Feathering?

[Jon G]

Hi,

I can't feather anything, the dialog box is greyed out. What's wrong?

XPro 3.2.4.3017 CD.

Thanks!

.jon

[steve.ledger]

Which dialogue box?

Feathering of a selected vector object is achieved via the feather text box or slider on the tool bar.

From Xara Help:
Mouse wheel up/down
increases or decreases feathering

Ctrl+Mouse wheel up/down
increases or decreases in larger increments.

Page up/page down keys
increases or decreases in larger increments.

Home/end keys select
minimum or maximum feather values.

[Jon G]

I mean the feathering control bar. I've floated it from the main toolbar to save vertical space...

Restarting Xara cured the issue, I can feather now but I've had this problem before and it would nice to know what's wrong.

[steve.ledger]

Sounds like a memory issue.

Reset all Options to Xara defaults, load a Xara supplied template and save as default, close and restart Xara. Use Xara with these settings for a while and see if the issue remains or returns.

Also, what other software is running at the same time?
Some software, especially web browsers are known for memory leaks.
How often do you reboot XP?
How much memory is installed in your PC and how is your virtual memory (page file) set?

[Jon G]

Could well be a memory issue... I have PS CS2 open with some tiffs, couple of Xara docs, Opera with several tabs, Thunderbird, Explorer, a color picker, XNView... :-)

2 Gb 533 Hz DDR and the appropriate page file setting, but thanks for pointing out that not anything is possible or wise. I'd rather not reset to X defaults as mine is quite pimped at the moment, but I guess I can do without Tbird and start closing unactive PS images.

[gwpriester]

Memory or resources, even if you have a lot, gets consumed over time.

If you have Photoshop open and you have been doing a lot of edits, Photoshop is storing each edit you make.

Xara is storing each move you make, up to whatever you have specified in the Options dialog. Each bitmap you create or import is stored in its entirety in the Bitmap Gallery. If you have a 10MG bitmap and you crop it down to a postage stamp, Xara is still storing all that information in case you change your mind.

Plus the normal day-to-day stuff that Windows is doing.

When your system resources start getting low, your programs start to become unstable and weird things can happen.

NOTE TO SELF: Save your documents often. Save your Xara document and shut down Xara. When you restart, Xara will run faster. Life is not a contest to see how many resource consuming applications you can have open at one time. Watch that DVD later. Ditto, the computer game.

Gary

[Jon G]

Yeah, I should be more reasonable.

The tiffs I keep open are 8Mpx 16-bit tiffs, each consuming hundreds of Mbytes or RAM. Couple of adjustment layers, edited with multistage actions. I'm usually lazy enough to import these as they are into Xara, and resize there :-D

no wonder things get flaky, I guess I've just been lucky earlier.