Xara Xtreme is good but...

[gwpriester]

b) Set the width units of lines to pixels. Points are not good when the render is made 96 dpi and points are 1/72.

.75pt = 1 pixel

You can also enter a pixel amount, e.g. 1pix (it must be keyed in with no space)

When you press Enter to apply the change the amount in the Width text entry box will show .75pt.

You can enter any pixel amount in the same manner.

The Help menu contains a list of abbreviations for all the other measurements.

Hope this answers one of your questions :-)

Gary

[covoxer]

Hi wW,

Why wouldn't you go back to the "Xtreme disappointment" thread and READ ALL MY POSTS there. They actually explain all those things that you are argue. I find it stupid to ask "why Xara skips 99% of whishlist" if I just have explained this in the thread that you have been posting to.
And yet again, "we all expect...". Hove can you talk for all of ours? And even if so, will it help to expand Xaras market?
Please, read my posts. Than you'll maybe understand that your selfishness beats all records here.

"Selfishness is very interesting thing, if you have not enough of it - you are not an individual, but you'll get too much it may harm you." He, he.

Can you look a bit farther than your nose? Don't you understand that Xara is fighting for better sales, and that requires improvements that are required by those who are not Xara users yet? Or maybe you want Xara to not grow? But who will develop the program then?

And why should I write this once again???

[StevenWWinters]

I may be all wet, or maybe I'm just stating the obvious, but...

It seems that what people may be missing is that the future of Xara X (now Xtreme) as a viable commercial product was uncertain (and perhaps has been for some time). For perhaps of a number of reasons (entrenched Adobe users, inadequate marketing, etc.), it has never garnered the significant market share necessary for it to develop in the way that many users would like.

Charles queried a while back on this forum asking for input on features that would expand the customer base. Clearly, from the responses, some users asked for and got a few of the things they wanted, in Xtreme. But many did not. Xtreme was the the outcome, which to some has been a disappointment, because their pet feature/enhancement did not get implemented.

Furthermore, as Charles notes in the FAQ, Xara now finds itself the little guy in an arena dominated by two 500 lb. gorillas (Adobe & Microsoft). Xara has a solid, excellent, but in many ways outdated product with insufficient revenue stream to keep it competitive. What's a body to do???

The response:
1. Xtreme, with features applicable to a wider audience (and an incredible price).
2. Open source.
3. Port to Linux & Mac.

The move to open source is a risky but gutsy move to help generate market interest and development resources for the product. Porting to the new platforms will also generate interest. If it was otherwise destined to become a deadend product, I think Xtreme is an excellent outcome, considering the alternatives.

Regarding wishlists: When you upgrade to Xtreme (and I assume buy a new copy), a survey is launched asking for feedback on what single feature you would like to see added. (I wanted to respond with several, quite frankly.) I'm confident that Xara will be using this to determine the direction of future enhancements, which hopefully now have a chance of happening.

Lastly, although it is not a feature I personally use, I think that Xara should bring back the CMYK print functionality that others have bemoaned the loss of. The new features of Xtreme take nothing away from the product for others who don't use them. Likewise, having the CMYK feature available, doesn't impair my ability to use it for my needs.

[wW]

I agree 100% Steve. You've written precisely what I've been thinking. It's the vector aspects of this program that put Xara on the map in the first place. To ignore or forget this fact speaks volumes more than I'm able to write here. Xara should be the only place one would ever need to go to for any vector tool or effect.
For many years now we have been giving hundreds of pertinent & meaty suggestions for upgrading & improving upon the vector tools in Xara. Many of these suggestions would undoubtedly put Xara light years in front of all other vector apps. Only once have we seen a major tool upgrade. The rest of the upgrades or releases have not shown any major changes with the working tools.

Actually, if you step back & look at Xara from the beginning until now. Speaking relative to the Tool set - There have been only 2 major releases of Xara since the beginning. Studio up to the version when the new tools were added - (XaraX I think). The rest have been upgrades to an existing program (Code) packaged as a new release & at times, under a new name. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, Just making an observation. Looking at it from the end user and not from the aspect of coding & language Xara uses to compile to programs. Taking this into consideration, Xtreme would be a 3rd release because open source leaves a window of opportunity for adding & fixing the existing tool set.

This is a VECTOR program 1st & foremost. I understand that you want to make Xtreme attractive to new users. Hence the plug-in's & open architecture. But guys, c'mon! WHERE'S THE BEEF? What happened to the official Xara fix for the vector tool set (upgrades & fixes)?

When I think of Xara. I think of a great intuitive illustration & vector program. Open Architecture will perhaps address the future of where Xara will go.

Perhaps my disappointment is a bit pre-mature Covoxer but when I convince my boss to purchase the new release & can't use it to print our work (which is 80% CMYK printing) I'm taking two hits, which effect my bottom line & also makes Xara look bad to the folks I've worked so hard to win over - (With Xara's quick outputs & faster production rates)

I'm perfectly content using X1 for now, It gets the job done.

[covoxer]

wW,

Many of these suggestions would undoubtedly put Xara light years in front of all other vector apps.

He, he, Xara is already some distance ahead, but not by means of features.
Speaking seriously, do you think that this "feature leadership" would increase Xara sales?
Ok, let me ask you then which one of existing vector editors is the most powerful or more precisely I should say feature rich and universal? Ha? Do you know the answer? What? Illustrator? Corel? Relax, none of them...
Clearly it is Deneba Canvas! Try it if you do not believe me.
But is this program as successful as powerful? NO! And that' a sad "no".
Actually, the whole company (Deneba) was bought by ACD (developer of the ACDSee viewer) not even a monster like Adobe or MS.
Do you want the same fate for Xara ltd.?
So, features and leadership is important, but we should think about the commercial success as well if we want company to survive to make further features improvements.
And one more thing, Xara have no chance to get "in front" of Canvas because it would need too much man/year work to implement only missing features.
So stop dreaming of that.

On the other hand, Xara is much faster, reliable, easier to use and it can handle much more complicated images without causing your OS death. And by these means, it is light years ahead of anything.

Oops, sorry about your boss... I think it was not easy to convince him?
But if you'll wait some time, I'm sure you'll get what you want. I mean CMYK. It's not the end of it.

BTW, Deneba Canvas is Vector/Raster/CAD/Publishing/Animation + some 3D - all in one! And It had analog of Live Effects some 5 years ago!

[wW]

Your post(s) have been educational John. Thanks for replying so extensively. You've got my curiosity going with Deneba Canvas, I'll be looking into that one.

Xara will always be my workhorse inspite of my dissappointment with the new release (so far). I have a feeling I'll be eathing crow soon. Feel free to tell me I told you so when the time comes.

[xalres]

I wouldn't say that CSS is better than tables yet. I've tried doing completely CSS based site layouts but the results vary widely depending browser/version. Even in newer browsers, some elements of CSS are really wonky. For instance, resizing a window in IE 6 causes dotted/dashed borders to run together or "dash" irregularly, something you won't get when using a table with background images.

When you're writing a site for a client you want it to work on as many systems as possible. "Your users should have x browser because it displays my CSS correctly." will not win you any return business or recommendations.

er...wow, that was kinda off topic.

[Rocko]

Hello,

I never tough that my comments got into a parliamentary discussion, I know suggestions take a long time to become true, but they do at the end, as the active bitmap effects, the accuracy with grids and guide lines, improving slide tool, etc. made for me as surely for many others a long time ago.

Other thing that I have noted is that the Open Source strategy has been misinterpreted and this could give you not the best surprises in near future.

Let me tell you my experience as marketing professional.

There are 2 types of Open Source commercial projects (between others I guess), those moved by their technology advantage that nobody would have supported, crazy ideas as PHP, Apache, Typo3 or Gnome. and those who are trying to get marketing momentum or to recover it like Mozilla, SugarCRM, OpenOffice and Solaris by example.

The main difference, the first group is one step ahead in technology and the second group are under the shadow of a leader.

The main similarity is the foundation of a community with the development supported by the leader/owner of the project, other people use to help mostly testing an suggesting.

With this in mind, my diagnostic for Xara is:
1.It is in the second group, as described, with Adobe as marketing leader, Microsoft's menace and ACD Systems' Canvas as technology head.
2.It is a must to build a positive and collaborative community in short term, as Typo 3 does.
3.It must be assumed that the cost for development will remain in house and if a good programer can port Xara X to Linux or Apple, he will have to be hired in a full time basis.
4.Detect an correct the Company's actual management problems preventing the project to be infected (Mozilla took years to amend its chaos and it stays behind Explorer in marked and Opera in technology, OpenOffice does have the bureaucracy vicious from Sun and is far away from MS Office and Word Perfect).
5.Get the technology leadership with end users in mind, this mean that the product must do what its competitors, BUT DO IT WELL plus improvements in other areas that those will take years to accomplish, plug ins are a good trend, user interface as well (One important weakness of Gimp).
6.Raising credibility, being consistent, congruent and efficient. Just complying promises on time and do not promise what is not possible to comply. Avoid argues as “It has its problems but is better than X”, “What do you expect if it is cheaper than Y”, “The Queen never takes care of us”.

I know marketing is not a loved field for most Xara's users, I share this willing to see a healthy Open Source community with real expectations.

Good luck,

Rocko

[covoxer]

wW,

If you think about ACD Canvas, it will not help you. Nothing will help in fact.
Xara is like a drug... I was trying to switch to other editors long time ago, believe me.

Corel DRAW - it's like Xara except that it was rebuild by paranoid that does not really understand what he was trying to achieve. Many powerful features, but feels like building a sand castle of the dry sand. Complete failure.

Illustrator - all the time of forcing myself to use it I was waiting to finally find the sanity in all that mess of buttons and windows... Failure again. Feels almost like building illustrated HTML page with bare hands in notepad...

Bunch of others actually failed because of not enough functionality - color separations was essential for me.

Finally I got Deneba Canvas 8. I like that program a lot, it's my second after Xara. I was using it for some time. The feature set is something I could only dream of! I forget about photoshop and pagemaker since all that was done in one path in one program! All cool, but after some 2-3 month of power using I finally understood that something is missing here. Not the feature but rather the pleasure of working. The point is that Canvas will not give you the satisfaction from the creative process, the one you get every time you use Xara. I like Canvas, but I will never use it as main creative software again.

Working with Canvas it feels like making a perfect sculpture except that with your legs, since your hands are busy by holding huge number of instruments. And the sculpture is of very thin glass, one wrong move and you'll have to start all over again, sometimes with reset button...
It's interface is close to Adobe but nicely improved. Still I would call it worse than DRAW and Xara of course.

Xara IS a drug. I do not know a person that was working for a long time in this program and then has found something better for him. And that's the other reason why there so many wishes. If the user of other program has not enough features he may easily start to use another, more powerful. But not the Xara user! Our only hope to get the feature is that we will find it in the next version of Xara, because we will newer work with the same satisfaction in anything else.

He, he, sick we are...

Cheers!

[Rocko]

I wouldn't say that CSS is better than tables yet.

Certainly, it is not the best for all the web designers, but it does for the web users.

I've tried doing completely CSS based site layouts but the results vary widely depending browser/version.

Tables always have depended on browsers.

Even in newer browsers, some elements of CSS are really wonky. For instance, resizing a window in IE 6 causes dotted/dashed borders to run together or "dash" irregularly, something you won't get when using a table with background images.

I think I was lucky to learn how to deal with it since my first lessons.

When you're writing a site for a client you want it to work on as many systems as possible. "Your users should have x browser because it displays my CSS correctly." will not win you any return business or recommendations.

CSS truly works NOW with most systems, in the understanding that you most consider the target and how it will be displayed on it, with or without an specific sheet, as cell phones, PDA, people with disadvantages, in print, video, web tv, IE, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, E-Mail. One single content with as many shapes as you want and it is currently in production!

Something that tables NEVER have done and NEVER will. You truly have to make a complete web site for each platform, sometimes for each browser under the same operative system.

Certainly, CSS (As well as CMS) has been since a few years ago the professional side of Web design. I think in Xara X as a professional tool to because there is Webstyle for other type of expertise.

Sincerely,

Rocko