GRASP GRaphical System for Presentation

GRASP - GRaphical System for Presentation

GRASP - GRaphics Animation System for Professionals

GRASP was the first multimedia animation program for the IBM PC "Family of Computers".

Originally conceived under the name FlashGun, the first public version of GRASP was the GRaphical System for Presentation. It later became the GRaphics Animation System for Professionals.

GRASP 1.0

John Bridges (software developer) and Doug Wolfgram were the co-authors of GRASP 1.0, which was released in 1985 and distributed as ShareWare directly by Doug's company, Microtex Industries. Subsequent versions followed. Version 1.10c was released in September 1986.

Starting with the source for PCPaint, the painting aspects were chopped out and instead a simple font editor for Doug's slideshow program was created. The graphics library was used to make a simple script playback that had a command for each graphics library function. It also originally used the assembly language fades from FlashGun for a "FADE" command, but those image fade routines were mode specific (CGA) and difficult to enhance. The routines were rewritten along with the script parts. It stored all the files in a ZIB archive, renaming John Bridges' program ZIB to GLIB and the archives it produced were GL files (GRASP GL library format).

GRASP 2.0

In 1987, GRASP 2.0, was released and no longer distributed as ShareWare. It became a commercial product published in the USA by Paul Mace Software, with John Bridges taking over the product.

GRASP 3.0

In 1988, GRASP 3.0 was released, followed in October 1988 by GRASP 3.5, bundled with Pictor Paint (an improved PCPaint minus publishing features).

GRASP 4.0

In February 1991 GRASP 4.0 was released, with the ability to create "self-executing" demos (bind to make EXE added), AutoDesk FLI/FLC support, PC Speaker Digitized Sound, and a robust programming environment

Multi-Media GRASP 1.0

In June 1993, Multi-Media GRASP 1.0 was released with TrueColor support.

Authorship and Ownership

Early in 1990 Doug Wolfgram sold his remaining rights to GRASP (and PCPaint) to John Bridges.

In 1994, GRASP development stopped. John Bridges terminated his GRASP publishing contract with Paul Mace Software, and went off to create GLPro (the next generation of GRASP) with Jason Gibbs at GMEDIA. In 2002, John Bridges created AfterGRASP, a successor to GRASP and GLPro.

Although some web pages list Paul Mace Software as "buying" GRASP or "owning" GRASP, that is not correct.