Xarascript?

[AntonM]

Another wishlist thing.

I'm doing a map of my town by tracing the centreline of the streets. There is a motorway, two B-roads, several A-roads and about a zillion other roads, streets, and country lanes. Basically the centreline is copied onto at least two other layers per type of road, these being the outline and the interior colour, and the ordering of the layers ensures that the interior line (centreline copy thickened to, say, 10pt) is on top of the (say 12pt) outline line, which produces a very satisfactory representation of a road on a map. but each kind of road (A-roads, B-roads, &c) gets treated slightly differently so that they look different.

This is all very well and looks jolly smashing - but as soon as I decide, later, that I want to extend the map to include a neighbouring village, I've got to go through the whole palaver again, for each kind of road.

I'd like to be able to have some sort of scripting language in terms of which I could, for example, give all A-road centrelines an "A" attribute, all B-roads a "B" attribute, &c, and the script language would then take that skeleton and create the necessary latyers and thicken the lines, &c &c, thereby producing a Xara file of a roadmap. If I then chose to extend the map, all I would have to do would be to add the extra lines, with appropriate attributes, and feed that extended skeleton to the script, which would redraw the whole thing again, as a roadmap, as defined by the script file.

Ok, so I could use a dedicated roadmapmaking drawing program. But I like Xara.

Does anyone else feel Xarascript would be useful?

Anton

PS. Why am I doing a map of my town when I've got a p[erfectly good printed one? Because I enjoy it! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[AntonM]

Another wishlist thing.

I'm doing a map of my town by tracing the centreline of the streets. There is a motorway, two B-roads, several A-roads and about a zillion other roads, streets, and country lanes. Basically the centreline is copied onto at least two other layers per type of road, these being the outline and the interior colour, and the ordering of the layers ensures that the interior line (centreline copy thickened to, say, 10pt) is on top of the (say 12pt) outline line, which produces a very satisfactory representation of a road on a map. but each kind of road (A-roads, B-roads, &c) gets treated slightly differently so that they look different.

This is all very well and looks jolly smashing - but as soon as I decide, later, that I want to extend the map to include a neighbouring village, I've got to go through the whole palaver again, for each kind of road.

I'd like to be able to have some sort of scripting language in terms of which I could, for example, give all A-road centrelines an "A" attribute, all B-roads a "B" attribute, &c, and the script language would then take that skeleton and create the necessary latyers and thicken the lines, &c &c, thereby producing a Xara file of a roadmap. If I then chose to extend the map, all I would have to do would be to add the extra lines, with appropriate attributes, and feed that extended skeleton to the script, which would redraw the whole thing again, as a roadmap, as defined by the script file.

Ok, so I could use a dedicated roadmapmaking drawing program. But I like Xara.

Does anyone else feel Xarascript would be useful?

Anton

PS. Why am I doing a map of my town when I've got a p[erfectly good printed one? Because I enjoy it! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[John Rayner]

Hello Anton,

If you have both lines for your roads on separtate layers, then it is easy enough.
Just select the "master" road, copy it Cntrl-C, mack sure you are editing only 1 layer, press Cntl-A to select everything, then press Cntrl-Shift-A to paste the attributes for that tine to all the rest.

Is that close enough to your xarascript you where asking about?

PS.. Most programs that have scipting languages make you use 15 tools to do one simple task. Instead of having a logical UI. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Egg Bramhill]

Anton
Don't know if I could really make any use of scripting.
What problems are you having extending the map? Why can't you just draw more lines on the required layer, copy an existing line and paste attributes, etc (or CtrlA and type in that layers line width) for each new extended road?
Egg
Whoops! John's beaten me to it.

[John Rayner]

"Whoops! John's beaten me to it." - Egg

But yours is so much prettier... Nice job.

[Egg Bramhill]

And yours is so much faster

[John Rayner]

Don't have much time for making pretty pictures in the morning. It must have been late afternoon for you. I think you are about 7 hours ahead o me.

[jclements]

Even faster, don't need to do the control-C, Control-V routine.

Just select a layer in the Layer Gallery and click on the "Copy..." button in the Layer Gallery. AND it doesn't seem to cause crashes like the "Move..." button does.

[jon spain]

You might be able to use something like macro express at (http://www.macroexpress.com/) but I've not tried it in Xara (it did work wll in Inspiration quite a while ago). There are other similar programs but ME does work

[Egg Bramhill]

John
I think the idea is that more roads can be added over time to the already existing roads. Copying a layer and changing the line width works fine when initially creating the drawing, but I can't see how it would help when revising the map?
Egg