The NEW Xara X1 Feature Request List!!

[Egg Bramhill]

How about a mathematical auto corner rounding (as in the Rounded rectangle) but for any irregular shape? I don't know how difficult this would be to achieve matematically but it would be a great addition if it could be implimented. See example below.
Egg

[RAMWolff44]

Oh yea, that's another good one Egg!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Dan Huff]

I'll third Egg's request for the auto corner rounding tool---GREAT suggestion!

[eobet]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by joroho:
Actually the mousewheel is mapped to zoom, you just have to hold down the Ctl key while scrolling.

.joroho. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hah, I didn't know that, but it would be simpler to not have to press control. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[amoore]

I prefer to use the mouse wheel for scrolling. I get very unhappy when I apply a tad too much pressure and it zooms instead of scrolls.

I'd prefer an option for turning the mouse zoom on and off.

[bertcat]

Using several programs - Photoshop, Flash, Premier, Maya etc I often get the keyboard shortcuts mixed up. Some consistancy (ie copy what the other programs do) would be nice. I really have problems remembering all the Function Key mappings of Xara. It's not possible to get it identical to all other programs, but perhaps they could be user defined?

Zoom - use plain Z for zoom, not Alt Z! Also allow rolling the mouse wheel (without ctrl) to smoothly zoom (but not in huge % steps) and switch to pan mode when it is held down as it almost does now. This could work all the time or only when the zoom too is selected.

Pan - H (although no longer needed if incorporated into the zoom tool with the middle mouse).

Select Tool - space bar or v ?

Freehand Tool - A ?

Text Tool - T ?

Fill - G or K ?

Ellipse,Rectangle,QuickShape tool - toggle from one to the other with a key? S for shape?

Transparency,Shadow - toggle from one to the other with a key?

Bevel,Mould - toggle from one to the other with a key?

Contour,Blend - toggle from one to the other with a key? (especially as they are mutually exclusive).

Geoff

[bertcat]

Right clicking on a layer brings currently up a menu - could we add a menu item 'select contents' to select all of the objects within the layer? (replace the current selection)

Another item could be 'add to layer' to *move* the selected objects to that layer.

(These ideas are stolen from Maya).

[Charles Moir]

I am particularly interested in key short-cuts such as these, or other operations, that people regard as 'industry standard' or at least common one more than one other application. We should certainly be making more use of these, to help users of alternative products be more at home, especially where we have no short-cut overlap (obviously providing user-configurable key short-cuts is a better option, but a lot more work).

So for example I believe it's pretty standard practice that a double-click on the Zoom tool should zoom to 100% (a short-cut that for some reason seems to be missing completely from Xara X). That's not used for anything else and so there's almost no excuse for not using that to mean something useful like this.

Are there other 'standard' key short cuts that people love and use a lot in other graphics apps?

Oh - and we have pan with centre mouse-button (or scroll wheel) pressed. Works at all times - you don't need to be in a zoom tool. In fact it's one of those short-cuts that once you remember, makes the pan tool completely redundant. This is the correct Windows standard (not followed by Adobe of course), but the best Windows apps do use this (e.g. Windows Picture Viewer).

I'm similarly interested in any 'standard' layer operations, such as double-click on layers (although I'm not sure there any standard meaning for this, or is there?). And yes we could certainly put a right click option on the Layer gallery to 'select entire layer'. I like that.

Keep in mind that using standard keys, such as Z for Zoom cannot work when in the text tool, where Alt-Z can.

[bertcat]

Double clicking on a layer should open up the properties for that layer with the layer name selected to make it easy to rename it.

Yes, standard keys cannot be used when entering text, but I can live with that - I usually use the spacebar to choose the Select tool which has the same drawbacks but hasn't been a problem so far.

[RAMWolff44]

I still think it's a great idea to have an Object Gallery introduced. Each object would be present with a plus sign and when clicked on all the effects, fills and transparencied would be listed with the option to right click within the Object Gallery to edit (in case the object is buried under other objects, makes the work flow much nicer!)

Also something else I am not happy with currently and I'm not sure if this is fixable. If you have a bunch of layers with objects on each layer and you grab them and group them they are brought to the layer that is selected and when ungrouped they are not returned to their previous layer heiarchy. That's really not good for me. Working on the kind of project like the "Universal Being" makes it so I NEED to group and ungroup all the time to move objects that need to be lined up properly at all times but when I ungroup them I have to one by one move them back to their respective layer. ACK!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/eek.gif I know I could grab them all and NOT group them but there are instances where there is a NEED to group and ungroup so this 'side effect' is not a favorite of mine. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif