OK. Now that the warning about the installer is out of the way...

First, adding capabilities keeps the person from "jumping ship" as much as possible. The same argument can be made for adding any new capability to any application--it already exists in something else. Heck, InkScape is in many ways more capable than XDP is--and it's free. For a low cost, Serif's DrawPlus has more capabilities than XDP. Why bother even buying XDP?

Serif's color handling is better than XDP. Xara products are not color managed, Serif's are. But with "better" and "color managed" comes a slight learning curve. Which hopefully will happen in XDP at some point.

I far prefer XDP to other vector drawing applications despite it lacking certain "professional" features. Those "professional" features are sorely needed in XDP but one can in most all instances make do without them. Even if that means it begins in XDP and ends up in something else.

As regards the point of the thread--and I'll mention once again it is a valid request that may benefit others beyond the OP--merging would not be very high on my personal list. Not at the expense of other items on that list anyway.