Updating developping progress

[franfar]

Hi to all!

I use to (every day) browse this site for new/updated info about Xara Xtreme LX and although I can see that rev. number increasing (f.e. 0.5 1423) it's difficult to get an idea of what's really going on. The same about new content/gallery that I can't understand it remains the same since the last stable release.

Maybe it's me but seeing news once every month gives the impression that the project could be, sometimes, in a slow motion (when I'm sure it's not the case!).

In conclusion: please, update more often!!! :-)

Just my 2c,

Thank you!!!!

[abligh]

Hi to all!

I use to (every day) browse this site for new/updated info about Xara Xtreme LX and although I can see that rev. number increasing (f.e. 0.5 1423) it's difficult to get an idea of what's really going on. The same about new content/gallery that I can't understand it remains the same since the last stable release.

Maybe it's me but seeing news once every month gives the impression that the project could be, sometimes, in a slow motion (when I'm sure it's not the case!).

In conclusion: please, update more often!!! :-)

Just my 2c,

Thank you!!!!

Development on LX is pretty rapid compared to most open-source projects. There have been a lot of improvements since 0.5 - if you want to know the minute they appear, join the xara-dev list (or if you are a real change junkie, the commits list, and you can see things being added to the code real time). If you aren't into mailing-lists and source code (fair enough) try the unstable version periodically (latest build).

Predictably enough, the next release will be 0.6 and should be within a week or so (according to Neil's mail to the -dev list). Major changes include: initial (not completely functional) support for printing, line gallery, page rulers, more work on import/export filters, EPS export, profile dialog, advanced colour editor, better help, copious bug-fixes, and no doubt lots of other things I've forgotten.

The reason that new stable releases are only done monthly (or so) is that we go in to bug-fixing mode for a week or two (at least in terms of code that reaches the built version) before a stable release. If we did them more often, we'd get no new features in.

Alex

[franfar]

Thank you very much Alex. Your reply has given me really lots of info. By the way, you didn't answered me about the gallery content ;-) I'd really like to see what people are doing using the current status of the app. Do you have some "channel" (read e-mail, forum,...) for sending work done with the Linux port of Xara? I think people could be very interested to show their talent!

Bye!

[abligh]

Sorry, galleries: I think the only new gallery in 0.6 will be the line gallery. The galleries that do work are missing what is called the "library element" - that's the predefined bits that are loaded from disk. I've got that on my list of things to do, it shouldn't be a huge task, but some areas have problems (e.g. the library element of the colour gallery is pantone colours, and Xara can't open-source them for licensing reasons). I was hoping to get this working for 0.6 but we decided getting basic printing working was more important so I have spent time on that instead.

Quickly going through the missing galleries: Frame Gallery - in essence animation just isn't there in LX, lots of work to do. Font Gallery - lots of windows specific code, lots of work to do if we support installing of fonts, not so much work to do if we just support system fonts and leave font installation to the OS. Name gallery - problems due to poor internal data structure, lots of work to do. Colour gallery & fill gallery should be no problem once the library element is done as it's 100% library data.

As far as artwork done with the Linux port of Xara is concerned, no I don't think there is a forum specifically for that. But it should not differ too much from work done with Xtreme. As one of the other threads has shown, you can already do nearly all the common operations with a recent Linux version. I'd love some people to be using it "in anger" though and send some drawings in.