The future of Xara

[Richard S]

Personally I find this question a positive and important one. My work is in GIS and as such I use AICS with MAPublisher and also Canvas GIS. AICS with MP is very expensive. Canvas is brilliant and too cheap, but its future is a bit unsure. Yes version 11 has been released, but theyre (Developers) not openly reactive and progressive as say Xara. I have the latest Xara Xtreme Pro, but it wont touch anything related to geographically spatially based data and so its not really worth my using it seriously as it wont import any of my data.
I would be open to a Xara that also has an add-on for GIS.
I realise to p'haps most users you wouldn't be interested in anything related to GIS, but that shouldn't prevent the development.
I'm certainly watching its development.
regards, Richard

[gwpriester]

Rocko writes:

Questions related to marketing and product development are usually neither answered properly nor welcome here.

Fanboys? Hmm?

I think you are missing the point. Over the years of TalkGraphics, previously the i/us.com forums, and before that Chris Dickman's CorelNET, I have heard the same question asked over and over and over again.

I don't think there is anything wrong with asking for or suggesting a cool feature. And if you look at the development of Xara over the last 10-15 years, you cannot say that Xara is not responsive to their users requests.

As I suggested previously, do a search for wishlist or wish list and you will find dozens of topics, some of them with hundreds of requests for new or improved features, and many of these have been implemented over the years.

Improving the multi-page implementation is a good idea and one that I am certain is in the works for the next major release. And there are other important deficiencies that I have no doubt will be addressed.

Xara has a design philosophy which is to keep it simple. I have reviewed Canvas, Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Freehand for Communication Arts Magazine over the last 10 years or so. And each product has its strengths and weaknesses. And I have been using Xara for close to 15 years for my illustration and graphic design and website design work. I like the simplicity. And what I really like is the exceptional creativity of the members of this conference when it comes to finding ways to make Xara do the things we think it cannot do. This month's Guest Tutorial by Mike Sims is a perfect example of this.

A poor workman blames his tools. A good workman knows how to get the best out of his tools.

Gary

[pauland]

Questions related to marketing and product development are usually neither answered properly nor welcome here.

I would certainly disagree with the 'not welcome' sentiment and don't think the rest of the sentence properly reflects the discussion here, either.

While it's true that Xara tends to keep quiet about developments, the user community often enjoy a kickabout on the marketing and product development side and even though Xara mostly keeps quiet about such things, I'm sure that some of that is read by Xara staff and no doubt influences what they do. I think the later releases of Xtreme have reflected opinions expressed in the forums very well.

Paul

[Rocko]

Hi,

After reading Daniel's links I realised my mistake. Apparently Xara failed with the Open Source effort, I may say that not for keeping CDraw but for achieving a bad perception.

Now I share the bembelembe's doubt and by the way the Richard's concern.

It seems that Xara at least need some new bright marketing projects as Talkgraphics was at its time.

Until then, it may make sense what Miguel de Icaza, former developer of open source projects, said after Gnome succeed: "You have to be big to compete against the big ones".

Kind Regards

[pauland]

I realise to p'haps most users you wouldn't be interested in anything related to GIS, but that shouldn't prevent the development.

That's exactly the reason why Xara shouldn't add anything related to GIS to the product.

It would be a disaster if Xara expended scarce development time on pursuing the requirements of a tiny minority (perhaps one) in preference to the wishes of the larger majority.

The only reason to change that would be if 10,000 GIS developers said they'd buy Xara if it supported GIS.. ;-)

I have nothing against GIS, (nor know anything about it), except that it's a potential diversion from mainstream development.

Paul

[Josie]

Agree.

Now the question is: who's the majority, the mainstream?
Is it illustrators (people who mostly create graphic components) or graphic designers (people who mostly arrange the components)? Or 50:50?
I think the answer to this question, whatever it is, is crucial for the direction of future program development, as typical tasks of illustrators are different from that of designers. ("Poor workman blames his tools" is simply not appropriate in this context.)

Current level of features looks suited for 70:30 user community. In reality, is it not, let's say, 20:80? Just curious what you're thinking.

[pauland]

Xara has an interesting mix of users ranging from superb professionals and talented ameteurs to everyday people who just enjoy playing and making art. Traditionally Xaras low price-point has enable a broad range of users to enjoy the program. The broad user base means that it is particularly difficullt for Xara to make everyone happy. The direction taken by Xara is also rather complicated by the fact that we talk about Xara, yet it's owned now by Magix, who seem to sit quietly in the background and mostly (I understand) have consumer-oriented products.

I think that describing graphic designers as people who "mostly arrange components" will raise a few eyebrows.

Paul

[BONES]

Good question. Although wishlists and suggestions occur here quite frequently, I am curious what is the general mood on the current state of things. Time for a new survey? Can you describe at most 3 features that would radically add to the way you work, significantly improve your productivity or that would enable you to abandon using other additional software in favor of Xara?

I don't know if I could come up with three. A spell-check would be nice and I like the look of the alignment tool in CorelDRAW 12 [although I've never used it]. Apart from those, neither of which I even remotely care about, I am perfectly happy with the current feature-set. I just want it to get even faster so that I can drag complex drawing elements around more easily when I am making UI's.

Over the years there have been many many posts just like this. And to be honest, I think the first thing that everyone does when she and he starts working with a new software product is to ask, why does this product work like this instead of how I am used to my old familiar software working?

I see this all the time and it annoys the hell out of me. If I liked the way other applications worked, I would use them. I use this application because it works much better for me than the others. Is it perfect? No, but bloating it up like it's main competitors is not the answer to making it perfect. Keeping it lean, mean and relevant is what counts and the Xara teams' focus on performance is, for me, the best way of making it better and better.
I had CorelDRAW and Illustrator years before I discovered Xara but after trying Xara I immediately stopped updating Illustrator and only kept updating Corel for Photopaint. It must be three or four years since I bothered to install CorelDRAW on any of my machines, even though I last updated to v12 only a year or so ago.

[Josie]

"I think that describing graphic designers as people who "mostly arrange components" will raise a few eyebrows."

The "description" is deliberately lame
It's just for the purpose of discussing this topic. (Illustrators, type designers, photographers are "creators of components" in that context. In the same context, designers are those who create something new using those components. It's not the definition. And of course, designer's tasks may include making illustrations as well.)

An illustrator could want to add more tools useful in creating simple or very complex artwork, something like Arch tool or Spiral tool in FreeHand.
Let's say a designer designs a business card and needs to prepare a sheet populated with cards for printing. He/she could want to use something like the Transform tool to duplicate cards in increments by specifyng horizontal and vertical offset and number of copies.
This is where the typical tasks significantly differ.

Now that we have a Pro version, it's good to ask what else is useful for people who need PDF/X, Pantone and Multipage docs.

[pauland]

Taking your business card example, it's a doddle to do already - you can use the blend tool to distribute one copy of the card down the page by positioning the end card first, or draw out some guides and snap to them, or..

This is a typical thing with Xara - even without more specialised tools, Xara does so many jobs really well.