What is a 'professional' tool?

[amoore]

...InDesign or QuarkXPress for very long documents

Unless by "very long document" you mean a magazine in which every page is different, you'd be much better off with Ventura or FrameMaker for very long documents. InDesign has some of the features and workflow needed (although you're still dealing with the slow and unintuitive Adobe interface). But using Quark for something like that is a serious waste of time, money and hair.

[steve.ledger]

Hi Gary,

I'm not confusing anything - I set the question. It is everyone else that is confusing things.

Here's hoping that was a tongue-in-cheek comment.

[gwpriester]

What are some of the professional features that are missing? And how would they make Xtreme (& Pro) more professional?

Xhris - Point.

Gary

[Xhris]

What are some of the professional features that are missing? And how would they make Xtreme (& Pro) more professional?

Xhris - Point.

Gary

That would be a better rephrasing of the question now that I'm satisfied with the original one. But this is cue for a wishlist...

[jamesmc]

What are some of the professional features that are missing? And how would they make Xtreme (& Pro) more professional?

Xhris - Point.

Gary

• 3D Extrusion (more advanced than bevel, akin to functions in 3D6)
• Acquisition of Digital Data (scanners, cameras - I think the more professional is obvious here)
• Animation Plug-in (at an extra cost to the user apart from the main prog) (with advanced features such as multiple time line, action script capable, sound/music time line,
• Exporting Filters (advanced filters for AI, PSD, etc. formats)
• Gamma Correction Software (perhaps as a plug-in with an option to buy) (with International standards utilized)
• Importing Filters (advanced filters for AI, PSD, etc. formats)
• Layering Advancement (very sophisticated Layering with the ability to treat each layer with all the accouterments of anything that Xtreme offers)
• SDK Kit (for programmers to buy separate and market their goods)

More later.

[Egg Bramhill]

3D Extrusion ~ I believe this is not very far away.
Acquisition of Digital Data ~ Basically a request for more import filters ~ no argument, but how do you keep up with these ever changing standards?
Animation Plug-in ~ Personal view: Xtreme can do a very good basic swf but if you really want vector animation go with Flash or Swish.
Exporting Filters ~ The export options have never been better.
Gamma Correction Software ~ I've no knowledge of this subject
Importing Filters ~ The import options have never been better.
In my opinion you have to disregard calls for an updated EPS import. This file type has been superceded by PDF

Layering Advancement ~ Reservations.

SDK Kit ~ no comment.

[Scotty]

professonal is any one getting paid to do a job.
jim

[amoore]

professonal is any one getting paid to do a job.

That pretty much sums it up. Anything else is just ego stroking.

We would all like for the term "professional" to mean something in terms of the quality of our output and the depth of our knowledge. Unfortunately, it doesn't. And with the general dumbing-down of software that's been going on for the last few years, the term means less and less, particularly in regard to quality and knowledge.

A few years back, I had a conversation with the owner of an agency we were using for an ad. He's a very nice man who truly tries to serve his clients well. He's well-respected in our particular niche. Of the four comps he presented, two were nightmarish, one was mediocre at best, and one was acceptable but no better.

When the layout arrived, I was not happy with the typesetting on the text block. It was way too ragged. Not only was it unattractive, it was hard to read because the line-endings were so far apart from line to line. After getting two "corrections" that were worse, I duplicated the text box and typeface in Ventura and gave him a couple of solutions so he could see exactly what I wanted. When it came back wrong yet again, I asked if the problem was his software. His response was, "It's the best software available. It cost me $18,000."

Is that what qualifies as "professional"?

[Odat]

Animation in XX/XXPro is pretty good right now, and as has been mentioned by many before (and Egg a couple of posts up in particular) if you want something that's more powerful, it's probably best to go with a tool that's custom made for that purpose.

That being said..

It would be cool if you had the ability to generate an animated gif the same way as flash; i.e. you name objects on frames and have Xara create the intermediate tweens for you automatically. I can see why this would not be added, since for a large-ish animation at a decent frame rate the Gif could get quite huge (also I don't know how many frames an animated gif can actually have).

Or, how about a modification to the way that the blend tool works when you're working on an animation? What if you could create an animation with 10 frames, put a shape in the top left corner, another in the bottom right, and create a blend between them. Then you right click on the shape and pick some option that tells Xara that you want to convert this blend to a tween across 10 frames. The end result would be that Xara automatically sets the blend to 10 steps, converts to editable shapes, ungroups, and then puts one step of the blend in each frame for you automatically.

[pauland]

The problem with putting effort into making XX/XXPro do this more sophisticated animation stuff is that it's going to be at the expense of not doing other stuff such as layer improvement.

It may be fun doing animation in XX/XXPro and I've enjoyed seeing what people have done, but Xara is never going to reach the sophistication of it's animation rivals and most Xara users aren't that interested in the animation features and I think from what I've seen Xara has it about right now. In terms of a thread about professional tools I don't really want Xara going down that route - the competition from Flash is just too hot.