As previously developed, inhouse DOS program for drawing DNA sequences has received considerable use both within the NIH community and more widely. However, based on its inadequacies and numerous requests for a version running on the Macintosh, work has begun on a completely new version of DNA draw for the Macintosh. It will do essentially the same job, i.e., formatting sequence data and drawing highlighted sequences for publication, but it will have a number of significant improvements over the PC version. First, being on the Macintosh and conforming to the standard Macintosh principals, it will be immediately usable, with little or no reference to a manual required. The Macintosh system of menus will make the specification and drawing of highlights extremely simple for the user. In addition, it will use the capabilities of the mouse to make interaction with the program much easier than the PC version. DNAdraw, written for the Macintosh computer, has proceeded to the point where Version 1.0 is soon to be released. DNAdraw s based on similar programs written for the DEC10, Convex, and PC computers. The use of the Macintosh user interface makes this new version of DNAdraw much easier to use than previously, and the addition of a number of new features has greatly enhanced the program. In addition to providing the standard sequence highlighting capabilities of changing fonts, shading, proportional spacing, changing styles, underlining, etc., the program has features for automatically highlighting aligned sequence data, and for formatting and translating raw sequence data. PostScript output provides the user with publication-quality output. A number of users have tried beta versions of the program, and it should formally be released soon.
