AI10 envy: next version of Xara?

[carygee]

Just saw a demo of AI 10 with its bend, stretch, twist and wrinkle tools, smartguides (thank you CAD) etc. Made me realize that our favorite Xara is getting a mite long in the tooth...

[carygee]

Just saw a demo of AI 10 with its bend, stretch, twist and wrinkle tools, smartguides (thank you CAD) etc. Made me realize that our favorite Xara is getting a mite long in the tooth...

[toograffic]

I haven't been able to figure out all the tools,filters,brushes, etc., on AI9. Now they're adding even more? Since I found Xara and started using it, I love the K.I.S.S. idea - Keep It So Simple.
Adobe seems to feel like they need a new version every 8-12 months. I'm sorry, I can't afford to spend $150-200 on every program I use each year. Especially for features I may never learn to use before the next version comes out.
And have you ever tried skipping generations of Adobe products? I had AI7, then had to get AI9 for school. I spent considerable time relearning half the tools, shortcuts, etc.

To Xara: Don't change a thing until you absolutely have to!

Gary V.

[juergen]

when they started to just charge for Framemaker upgrades like mad without even delivering anything. The 350USD upgrade to FM6 did not even support bookmarks for pdf files which adobe even supports with the M$ word plugin.
Same crap as GoLive in my opinion.
Like some other companies who just want to melk their customers, not deliver good software anymore.

just my 2c
Juergen

PS. I like to vent currently when I hear "Adobe" [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[tonylondon]

I have AI9 and a vector plugin which provides the distortion tools you describe, carygee. I love playing with them, but very rarely use them. Why?because AI is such a pig to use. How should Xara incorporate such tools, yet remain simple to use and still small enough to down load? I would really love Xara to add a rotational shear to their list of transforms, however...
Tony

[Michael]

I know there's gonna be some rave/rant about this, but actually I'm quite tempted by Adobe's new program. I'haven't seen it actually, but I'm working with AI9 at the moment (don't be afraid, just proofing Xara's output ...) and it's said that Illustrator 10 should be more easier to use and faster ... Now, if that's true, Xara has got some serious problems.

I fell in love with Xara more than 6 years ago. CorelDraw! was the major ilustration app those days. And Xara drew circles around it! And it had all the features (transparancy, real-time gradients, speed, souplesse and bitmap-support-beyond-believe) that Corel users begged for!! Illustrator on those days was just a he
ard to use Macintosh program, which accidentally happened to run on the PC as well in it's third incarnation. AI3 was really awfull! But it was THE application to get your artwork to print ...

Xara was a dream come true. And it still is my main program. It outlived Corel in a grand way. I do use CorelDraw 10 just to convert CD9 maps to CD5 drawing so I'll be able to read them in to Xara. And after editing or making artwork in Xara I export to Illustrator files to get them to our image setter. Some editing is done in Illustrator, si I picked up some Illustrator experience and I'm even able to draw in Illustrator. And to be frankly, Illustrator is rather sophisticated ... But it needs a very fast machine with loads of memory. And I'll buy just the machine to match it in the next two weeks (MSI KT266a-RU, AMD XP 1900+, 512 Mb Mem(or 1GB if there's some spare dough ...), 40 Gb IBM hd, 29160 Scsi, 2x 10 Gb IBM scsi disks, ATI 7500 graphics ) so I guess that, given the fact that I spend 1500 Euro/1300USD, I might as well buy AI10 ...

And to be honest, I wonder if Xara is up to the competition. If only it would export to SVG .... (like it was promissed)

[Klaus Nordby]

I have AI 9 too and am getting an upgrade to 10 very shortly. Yes, it's a pain to use compared to XX in most ways, but it has a LOT of neat extra special effects. And it has rock-solid, state of the art PostScript support in every way, and works very well with Photoshop 6 - especially for getting vector shapes into PS6, which is a simple copy operation via the clipboard. There are MANY functions in AI which I hope Xara will emulate for XX2!


K

[da94]

Yes, Xara should work on compatibility issues, but AI9 still has no color picker, innovative bezier tools or any decent perspective solutions. Like Quark, Xara need not be upgraded more than every 3-4 years.

Daniel Attila
da94@yahoo.com

[RAMWolff44]

I read the posts and I am like "where's this update page at??" are the brush problems all resolved (IE: some of the brushes I imported into the program crashed it time and time again) and now all these other add ons. If Xara doesn't concentrate on stabalizing the program as it is now instead of loading it down with more add ons, it's going to be right up there with so many other Microsoft apps.

Let me know where I can veiw or download and see what all the hoopla is about...much appreciated.

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Sheff]

I agree that compatibility is a major issue. The only reason I bought AI9 is to VERIFY that what I've exported from Xara will open in AI. Then fix what needs to be fixed and save it as an AI again.

Also, I agree that something needs to be done about brushes. I've often choked Xara with some of the brushes that I've created.

What I'd like to see in image linking option rather than imbedding images. It would help reduce file sizes.

Sheffield Abella
sheff@sheff.com
www.sheff.com