A debate for adults.

[MarkMyWords]

An attempt was made in another thread to raise a serious discussion about Xara as it is and how it has developed. Predictably some got a little over-defensive and over-stepped the mark, the thread was closed.

I will attempt to raise the question again. Please do not take this as a personal attack or simply say "go and use something else", we all know the alternatives, this discussion is about Xara Xtreme, I'm sure we are all capable of a discussion without resorting to silliness. If the theme bores you then move on, vote with your feet, so to speak. There is no need to let everyone know how exasperated you are about those who want to raise this topic, O.K?

Firstly Xtreme is excellent, it is very, very fast and intuitive to use, of these things there is no doubt. To address the points raised in the other thread; Have the recent refinements to Xtreme been far less than they should have been and is Xara a good competitor for either Photoshop or Illustrator?

Well, I'm a newcomer so I cannot say too much about how far Xtreme has come over the years, nor how useful, or not, the latest additions have been.

But some things many think a professional graphics programme should have are missing. I have bored many in the past about the need for an actions/macro recorder and how it would make most workarounds a one-click solution, so I wont say any more about that.

Does Xtreme compete with Pshop or Illustrator?

Well it certainly is not aimed at the Pshop market, so that would seem a redundant question. Except when you take into account Xtremes speed. It is perfectly feasible that with the addition of some tools which emulate bitmap tools; floodfill, masking, better brushes, a mesh warp, an eraser and such that Xtreme could well compete with Photoshop, at least for painting with. The idea of painting with vectors is an exciting one, but A; this would only cover part of Pshops market and B; I doubt Xara are really interested in such a move.

Illustrator? Well Xara is perfectly capable of creating any image that Illustrator can (probably even images equal in style and complexity to painted Photoshop images too), but is that what it was designed for? I don't think so, it is relatively time consuming using Xara for complex illustration.

In my opinion, Xtreme is aimed at the graphic/web design market. The tools do not lend themselves as easily to complex illustration as they do to relatively simpler graphics. If this is the case will it change? I think that is unlikely, Xara has little incentive to make the huge investment needed to take on the 'big boys' at their own game and seems to be ticking along quite nicely as it is.

Of course how long that can last without some significant changes is hard to say, but the quality of the programme is undeniable and even if the changes over the years have not been 'killer' selling points, Xtreme is still massively faster than other vector software and generally much easier to use.


So, yes, I wish Xtreme could be the one to make the difference between bitmap and vector editing obsolete, I see no other software that looks close to having that potential, but to be a realist, I can't see any reason why Xara would want to take that route.