Features I'd like to see

[spectecjr]

TabletPC support:
Eraser, second button, pressure, etc.

Better alignment handling:
The ability to align text on its optical boundary instead of its actualy boundary (eg. align on BC or AB widths on the first and last character of a line, ABC widths for all other characters).

Better group alignment:
It'd be nice to be able to align on a group of objects, but not on the shadow. So, perhaps selecting the subgroup used for alignment would work?

Better shadow handling:

It'd be nice, again, to shadow the union of an entire group of shapes instead of individual shapes. That way you won't have to create a shape that is the union, which screws up the antialiasing around the shape edge (... you can't have a completely invisible shape and give that a shadow, which would also get around the problem).

Bugfixes:
Fixes on shadows for large numbers of shadows on a page. Sometimes the shadows just don't show up. Same applies to bevels - sometimes they just don't show up either, if you have a large number of them.

Better page layout support:
Eg. if you want to print business cards, the current page setup controls are a bit lacking.

[spectecjr]

TabletPC support:
Eraser, second button, pressure, etc.

Better alignment handling:
The ability to align text on its optical boundary instead of its actualy boundary (eg. align on BC or AB widths on the first and last character of a line, ABC widths for all other characters).

Better group alignment:
It'd be nice to be able to align on a group of objects, but not on the shadow. So, perhaps selecting the subgroup used for alignment would work?

Better shadow handling:

It'd be nice, again, to shadow the union of an entire group of shapes instead of individual shapes. That way you won't have to create a shape that is the union, which screws up the antialiasing around the shape edge (... you can't have a completely invisible shape and give that a shadow, which would also get around the problem).

Bugfixes:
Fixes on shadows for large numbers of shadows on a page. Sometimes the shadows just don't show up. Same applies to bevels - sometimes they just don't show up either, if you have a large number of them.

Better page layout support:
Eg. if you want to print business cards, the current page setup controls are a bit lacking.

[Charles Moir]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>It'd be nice to shadow the union of an entire group of shapes instead of individual shapes.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Isn't that the way it works already? You can see the one on the right (shapes grouped) is a single shadow that is the outline of the combined shape. The one on the left is a shadow applied to the selection of shapes which was not grouped. You can see see this has created a separate overlaid shadow for each object like the original objects.

http://www.xaraonline.com/zym7/~loca...79B/shadow.PNG

UBBCode corrected by T.G. Moderator to display referenced image.

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on November 03, 2003 at 20:41.]

[Charles Moir]

Well you would be able to see if the image worked. Anyone any idea why that image doesn't work? What do I have to do to embed an image inline?
(If you copy / paste the URL into a browser you can see the image I'm referring to).

[jclements]

The area I've found where shadows REALLY BOG THINGS DOWN is when Glow Shadows are applied to text labels in a diagram. Perhaps there might be a better algorythm for shadowing text objects.

[Charles Moir]

Yep John - we believe there are ways we can improve the rendering speed of soft shadows, especially if we use new Pentium4 SSE instructions. So we're working on it.

[spectecjr]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Charles Moir:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>It'd be nice to shadow the union of an entire group of shapes instead of individual shapes.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Isn't that the way it works already? You can see the one on the right (shapes grouped) is a single shadow that is the outline of the combined shape. The one on the left is a shadow applied to the selection of shapes which was not grouped. You can see see this has created a separate overlaid shadow for each object like the original objects.
http://www.xaraonline.com/zym7/~loca...79B/shadow.PNG<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You know, I'm not sure. Testing it right now, yes, it does work as described. However, I've gotten it to get into a mode where it doesn't quite work that way.

Hmmm... maybe I'm mixing it up with Transparency -- certainly, it'd be nice if transparency allowed you to make an entire group transparent to the same extent, instead of just the individual shapes.

Eg: group together two rectangles. Add flat transparency 50%. You can see the additive effect of the transparency in the group where the rectangles overlap. What would work much better would be to have the entire shape treated as a layer, and that layer give the required transparnecy.

Maybe that's what I'm getting confused with. Either way, mixing transparency and shadows, or using transparency with groups of shapes gives odd (if logical) results.

[Sheff]

the instance, but it is annoying. With shadows, there are instances where you cannot ungroup objects with shadows. You must first remove the shadow, then you can ungroup. Make your adjustments and then regroup and reshadow.

This is a hassle especially if your shadow is a color other than black. You cannot paste shadow attributes. I wish you could. The best you can do is create a named color that is the color of your shadows. Thats the only way to be consistent about it.

I would like this fixed. I would like to have a check box of attributes that appears when you paste attributes on an object.

For example, I might want to copy an object and paste the attributes of fill, transparency and shadow, but not line width or font. I would like some control over those attributes I can paste.

Sheffield Abella
www.sheff.com

[Michael]

Mr. Moir wrote:
" ... shadows, especially if we use new Pentium4 SSE instructions. "

That's all right for those with P4's, but if someone has put it's cards on the AMD-platform. Dow we have to struggle with a less optimized version of Xara X2 ?

[Sheff]

I thought there was some controversy regarding some of the benchmark tests where SSE was enabled for P4 and the AMD SSE instructions were not enabled, even though there is a patch to enable them?

AMD(Athlon) supports SSE if I'm not mistaken. Not sure about SSE2. AMD 64 has SSE2.

Bear in mind Xara was released over 3 years ago. Most of us were still using Pentium II's & III's back then.

Hopefully this next version will have repaired the bugs and still work with the newer processors(64 bit). It seems to me that they will put out a version with whatever technology is current today and hopefully it will work with whatever comes along.

It would be nice to have speedy software where the only bottleneck lies in the user.

Sheffield Abella
www.sheff.com