agreed to bundle in Mouse Draw. The original program was written entirely in Assembly language with primitive graphics routines developed by Wolfgram.[citation needed]
John Bridges worked for an educational software company, Classroom Consortia Media, Inc., developing and writing Apple and IBM graphics libraries for CCM's software. Bridges and Wolfgram were friends who had been connected through a bulletin board system developed and run by Wolfgram. The two collaborated cross country via the BBS, Wolfram in California and Bridges in New York.[citation needed]
Apple was by this time hard at work on their new computer, Macintosh, and Mouse Systems wanted the new paint program to capture the look and feel of MacPaint. Wolfgram contacted Bridges and the two agreed to develop the commercial version of PCPaint, as it was to be called by Mouse Systems. John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram started reworking Mouse Draw into what became the world's first commercial GUI painting program for the PC. The program was completely re-written using Bridge's graphics library and the top-level elements were written in C rather than Assembly language. Bridges developed the core graphics code for the first version of PCPaint while Wolfgram worked on the user interface and top-level code. Mouse Systems signed an exclusive agreement with Wolfgram's company, Microtex Industries, Inc., to bundle PCPaint with every mouse they sold.[citation needed]
In early 1987, Mouse Systems decided that Paint Programs weren't helping to sell mice any longer so they discontinued the bundle deal and returned rights to the code to MicroTex Industries, but retained rights to the name, PCPaint. Wolfgram then combined the paint program with a new animation system he was developing (called GRASP) and Paul Mace Software bought publishing rights to the animation system and PCPaint, which was to be renamed Pictor. Bridges again got involved and took over programming responsibilities for GRASP as well as PCPaint while Wolfgram focused on more of the business details.
In creating the first version of PCPaint, Doug had a dual floppy machine with a Computer Innovations compiler on one disk and source code on the other. John had the "luxury" of a 10MB hard disk in his XT. Data was exchanged daily via 1200, then 2400 baud modems.
John Bridges and Wolfgram continued to work on PCPaint and GRASP on behalf of Paul Mace Software until 1990. Also in that year, Doug Wolfgram sold his remaining rights to PCPaint (and its animation system, GRASP) to John Bridges.
In 1994, GRASP development stopped and so did development of Pictor Paint. John Bridges terminated his GRASP publishing contract with Paul Mace Software, and went off to create GLPro (the next generation of GRASP) with GMEDIA. Along with GLPro, came GLPaint, the successor to PCPaint and Pictor Paint.[1]
PCPaint 1.0 saved its graphics in a modified BSAVE image format (which was popular at the time) with the file type (extension) of ".PIC". By PCPaint 1.5 this format was extended further to accommodate image compression. With the release of version 2.0 the PICtor PIC image format was developed almost to its present state, with no similarity to the BSAVE format used by earlier versions.
Pictor Paint saved its files in a compressed format with the file extension PIC, which was the same format used by PCPaint.[5][1][6]