One on the nice features of the .AI/.EPS export function is that Xara's Layering is recognized by Illustrator. The EPS format was native to Illustrator 9 and earlier.

Now Illustrator has adopted the PDF as its native format (enabling to them apply a variety of appearance parameters to a single object among other things). However, when exporting to PDF from Xara (even when enabling layers), the layer info in the PDF is not be read by Illustrator.

I hope there could be away of tweeking Xara's PDF export structure such that the PFD layers would be recognized by Illustrator. Editing in Illustrator, in my opinion, really needs those layers, particularly with complex drawings.

A rebuttal to this request may be just to use the .AI/EPS export option, but this leads to other issues with recognizing open type fonts used in Xara, even when the .Ai/EPS file is opened on the same system that the Xara export was created from.