Further to my problem with reading the onscreen help . .

Does anyone know of a book along the lines of "xara for dummies" that I could get hold of?

I'm not being critical of the software. I wouldn't DARE! . . but I do find myself somewhat disappointed with the glibness and surface skipping character of the helpfiles.

I feel the effort that went into providing and listing the many (and sometimes bewildering) alternatives available for achieving a given effect may have been better spent on memory hooks such as "we do it this way because . ." or "the structure of metafiles is such that we designed the import mechanisms to automatically create separate objects from outlines and fills, reproducing the original edit handles for both instances and grouping them separately so either may be discarded." (I wish)

This last is a matter close to my heart, as I am currently bringing forward my "stock" from macdraw format via metafile to xara format. And there's a shedload of it.

The move to xara is one frought with serious misgivings and a massive task, but not to be deferred any longer. I tell myself that putting everything on a single (pc) platform will simplify things in the future and keep costs down.

I'm also swayed a (little) bit by admiration for a bunch of guys that are clearly in a league of their own, and who soldier on undaunted after being used and abused by the bastards at corel. (or so I've been told)

It's the last day of my trial so I will be buying this afternoon. I've read enough of this forum already to know that there's an impressive pool of intellect out there, so I just hope you can spare me a little.

Thanks in advance

Anthony