viewer for XAR files

[roman]

Roman

[Mike Hennessey]

I am currently evaluating Compupic, and it does view .xar files great, however, I can't get thumbnails of any of my .cpt (photo-paint) files.
This is a supported format, but I am at a loss. I have e-mailed their support group, but will not have an answer until at least Monday.
Have any of you others, experienced this in your evaluations?
If so, I'll stick with Cumulus, no support for Xara, but.......
Mike [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img]

[davezub]

How about XnView? This great FREEWARE viewer has two many features to describe here, and has native support for XAR, plus other raster and vector files. Some need GhostScript, but most of us have this any way. Give it a spin. One thing, it will not thumbnail/view older Xar files, just X. I let the author know about this.

Seems to me that Xara's popularity is growing if this great viewer is supporting xar files. Here is the url:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/index.html

Dave Zubrowski

[traceyp]

We've had Compupic for many years now and I didn't now you could view .xar files in it until I read this thread.

Following Davids post, I've now downloaded Xnview and we're both (my partner and myself) are very impressed with it. Has an interface very similar to Compupic and supports some 300 graphic formats. It also comes with some very effective filters although I don't know that it supports PhotoShop type filters - looks like its all done via dlls. Anyone looking for a good graphic viewer could do very much worse than take a look - I don't think you'll be disappointed. As David says, it does display xar files (albeit the bitmap header). The web address is:

http://www.xnview.com

Mike

Regarding your comment about not being able to view CPTs? We're talking about Corel and they do NOT make their file formats public (at least not since Draw5 and CPT6) and I suspect never will, thus making it impossible for other software to support their file formats. This includes Xara (whilst Corel were the marketing company for Xara). Even now, XaraX only supports .CDR versions 3, 4, or 5 and CMX versions 5 and 6 and I guess you don't see many of those around these days???

I became a user of Corel products when they purchased Ventura and was asked by the Corel Users Association in the UK if I would be willing to provide tech support on Ventura because the Corel help wasn't really up to it (at least, not from their Dublin office). In due course I became a committee member and in my time on the comittee and providing Ventura tech support, I learnt that Corel keeps everything relating to their products under extremely tight control. An example is third party books - there aren't any to my knowledge! The only ones you see are all official Corel books. Several years ago, I spent many weeks extracting and formatting the help file for Corel Script, created a pdf and uploaded it to Compuserve. I also contacted Corel to say I would like it to be made available for others - the answer was NO!

Essentially what it boils down to is that if you want to see what you have in the way of CPTs or CDRs (we use PhotoPaint a lot and have the same problem) is to use a viewer provided by Corel (with Draw7 it was Corel Multimedia Manager - I don't know anything about it or what the current viewer may be) or export your files as something like GIFs so you can view them on any half decent viewer (such as Compupic or Xnview). Alternatively its a case of opening CPT and going through the motions of opening a file and selecting to see previews of CPTs and just moving through them to see what you have. I believe that only the formats for CPT6 and Draw3, 4 and 5 are in the public domain and even then possibly only unofficially. The later version CPT and CDR file formats are not available hence they cannot be supported. If anyone knows any different though.....???

Tracey

[Klaus Nordby]

XnView is great, thanks for the tip! However, it does not *really* read the XAR format: it only reads the PNG preview bitmap portion, which is why it only displays those small views. (CompuPic does the same.) Still, it's very good, it's a very lean and fast program (Jens, you'll love it!) - and the price can't be beat.


K

[Mike Hennessey]

Thank you for your valuable information. I suppose that is why they can still say .cpt is a supported file format, albeit version 6 and prior.
This has been a most interesting thread for me, and again my thanks.
Mike

[Don Lamb]

Thought you might be interested in a response I received today from Compupic (Photodex) re supported formats. Looks like XnView is the better way to go.

Don Lamb wrote:
I downloaded a trial copy of CompuPic to test with the graphic file formats I use. I had read in the Xara Forum that CompuPic supported Xara .xar files. Although this format is not listed in your list of supported files CompuPic does indeed support the .xar format or it at least displays the bitmap image saved with the Xara file. However, although your list of supported formats includes .ai files, it would not display versions 7, 8, or 9 .ai files for me. Also listed as supported are .eps and .cpt files. In my test it would not display versions 8 or 9 .eps files from Illustrator or Xara eps files. Neither would it display versions 7, 8, or 9 .cpt files.Am I doing something wrong or which versions of these files does CompuPic support? Thanks for your help.

Hi
We currently do not support all the varients of this format. We may add support for these formats in later
versions, until then you will need to use a different program to either view these formats or convert them in to a
format that CompuPic does support. Or you can go to the Edit drop down menu, then to Configure Actions. There you will need to find the format you are trying to view and select the program you would like to have CompuPic open when you go to view one of these images.

I hope this answered your question if not please let me know.

Thanks
Aaron

[roman]

But hey, at least they asnwered [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] .

[smorg]

One of the nice things about CompuPic is that it displays animated gifs, too. It also lets you size your thumbnails when printing (3x4, 2x5 on a page, etc.).

I tried XnView and don't even remember why I uninstalled it, but it was a while ago.

My default file viewer is PSP, it reads .cdr files (haven't tried .cpt), but since v.5, it won't let you adjust the layout for printing thumbs...the size you choose in the browser is what you get printing.

[davezub]

smorg:

The latest version does animated gifs and has a host of printing options.

I just received and email from the author and have sent him copies of version 1.x and 2.x Xara files for him to work with.

Give it a spin (small download).

Dave Zubrowski