I'd love to see a different model for Xara's offerings under Magix, because you're going to get the same sort of disagreement (as civilized as this one is!) when you try to address Web Designer's foibles, and so on.

Charles, you mentioned a long time ago that Xara is envisioned as an "everything under one roof" design application, not solely a vector drawing program, and by definition, I think this is why Xara is seen as walking a slippery slope. Rather than seeing Designer Pro as "a vector drawing program, but also so much more!", it's being seen as "It's not quite a DTP program, it's not quite a paint program...", and it's because some users are depending on the program as a complete solution in one area of visual communications.

You either sell it as a vector drawing program plus... or you re-strategize and let each module grow into its own thing, instead of packing all the other modules' new features under one roof. You probably don't have the engineer power to do this, but at least you wouldn't be in the situation of explaining away its perceived shortcomings.

Adobe doesn't enjoy this problem with its suite because each program grew up on its own, and then a synergy was created wherever there was the possibility of product cross-over with features.


-g