Bugs & Suggestions

[John Dye]

Hi,
I am using Xara X on a large complex Rendering with many layers. The drawing was started in Xara 2. It is a Range Keeper Mark 8, mod 21 form the Battleship Massachusetts to be useed as a teaching aid and consists of many dials with grouped indicies grouped so that the dials can be rotated to show different settings. I started useing X because it allowed be to drop in shadows and making gauge bezels is a snap. Also ingraved labels are easily editable and very beleaveable. I have several digital photos of the actual range keeper on a back layer to use as reference, so the whole thing is quite complex and is a large file. The problem I've run into is repeated Access Violation crashes. The all have ocured 15 or 20 minutes into a session and all as I am doing more ore less the same thing. I have just completed a dial on a layer near the back that is intended to peek out of an opening on the instrument face. I created the dial off to the side because it is mostly hiddin and it is easier to make if I do so over one of the photos that has the info. I make a copy (cntl K) and start to move it under the inistrument when if get the error message. The only option that works id to exit Xara. The file does not seem to be harmed. Is this a "bug" or does it have to do with some limit in drawing complexity? It has happened 3 times but dials I have created without crashing are OK and I can continue to progress. (I just have to save often)!
Thanks for a great program
John

[rubem]

Sean,

> I like your idea of a zoom history and a 100% button would also be useful, although the zoom factor drop-down already works with just a single click, scroll and release.

Aknowledged, but I still feel that a single, obvious, simple, one-button click is still the best option for 100% zoom. And zooo history would be a big time saver.

> I'm not sure what you have in mind about saving the view, because Xara currently does this.

When I open two different views of the same document, e.g. a zoomed view and a 100% view. They are lost when you open the document again. My idea is saving the current MDI window state with the document.

> To totally reset a bitmap fill you have to temporarily select a flat fill then reselect the bitmap.

The idea is to create a numerical readout. To reset a bitmap fill, simply type "100%" and it's done.

> Xara supports accented / international characters using a CTRL key combination. See the help file for details.

Doesn't ever work correctly. I reported this in the CorelXARA forum more than one year ago. You can only choose between two incorrect behaviors changing the value of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\Xara X\VersionXX\Options\TextTool\UseDeadKeys (not very user friendly):

1) You always get ~ instead of the accent you want; or

2) You always get a couple of undesired accents before the actual accented character you want, like this: ´´á

> Xara may not be working correctly with your particular keyboard driver

I use the Brazilian Portuguese keyboard. I mus say that Xara is *the* only software to my knowledge that has this problem. All others use the standard Windows driver.

> ...setting ...\UseDeadKeys to 0 should disable the accents, but only if you change the registry when Xara isn't running.

Nope. never works. See above for the two wrong behaviors. I tried these settings in at least two different machines with identical (wrong) results.

Best regards and thanks for your response

[mike engles]

Hello

I have found that unhecking the background redraw
in the view menu can reduce this a bit.

Xarax does suffer from a great deal of access
violations. They seem to be connected with the undo/do buttons and the sliders connected with bevel and contour tool. Usually one can keep on working. I really think that the new XaraX is a very complex programme, especially the rendering of bevels, contours and shadows which require a pretty powerful computer and a lot of ram.

I suspect that people with newer computers have fewer problems. I have a Pentium 233 MMX and 128 ram. It is quite ancient by todays standards.

[defunkt]

why does xara x anti-alias my bitmaps? I must say I really don't like this. I want my pixels [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[John Dye]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the reply. I think you are right about the undo/redo. I have been careful to save frequently (even I learn)and have not had a single crash since the three in a row. Maybe something is reset with a save that prevents the crash??? The other problem I have seen is printing to an EPSON 1520(?) the shadows (wall type) are displaced 1/2" or so farther out than I placed them. I see others are having the same problem. I assume this is a bug that will be fixed in the released version. Does any one have a new date?
John

[John Dye]

Hi again,
Just to follow up of printing shadows. I tried again today and it seems that some of the shadows print in the correct location and some don't. Also, I notice a square in the background where the shadow falls that is slightly lighter tone that the rest of the background. In this case the background is a grey blend to give a 3D effect.The effect is a patchwork quilt. Printer is a Epson 1520 running at 1440dpi.
One other question I downloaded the demo Sept 29. Seems like I remember a comment that the demo had been revised after Oct 2(?) should I down loadd again?
John

[Pekka]

- bitmap preview must stay in place when changing settings (e.g. antialias type). When user places the preview to top right of image, xara centers it again on every preview redraw so user needs to scroll all the time to do proper compare.

- image maps contain lots of erroneous data like

<AREA SHAPE=RECT HREF=&quot;http://www.domain.com/&quot; TARGET=&quot;_self&quot; COORDS=&quot;-818,2364,-818,2364&quot;>

- not really a bug, but a problem:
Bitmap resize and especially rotate algorithms must be improved. Now I have to resize and rotate in external programs because Xara performs so jaggily and blurrily.

- the saving problem I reported earlier is there in beta 2, too.