One reason why Illustrator 10 is superior to XaraX

[Egg Bramhill]

.

[Egg Bramhill]

How's this Klaus. Does it look better?
Tantalisingly
Egg

[Klaus Nordby]

Egg, they look better than some, though worse than others . . .

tsk, tsk . . .

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara

[qmr]

interesting thoughts here, for as Klaus says xara wins hands down in speed and ergonomics, but lacks certain things evident in those other 2 standard(??) design programs. Illustrator and freudhand are expensive apps to buy and use (2 mouses and 1 keyboard sacrificed to freudhand-rage so far) BUT freudhand has something I have a particular fetish about.. accuracy, especially with the little nib thing.. the bezier tool, (an uncommon thing of wondrous beauty in freudhand, like its search-and-replace). I click on an end point in X to add precise continuation of lines and the point becomes defaultedly a curved point so the line balloons out and needs realignment before I can proceed. There may be a workaround but Im too impatient to find out, I just swear and get on with it. I just want to get the thing done which is why I default always to X. However lack of accuracy in some of these little areas is very frustrating but X ergonomics make up for it as its quick to fix. Im upgrading next couple of weeks to freudhand 10 via the macromedia webstudio suite thing (comes bundled with it) so maybe they have finally lost the crinkly display of fh5,7,8.. and gained some speed - truly its only Xara that indicates Im running a P4! Compared to X, Illustrator and especially freudhand still run slow and clunky like coreldraw7 on the old P133 but without the crashes. But I would appreciate freudhands other picky little accuracies.
X combining increased accuracy and current ergonomics - now thats a challenge thatll be impossible to beat.
Thing I love in Illustrator is its pressure pen tool is so so smooth, so precise. Also its great for transfers of vector drawings via eps to Flash.. Its colour and gradient tools also are so smooth. Pity about the gazillions of panels. Adobe and Macromedia must have relatives of the CEOs in the firms whose sole job is to make those gazillion panels look sexier with each release. ick - I hate em.
Features like the Ill Gradient mesh etc I much prefer in X using quick combinations of gradient transparencies overlapped etc. It aint postscript but who cares.. except I did a logo in X just last week for a client through my website, she added partway into the project she wanted it on billboards too, not just the website (expletive deleted)... This means eps which non-flash-wise barks for me.. I hate eps. So I exported the logo sans blends as ai into Illustrator9 and continued it quickly there so I could send it as illustrator eps. Quicker than correcting the X eps glitches I get, even with all transparencies removed, unless its a simple set of shapes. Recreating all the blends in Illustrator was a breeze though thankfully, and I have Klaus' reassurance there will be no banding.. until a seagull craps on it but I digress.. whew. Its such a drag having to do these things twice, and Ive done it often. The only advantage is you already know how youve created the design so its a matter of doing it again... much quicker than starting from scratch. But the way I work, I like to design all sorts of variations on a theme quickly then look at the range of variations. This I can only do quickly enough in xara. And THAT is for me the most important thing.
Speed, that keeps up with my brain.

Bring on svg or whatever the interchangeable vector format will be..

Heres my test of drawing programs..
Do a blend between letter shapes in all these programs.. thats an acid test of whizzyness for a drawing app for me. Only X has the ability, and blend remains editable. I hardly ever use blends between letterforms I admit, but its great to silence the digital scotsmen round here who think adobe was created somewhere in the holy land, a long long time ago..

Q
http://www.Qdesign.co.nz

<font size="1">"wha.. you mean its not Christmas yet??"
"GET BACK TO.."</font>

Q

[pduggan]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>digital scotsmen<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

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Peter</p>



Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[Klaus Nordby]

Quenstion, thanks for your semi-invormative rambling! :-) I have Freehand 8, but will never ever use it - to ugly and awkward for words. Beween XX for ease and speed and AI10 for reliable PS and tons of lovely effects, I have all the vector tools I can stomach. Well, then there's RealDraw and Expression - also wonderful in their own ways.

ramblingly,

K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara