According to Xara's speed charts, Cairo was severely bashed for speed. Why is time being spent porting to Cairo? That work is being done to improve the existing code is pleasing to hear.
According to Xara's speed charts, Cairo was severely bashed for speed. Why is time being spent porting to Cairo? That work is being done to improve the existing code is pleasing to hear.
In a nutshell, OpenSource developers (well, most of them) want all parts of the source code open, and don't want to use/deal with/work with anything that does not fit that model. In the case of Xara, the CDraw library that does all of the rendering has not been released as source, and most likely never will be.
Although Xara has stated that they're never going to revoke the license on CDraw which would stop anyone that was using XaraLX from being able to continue using it, a lot of people don't want to work on a project that relies so heavily on a chunk of code controlled by someone else.
As a result, the code was forked so that it could be modified to work using Cairo as the rendering engine instead of CDraw. Development can then move forward because there is a version of xaralx that is completely self sufficient from outside code.
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This thread is a good starting point to read something about the problems with the Xara Xtreme for Linux source code and the OpenSource community.
Regards,
Remi
That line of thinking from the OS community is a great shame. Such distrust is costing them. Can Xara really not be trusted; do people really not empathise with the feeling Xara has toward their code?
It will be interesting to see just how slow Cairo is. It seems like a poor use of effort to go down that route to me. But at least someone is improving existing code. It's times like this I wish I had mainly the time, but also a bit more hardcore coding experience. (Although I'm not a fan of Linux having used it a lot recently, but that's a different story.)
I guess at the end of the day it has to do with the word 'Open' that comes before 'Source', there's a clue there somewhere I'm sure of it.
And knowing the feeling xara has for its code is one of the best reasons I can see for porting elsewhere - no disrespect to xara who play a different game.
I wish em well - I like linux - and I'm more likely to be there than vista 5 year hence. I don't have the skill to help either, sadly.
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Nothing lasts forever...
about Cairo,
it's a work in progress, and they work hard inside of it's core - each new version it's a visible step forward (at least for me). Indeed is slow maybe for now but the sky is the limit here on the Open Source side. Time is on the Open Source side.
On closed source work flow - it's not so easy, limited number of engineers, other specifications, other timeframe, etc ..for example ask Charles Moir how much time take for Xara Dev. team to get CDraw as is right now.
Also - as I said before - which professional designer need to work with free software ? Why I care about Cairo, if XaraXtreme Pro for Linux could give me what I need, I don't care about the rendering engine. My scope is to do my job - not to use free tools for professional grade work.
Inkscape, Gimp - are wonderful tools now - but becoming Pro tools ( in paralel with free versions ) they can get a quick advance ( mode dedicate developers, a precise production roadmap, etc ). I don't see any harm here.
Free Inkscape, Xara, Gimp for teaching and for homework - Inkscape Pro, XaraXtreme Pro, Gimp Pro - for professional DTP / Webdesign work.
That's the correct, sane way.
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