Xtreme Disappointment

[BONES]

The more I use Xteme, the less impressed I am with it, to the extent that I am seriously considering reinstalling X1 in its place. My main problem with it is this stupid bitmap proxy thing that gets generated when you move/scale things. It makes working with complex pictures Xtremely clunky as you have to wait for it to be generated before you can start trying to reposition/resize things. I much preferred it the way it was. It woul dbe great if that could be made an option, to be turned on or off.
I also have regular problems with text. If I try to rearrange words/phrases by cutting and pasting, the cursor often disappears and I cannot paste back into the same text object, no matter what I try. I end up having to delete the phrase from its original location and retype it in the new spot.

[Soquili]

Hi Bones,

I have Xara X, X¹, and Xtreme installed on my home computer. I use Xtreme for most of my daily drawing. If I need a feature that was not carried forward from X¹ I use it instead. It takes a little forethought so the correct version is used to begin the drawing. Some of the features in Xtreme can make a drawing incompatible with X¹.

I haven't experienced the problem with the text cursor disappearing, but I don't use much text in my drawings.

[Scotty]

Yes I tend to agree, I am using X1 more than Xtreme, I find that Xtreme, after applying plugin effects, slow down. I am running a Pentium64 with a GeForce 256MB accelerater and 1 GB of memory, so thought that Xtreme would 'screem' but X1 does much faster.
Jim

[Charles Moir]

Hi guys, the fact is Xtreme should be faster, very dramatically faster in many ways. A simple test like doing a previous zoom (perhaps the single most common operation by many users) shows this. For a complex drawings in X1 this can take seconds, in Xtreme this often less than <0.1 seconds.

OK another simple test: In Xtreme load Paul Shotan's red Motor Bike file from the Example clipart gallery (the file loads as Firestorm.xar). It's a classic drawing. Now just try dragging the front wheel, or the fuel tank, or the ultimate test, the backdrop. Zoom into the front half section of the bike and try the same things. Save the file, load it in X1 and try the same things in Xara X¹. You should find Xtreme is visibly and dramatically faster and smoother.

We are aware of one issue with Xtreme. It uses Windows XP themed controls for things like buttons, menus etc and it seems on some machines these are much slower than the old Windows 2000 equivalents that X1 uses. It's a known Windows XP bug that Microsoft have not fixed. You can revert Xtreme to using Win2K style controls by deleting (better to rename) the Xtreme.exe.manifest file from within the Xara Program Files folder. For some users this makes a very consider speed improvement.

However if this doesn't solve your problem, and for some weird reason you still think Xtreme is slower than X¹ you have two choices.

a) During any drag press TAB, this puts it in outline mode from this point on. No more solid drag, no more solid scale, rotate and resize.

b) If you want to turn off the object, group and layer caching go to the options dialog Tune-ups and switch it off. Now it reverts back to X¹ style no-cached rendering (and much slower dragging, previous zoom, etc).

Charles

PS The text cursor going missing issue is known about, and will be fixed for the next release. It relates to specific cases of doing a Ctrl-X to cut lines of text to the clipboard. If instead you copy, then delete, the problem does not arise.

[Daniel]

a) During any drag press TAB, this puts it in outline mode from this point on. No more solid drag, no more solid scale, rotate and resize.

With Live Drag enabled, as you drag an object away from its original position, the original object shows with a dashed outline: this is useful for relative placement of the moved copy (which drags nicely). The delay for the dashed outline is too long though - can it be displayed immediately? With Live Drag disabled, the moving object is shown with the dashed outline with no delay, and that's why I tend to work with Live Drag disabled

b) If you want to turn off the object, group and layer caching go to the options dialog Tune-ups and switch it off. Now it reverts back to X¹ style no-cached rendering (and much slower dragging, previous zoom, etc).

I can see the differences in your demonstration but I still prefer to keep the caching turned off because when resizing objects in Xtreme, the bitmap copies displayed give a poor indication of what the object will look like if the size of the object is increased significantly. It tends to need an approximate resizing and then a second go to do it again with a bigger/higher resolution copy of the bitmap cached copy.

PS The text cursor going missing issue is known about, and will be fixed for the next release. It relates to specific cases of doing a Ctrl-X to cut lines of text to the clipboard. If instead you copy, then delete, the problem does not arise.

I'm really looking forward to the update that Xtreme shut down without warning if you cut text to the clipboard after colouring it with the eyedropper. It's that bug specifically that keeps me in X1, using Xtreme only for PDF exports. (reported to and confirmed by Neil Howe on 10/01/06)

[FLySOLO]

i wrote about text annoyances and weird paste attribute behavior too.

for some time i checked xara com every day for an update (or maybe a silent update)

it would be nice of the devs to do a statement (sticky) with a list of known problems and maybe kind of a roadmap what will be fixed when...

bb,

FLy

[wW]

As a professional graphic artist, X1 is the program I use 95% of the time. From time to time I'll use Xtreme for importing AI's & eps or for exporting wmf, eps, pdf & ai. If Xtreme had the CMYK print option (spots not required) I'd be using it 100% of the time instead of the 2% that it's used now.

Hey, how about making XaraX available/purchasable to those that need or could use CMYK & spot printing - Perhaps it could become the new Webster?Better yet, Put the CMYK print option into Xtreme....

When do we " Xara users" start seeing some of the benefits of this OpenSource Code? Will Xara Ltd post this info on the web site? Perhaps someone will OpenSource CMYK back into Xara-Xtreme.

wW

[BONES]

Hi guys, the fact is Xtreme should be faster, very dramatically faster in many ways. A simple test like doing a previous zoom (perhaps the single most common operation by many users) shows this. For a complex drawings in X1 this can take seconds, in Xtreme this often less than <0.1 seconds.

Thanks for replying Charles. I have to say that I never noticed it taking time to redraw in those situations but this caching thing is very noticable and drives me absolutely nuts some times. I just did some tests with it switched on and off and I really couldn't tell the difference. I thought maybe I needed to restart the app so I did that but still no discernable difference. Maybe its because I use a very high-end QuadroFX graphics card but both methods seem to redraw as quickly, its just with the caching there seems to be a noticable pause before I can move things. And of course, its much less annoying to have to wait for a zoom to redraw than moving/scaling/etc because you're not actually doing anything when you zoom.

[AntonM]

it would be nice of the devs to do a statement (sticky) with a list of known problems and maybe kind of a roadmap what will be fixed when...

I agree. I've asked for this too. Having purchased two copies of Xtreme (one for me and one for my children), and having thus put my money where my mouth is, it would be nice to get some feedback on what's happening in terms of bugfixes and planned development.

[eobet]

As a professional graphic artist, X1 is the program I use 95% of the time. From time to time I'll use Xtreme for importing AI's & eps or for exporting wmf, eps, pdf & ai. If Xtreme had the CMYK print option (spots not required) I'd be using it 100% of the time instead of the 2% that it's used now.

Hey, how about making XaraX available/purchasable to those that need or could use CMYK & spot printing - Perhaps it could become the new Webster?Better yet, Put the CMYK print option into Xtreme....

When do we " Xara users" start seeing some of the benefits of this OpenSource Code? Will Xara Ltd post this info on the web site? Perhaps someone will OpenSource CMYK back into Xara-Xtreme.

wW

Very good post. I also use Xara X for my professional work, but I haven't even updated to X1 (I don't know, I saw no reason to... should I?).

I'm also interested in the open source version, as I will probably move to OS X soon.

I don't do much complicated work, though (mainly 16x16 - 96x96 icons), but if I would to more complex stuff, I'd probably would have moved to CorelDraw or Illustrator to be able to use their drag'n drop palettes with objects, layers, groups and clipviews integrated.