Re: Xtreme Pro 3.2 & Xtreme 3.2 Released!
Well, nice upgrades. Mark me disappointed though: still missing the two features i most need to move from Corel Draw.
I avidly adopted Xara in version 1.5 several years ago, when supervising designers at a sign shop in Houston, Tx. We followed the actions of Corel buying into, using and then suppressing Xara's many innovative technologies.
Were sad to see it become a hard to find for purchase ghost for quite some time, only available in clipart collections.
We could do things in Xara that would take twice the number of dialogs and klunky entry methods in Corel draw and the video help files could not be beat for training new users. We were missing a few tools back then that made us keep Corel draw for some tasks, while others could not be beat.
For the great big Kudo: searchable clip art. We found clipart collections to be nearly useless without a searchable index. We would pore over printed catalogs of cheap stock art, and end up scrapping them because xara could search for font styles and clip art internally in the program. We no longer needed an external library manager with searching like Thumbs Plus.
Number one need then was a contour tool, very useful when cutting vinyl on plotters.
It finally came along after two more versions. The other two i'm still waiting on:
Dimension tools, and Spell Checker.
Spell checking prevents the printers worst nightmare: 5,000 copies of a misspelled word going off the press.
dimension tools we worked around by making reusable graphic blocks, but they have a problem. during constant revision, they don't follow size changes of the objects and have to be manually edited. Creating a chance for typos that go to the production shop and create waste in cut materials that don't fit.
I'm telling you, I'd never suggest to others or use another drawing program if Xara could add dimensioning and spell checking.
Otherwise, i found little about the upgrade that would make me more efficient. Many of the additions i've already worked around, like customising the menu with a paste attributes button.
So keep up the excellent work. In an age of horribly bloated programs yours is still a gem. For example, i just went to test the new CS3 lineup from Adobe. Horrible. takes up twice the disc space and requires twice the memory of the CS2 models with little or no improvement in functionality and quite a lot of added bugs. We call this progress?
I must say, xara has always been amazingly fast and leaves a small footprint for all its features.
Dimensioning and Spell checker, you've beat Corel draw and all the others to their knees.
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Originally Posted by ripcobalt
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