Xara Designer Wishlist- Arrow head+tail styles

One minor point I find incredibly annoying in Xara is the way arrow heads and tails are drawn.

The new straight line tool adds more control over arrow head and tail sizes (although why only straight line arrows need more control over heads and tails escapes me), however it doesn't change the way Xara positions the head or tail, which in my experience is different to most other drawing apps.

Currently in Xara arrow heads and tails are centred on the ends of the initial line, and add to its length. Therefore as the arrow head/tail size changes the overall length of the line changes. This is a real nuisance if you want an arrow to exactly touch a shape, you have to reposition the line every time you change line thickness or arrowhead size.

I also find on curved lines this approach often results in the final arrowhead being at a strange angle that must be tweaked with the shape editor to look right.

This could be addressed with the very simple addition of some more arrow head and tail styles that are draw WITHIN the length of the underlying line. For an example of where this is necessary, think of dimension lines in an engineering drawing, dimension lines than grow/shrink when you change the line thickness are worse than useless.

Also note-

1) Adding the arrowhead size control given in PGD 6 for simple lines to all lines would be helpful (and I think would make the new straight line tool redundant?)

2) This idea could also be implemented as a new "connector" line style (see my other post), but my preference would be to have "endings that don't change the line length" available for all lines.

Please see below for my attempt at explaining this graphically.

Regards: colin_e

Attachment 79398

Hi colin,

The straightness of the arrowhead in relation to the line depends on whether the end of the line is straight or curved. In your case the line was curved at the end, hence the odd angle of the arrowhead.

Regarding the start and end of the arrowhead, we must remember very short lines with big arrowheads. In the attached example I shorten your line and add a large arrowhead. The arrowhead is added to the end of the line, just as you might add a real arrow head to the end of a stick, thus making the stick a little longer.

If I added the arrowhead your way, by making its point start at the end of the line and move backwards, the arrowhead gobbles up the line. In effect the spear is just an arrowhead now. ;)

The straight line tool's arrow controls work with all lines (much the same as the other tools work with straight lines), so it's really more of a straight line and arrow tool. The reason the arrow controls weren't added to the existing line tools is that their info-bars were already full.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by colin_e

This could be addressed with the very simple addition of some more arrow head and tail styles that are draw WITHIN the length of the underlying line.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Allen

Hi colin,

...

Regarding the start and end of the arrowhead, we must remember very short lines with big arrowheads. In the attached example I shorten your line and add a large arrowhead. The arrowhead is added to the end of the line, just as you might add a real arrow head to the end of a stick, thus making the stick a little longer.

If I added the arrowhead your way, by making its point start at the end of the line and move backwards, the arrowhead gobbles up the line. In effect the spear is just an arrowhead now. ;)

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I agree, this is why I was suggesting we add some new line end styles, rather than scrapping the current scheme in favour of only having "within the line length" heads and tails.

Having said that I would say that for me the "inside the line" style is far more commonly required (and more commonly offered in other tools) so I would like to have this as the default.

Being a non-creative type (I wish it were not so, but it is) I use Xara a lot for business graphics, annotating screen shots etc. Arrowed lines are used very heavily either for callouts pointing to specific features, or as connectors. Several thousand times a year I draw a line that points to an object, touching it's edge (easy), add an arrow head, then have to tweak the line position to make the arrowhead tip touch the object, and then potentially redo this for EVERY arrow in a drawing if I need to change the line thicknesses. It is a small but continuous thorn in the side, a waste of time, and easily fixed.

Yes, it would be nice to see Xara add proper reflowing connectors and maybe even dimension lines as well, aka OpenOffice Draw for example, but at this point I am just asking for a few more arrow head and tail styles as a first step. A small change for (for me) a significant improvement in productivity.

I hope they do add those extra features Colin. In the meantime, have you configured your default ‘new page’ to have a whole bunch of arrows in it? You could select the kind you want, and arrange them so their points go right up to the boxes, and then continue drawing them from their tail end.

Normally you would draw the line up the arrowhead, but this way you would arrange the arrow first, and then build backwards. At least it would allow you to arrange the correct kind of arrow exactly where you want it.

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