Slow toolbar redraw in X1...

[carygee]

X1 launch seems to lack the crispness of XaraX, with toolbars conspicuously unfolding after startup. (Or is that my pc? WindowsXP, 1GB RAM)

Also, I note that the fill adjustment arrows are conspicuously smaller?

[carygee]

X1 launch seems to lack the crispness of XaraX, with toolbars conspicuously unfolding after startup. (Or is that my pc? WindowsXP, 1GB RAM)

Also, I note that the fill adjustment arrows are conspicuously smaller?

[Charles Moir]

We are not aware of any slowness in the toolbars on any of the machines we've tested it on, and that includes some rather old and under-powered computers.

However the toolbars do use 32-bit full colour icons now and so this area has been changed. If your machine is very slow at rendering 32-bit icons that would explains why it now appears slow. But on any semi-modern PC working as it should the toolbars should be instantaneous. If not that points to some Windows or graphics card problems.

The fill arrows and control handles are all deliberately smaller than on previous versions. However this can be controlled by registry settings if you're happy messing with the registry (which can be dangerous)

In HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Xara/XaraX1/Options/Selection blob handles

There are various values you can alter to vary the selection handles and fill arrow sizes. The last two values, presently 3 and 2 used to be 4 and 3 in the old Xara X release, I believe.

We take no responsibility if you mess up your computer playing in the Registry however.

[carygee]

I think I have enough horsepower: 2GHz Pentium 4M and a nVidia GeForce graphics chip w/32mb dedicated video ram...

My Office 2003 apps, I believe, also have these 32-bit full colour icons and they snap to attention as expected...

Re fiddling with the registry, it's not worth the risk. A $2.50 set of reading glasses may be a better out.

Thanks for your prompt reply

[DD]

A quick thanks for the regedit tip.

I have put my "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Xara/XaraX1/Options/Selection blob handles" back to the old 4 and 3 and find it much better than the smaller X1 defaults.

One other thing, I love the solid live fill dragging but dislike the bounding box display when the mouse pauses. Attempting a fine adjustment where there is little difference between the old and new positions is particularly messy with boxes flashing up every time I pause.
Might there be a registry entry to turn these boxes off ?

Dave D.

[jens g.r. benthien]

Dave,

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Might there be a registry entry to turn these boxes off ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know about a registry key, but if you double click the white arrow in the blue circle you turn off the bounding box.

Maybe this helps.

[jens g.r. benthien]

Carygee,

nVidia graphics cards with enabled OpenGL are a bit slow on 32 bit rendering in high resolutions. As fast as they are in OpenGL, their performance lacks a bit in standard mode.

But be honest - the icon rendering is only necessary when you start Xara X1 or resize the window...

I'm not sure if Direct X support of the graphics cards will influence the rendering times - in Linux nVidia and ATI are good performers at the same level. But in Windows... well, that's a completely different story.

I can live with the nVidia being a tad slower than the ATI.

[Charles Moir]

Yes there is a registry entry to disable outlines after a pause. It's called IdleDragDelay2 under the Dragging section. It's defaults to 1 second (1000 ms). Change that value to say 10,000 and it will not show outlines for ten seconds - as good as not doing it at all.

The reason the feature is there is when dragging objects under other objects or dragging objects that the exact same colour as the background - you can't see them unless we draw a bounding box or outline. So rather than show it all the time (ugly, spoils the sold drag) we show them after a short pause. that way if you drag an object under another and pause for a second you can see where it is. But using this reg entry you can disable the feature if you don't like it.

But the easiest way to see outlines is to use the ever present Tab key during a drag - that way reverts to the old outline drag which is visible all the time while dragging, resizing or rotating.

Oh and our conclusion about slow icon rendering is that it's a video driver issue. 99% of video cards do not show this problem and the icon rendering is as fast as it's always been.

[gidgit]

Well, I am running an extremely slow Celeron 400 c/w 384 megs of ram, and a slower type 128 bit 3D Prophet 4000 XT vcard, and all seems ok to me... re-icon rendering in X1 http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif