Dynamic Drawing with a Design Surface

Abstract

Drawing programs exist in two basic flavors. The first type is painting programs, like Microsoft Paint, which allow users to create bitmaps with static content. In these programs, once the user draws a shape or types some text onto the drawing area, it can’t be modified or rearranged. But in more-sophisticated vector-based drawing programs (everything from Adobe Illustrator to Microsoft Visio), the user’s drawing is actually a collection of objects. The user can click and change any object at any time or remove it entirely.