Xara Designer Wishlist- Connectors

[colin_e]

Note: I get tired typing "Xara Photo & Graphic Designer". Is "PGD" the accepted abbreviation?

Anyway, my vote for a simple feature I could really use in Xara PGD is connectors. Multiple graphics tools support these, the implementation in OpenOffice Draw is ok for example (see: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/...ing_connectors). A lot of business or design documentation consists of connecting ideas together, and having "stretchy" connectors that stick to objects saves a lot of rework if you have to modify the diagram layout.

The basic requirements are-

1) A connector connects two endpoints with a styled line (typically an arrow). The connector line typically has some options (e.g. single or multiple lne segments, straight or curved, horizontal/vertical constraint).
2) The connector preferentially connects to connection/control points on objects (e.g. the centre, corners, and face-centres of shapes). A desirable option is to extend this (with say a key modifier) to connect to a freely-chosen position (like drawing an ordinary line), or to "any point on the edge" of a shape.
3) The connector stretches (re- lays out) if the connection points move.

Note: for this to work properly Xara also needs some minor tweeks to arrow styles, see next post).

I do a lot of work with business diagramming, and annotating screenshots with Xara (I wish I could be more creative but I don't have the skills...). This addition would save me a lot of time when working on things like complex screen mockups.

[James Allen]

Hi colin,

I think these tools you describe would be a good addition to Xara. In the meantime there are ways you can speed up the movement of shapes and lines in such diagrams, as I show in this VIDEO.

Place rectangles, circles, triangles etc. on a page and convert them to curves. Make sure ‘snap to objects’ (the magnet icon) is on, and then draw your lines. You can snap them to centres, sides or corners, and when done, select shapes and lines, press F4 (shape editor tool) and select nodes of both shapes and lines, and drag them where you like. Using V (selector tool), F4 and shift F5 (pen tool), you can move shapes and lines around quite quickly via their nodes. Combining these tools with others you can do a lot with diagrams and mock ups, etc. You’ll even see something similar to the ‘stretchy’ movements you described.

As far as face centres are concerned, you can draw a rectangle, clone and nudge it to the right and down, then marquee another rectangle (line only) starting from the centre of the first, and ending in the centre of the second. Nudge the second rectangle back up to be in line with the first, and place the line-only rectangle below them (ctrl/b). Its lines now intersect the other rectangles’ faces, and other lines will snap onto them. It sounds complex, but with a little practice you can make diagrams like this pretty fast.

[colin_e]

Thanks for the tips James, much appreciated. The approach you show in the demo is nifty, it probably has some interesting creative possibilities that are outside what true connectors could do.

However as i'm sure you realise that critical "convert to shapes" step is a defining feature in many graphics packages, because it's a one-way trip. Having to convert everything to shapes, and edit via shape nodes, is quite a big sacrifice in control for a relatively simple need.

Some pixel-orientated packages (mostly older ones) did this as soon as you drew an object. Others leave it as an option, but at some point you have to "convert to shape" to use some features. More modern applications try to delay the need to do this, or avoid it entirely for at least some effects. One of the great strengths of Xara is that it allows so much to be done with objects like text WITHOUT forcing a convert to shapes step.

So i'll stick to my request to connectors (and maybe even dimension lines, now that Xara does explicit scaling on drawings, which implies a "true size" meaning for drawings), but keep this in the back pocket as a workaround for the current version.

[James Allen]

You're welcome, Colin. I agree it would be a nice feature, and hopefully they will implement it one day. I guess it will all come down to the need vs cost, marketing analysis, etc. If it were there, I would not use it often because I don’t make the kinds of charts you do. Then again, they might be able to attract many new customers away from other software, though it can work both ways. They have to consider the chance of a specialist program providing this facility so well (with Xara compatible exports) that it makes any such tool in Xara needless. Would they have spent money and time creating their tracing facility if they had known Vector Magic would come along in 2007, the result of a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence research project? They might go to a great deal of trouble to implement this, and then some company called ‘Connector Magic’ pops up, allowing Xara compatible exports.

What tool do you think is best for this function at present, and how compatible is it with Xara?

[pauland]

The tool that really ruled this marketplace was (is?) visio, though AFAIK it works only from component templates. Been a while since I used it.

[colin_e]

...

What tool do you think is best for this function at present, and how compatible is it with Xara?

As the previous poster mentioned, Visio is probably the best known example these days, although Visio implements some functions I wouldn't see as mandatory (like intelligent rerouting of connectors, and automatic drawing of "hops" when one connector crosses another). Visio is pretty unpleasant to use as any kind of general drawing tool though, I wouldn't hold it up as any kind of examplar of usability.

I'm guessing you meant "comparable with" Xara?

The one I've used a fair bit for business graphics is the one I mentioned before, OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) Draw. OO Draw hasn't had a lot of attention by the developers over the last few years, which is a shame it's a decent drawing package for more business/technical subjects, aparrently quite comparable to an early version of CorelDraw. It does scaled drawings, multiple pages per file, automatic dimension lines etc. As MS Office doesn't have a dedicated drawing tool it gives OpenOffice a distinct advantage, although it's not one many people seem to know about.

Inkscape also does connectors according to the manual, although it sounds as if this function is quite immature.

[James Allen]

The one I've used a fair bit for business graphics is the one I mentioned before, OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) Draw.

Incidentally, do you know why they changed their name? I think the first name was a lot better. Perhaps it was a legal issue over trademarks.

OO Draw hasn't had a lot of attention by the developers over the last few years, which is a shame it's a decent drawing package for more business/technical subjects, aparrently quite comparable to an early version of CorelDraw.

My earliest use of CorelDraw was around ’91 I think. I’m pretty sure I was using radial fills, extrusion with perspective, light and shadows, and curved text on a line. Does OO Draw do that kind of stuff?

I saw LibreOffice’s webpage and noticed it is free open source software, relying on contributions. This is the first obstacle for any graphics software company thinking of introducing similar tools. Looking ahead, how good is the flowchart tool in OO Draw going to be? Students will probably use the free software. Would they bother to learn new ways to make similar flowcharts, or would they just stick with the software they used in college? Does OO Draw allow you to export Xara compatible files? Looking down the road, if Xara did create this kind of tool, and the folks at LibreOffice felt it might affect their popularity, is it possible they would introduce new export formats that were Xara compatible? If so, how would this affect the new tool’s popularity?

I can't speak for Xara but if I were to make a clumsy guess, perhaps they will eventually bring in some similar tools (like the connectors) without a lot of the other bits and pieces. Perhaps a simplified version of what OO are doing would suit a lot of people, if it was incorporated into one simple new tool.

[colin_e]

Incidentally, do you know why they changed their name? I think the first name was a lot better. Perhaps it was a legal issue over trademarks.

LibreOffice isn't actually a rename of OpenOffice, it's a "fork". It's complicated but roughly speaking-

* Once there was a low cost office suite with MS Office import/export filters called StarOffice, produced by a company in Germany.

* Sun Microsystems bought out the StarOffice company. The product was rebranded and updated, and was available free (OpenOffice), or as a supported product from Sun.

* Oracle bought Sun. Oracle is not exactly seen as a major supporter of free software, and several of its decisions around major Open Source software products belonging to Sun (OpenOffice, MySQL, Java) have caused criticism in the Open Source communities around those products. For al lof these projects I believe this has caused the open source communities to take the source code and produce a separate development strand NOT under Oracle control. However Oracle owns the rights to the names through their acquisition of Sun, so the new forks need a new name.

LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice. The OpenOffice name is still used (and the product still made available) by Oracle.

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL available under the GPL open source license rather than oracle's more restrictive terms.

The Apache foundation recently withdrew from the Java Executive committe over differences with Oracle, and it seems possible that a fork of Java will result from this and other groups unhappiness over Oracle's control of the code, and particularly the licensing.

...My earliest use of CorelDraw was around ’91 I think. I’m pretty sure I was using radial fills, extrusion with perspective, light and shadows, and curved text on a line. Does OO Draw do that kind of stuff?

Some of it. OO Draw is mostly geared towards business or technical graphics, it's good for anything from org charts and flow diagrams up to basic 2D technical drawings like floor plans. There is a basic 3D rendering option for 2D shapes, it's a bit of a bolt-on and I never used it much. I suppose it could be said that the Xara 3D features in XPGD are a bit of a bolt-on too, so that's not unreasonable.

Overall I wouldn't suggest OO Draw was remotely as effective as Xara PGD for producing attractive business graphics, let alone mor creative stuff. But then if that wasn't the case noone of us would be spending our hard-earned money on Xara would we?

A better comparison is MS Office. OO Draw beats anything available in MS Office up to 2003 comfortably. With Office 2007 things are more difficult, MS Office is good at pretty diagrams to embed within a Word document, OO Draw would still be mush better to produce (say) a floor diagram of your office building with automatic dimension lines and support for drawing scales.

As I said, OO Draw has been left unloved for the last few years which is a shame. 4 years ago it was pretty competitive, if OO Draw could have been the home for (say) the work that has gone into developing Inkscape, the the open source world would have had an office offering with a much stronger unique advantage over Microsoft office.

[James Allen]

Very interesting. Thanks for providing a peak into that world.

It might be wise for Xara to think about instilling some of the most popular features from OO Draw into Xara, like the connectors, flow charts, etc., while there is conflict and division going on between the different parties. If OO Draw is left by the wayside to wilt, users may welcome an easy-to-use alternative, that answers some of their needs but also provides a bunch of innovate tools to boot.

[Big Frank]

If OO Draw is left by the wayside to wilt, users may welcome an easy-to-use alternative, that answers some of their needs but also provides a bunch of innovate tools to boot.

Honestly, I doubt it. OpenOffice's draw (bad pun, sorry) was the fact that it was a free, practical alternative to MSOffice. Any OODraw-like enhancements built into Designer will nevertheless require the user to pay for Designer.