Whatever happened to the xar viewer?

**Xhris** · 02 June 2007, 02:45 AM

I've often wondered why Xara don’t push the Xar format as a rival to PDF and XPS. It is considerably superior in a number of ways, such as file size, speed, features etc.

There was a time back in the CorelXara days when I'm sure there was a xar viewer (do people remember?). I never really used it at the time, as I had the Xar writer & viewer (CorelXara).

Here is my vote for bringing back a modern incarnation of this free viewer, and promoting the xar format as a superior successor to Adobe and MS’s “equivalents”. It would certainly have the advantage of promoting Xara, as well as selling xar as a portable document format. If it could also view PDF and XPS documents, it could help in a transition to the viewer.

I've set up a vote to gauge people's opinions.

**parahandy** · 02 June 2007, 03:03 AM

Oh boy yes to be able to send to ones friends the original without loss of quality.

**RAMWolff44** · 02 June 2007, 04:21 AM

I don't remember it but if it's better suited for Xara and can be made to read PDF's I tink this would be a very powerful tool for Xara or MAGIX!!

**Nostaw** · 02 June 2007, 05:12 AM

A Xara viewer would be indeed great.
Saving an .EXE file which is the xara viewer and the Xara Image in one file could be handy too.

**Rodzo** · 02 June 2007, 08:40 AM

Sorry to be a wet blanket guys, but history is stiff with instances where a wonderful product didn't quite manage to gain the tipping point and was subsequently buried by vastly inferior competition. It's heartbreaking, I know, but it's the way the world is.

Anthony

**The Alien** · 02 June 2007, 08:45 AM

Definately YES.
One would be able to show one's artwork to others without them having to buy Xara just for seeing their work. Zooming in is the main issue that is of concern to me here.
I won't see a .xar viewer as a competitor to Acrobat or so. It's a bit too soon to think that.
It's more that I feel that many people (those who don't have Xara) have been left out and can't be reached to adequately show Xara's capabilities.

From a marketing POV, I think it would be a very wise idea if Xara would offer such a viewer for free so people can see what Xara users can do. This would convince them more to buy Xara products.

From my own POV, I've always wanted to show others my Xara drawings and zoom in to show more detail, but I rarely have Xara with me so I have to do with .png instead.
E.g. currently I'm working on drawing the mechanism of a certain disease which I wanna show to my colleagues for evaluation, but now I have to use flash instead because it's vector and you can zoom into .swf files (.png is not much of an option). But that's not the perfect solution either.
I'd like (but that's just my opinion) the .xar viewer to be a single .exe which you can carry around everywhere.

**steve.ledger** · 02 June 2007, 09:38 AM

Originally Posted by The Alien

Zooming in is the main issue that is of concern to me here.

From my own POV, I've always wanted to show others my Xara drawings and zoom in to show more detail, but I rarely have Xara with me so I have to do with .png instead.

This is where PDF export (or PDF print) come in. Zooming in is available for your vector work.

We've been using PDF for sending Signwork proofs to customers out of Signlab for this very reason. Same thing applies to Xara I would have thought? Works for me

**The Alien** · 02 June 2007, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by sledger

This is where PDF export (or PDF print) come in. Zooming in is available for your vector work.

We've been using PDF for sending Signwork proofs to customers out of Signlab for this very reason. Same thing applies to Xara I would have thought? Works for me

I will use .pdf when I upgrade to the/a next version (I'm currently only using X1

)
It should be better than using .swf

**Xhris** · 02 June 2007, 01:08 PM

Originally Posted by Rodzo

Sorry to be a wet blanket guys, but history is stiff with instances where a wonderful product didn't quite manage to gain the tipping point and was subsequently buried by vastly inferior competition. It's heartbreaking, I know, but it's the way the world is.

Anthony

Well let's hope this wet blanket of yours doesn't end up applying to Xara itself.

Xara have put a lot of effort into making their (actually really great) PDF exporter and it's likely to get better. But there's still justification for a native Xara viewer so that you wouldn't need PDF at all to send your Xara artwork/files. The responses so far in this thread seem to support that.

Look at how we send xar files amongst each other on TalkGraphics. Better than having to convert to PDF and then import into Xara (which is the equivalent to what those who don't have Xara need to do at the moment, essentially).

**StevenWWinters** · 02 June 2007, 02:57 PM

Are you asking for an updated version of this: http://www.xara.com/downloads/plugin/

I really wouldn't want to see Xara invest alot of their limited resources on it. If it was an easy thing to provide, sure, but their unlikely to set a new industry standard, IMO. Their efforts would be better spent providing improved import/export capability for the existing standards.