Line width option keeps disappearing ?

[jimmex]

Hi - can anyone advise on a problem I an having with the line width option suddenly refusing to work when I want to change a line width. What happens is I select a line and the option box for different line widths freezes and refuses to display the drop down list box. If I type a value into the field and press enter it reverts back to the default 0.5 pt. This has happened to me on even the most simple of drawing within a minute or two of opening XaraX.

When it does happen, if I save the file and then close XaraX and reopen the same file and carry out the same procedure to change line width it works fine until the next time it freezes

When it freezes Ive tried selecting the line with various tools - eg normal select, line edit. pen tool - and Ive tried punching the usual alt, control or shift buttons and I cant unfreeze the option.

I use Xara pretty intensively for simple image editing and I guess this problem is occurring 2 or 3 times a day at the most but seems to be totally unpredictable when it does.

I first ran into this problem a few weeks back after downloading and trying out the XaraX demo version. I've since purchased XaraX through the members club and redownloaded and installed new on a clean image on my PC (with no previous versions of XaraX installed or deinstalled) and the problem continues to occur.

It seems to me a 'bug' is in the program but having searched the forum I cant find any other members reporting this problem .....so any of you XaraX gurus got any ideas please before I tear my hair out!!

Thanks in advance

Jimmex

[jimmex]

Hi - can anyone advise on a problem I an having with the line width option suddenly refusing to work when I want to change a line width. What happens is I select a line and the option box for different line widths freezes and refuses to display the drop down list box. If I type a value into the field and press enter it reverts back to the default 0.5 pt. This has happened to me on even the most simple of drawing within a minute or two of opening XaraX.

When it does happen, if I save the file and then close XaraX and reopen the same file and carry out the same procedure to change line width it works fine until the next time it freezes

When it freezes Ive tried selecting the line with various tools - eg normal select, line edit. pen tool - and Ive tried punching the usual alt, control or shift buttons and I cant unfreeze the option.

I use Xara pretty intensively for simple image editing and I guess this problem is occurring 2 or 3 times a day at the most but seems to be totally unpredictable when it does.

I first ran into this problem a few weeks back after downloading and trying out the XaraX demo version. I've since purchased XaraX through the members club and redownloaded and installed new on a clean image on my PC (with no previous versions of XaraX installed or deinstalled) and the problem continues to occur.

It seems to me a 'bug' is in the program but having searched the forum I cant find any other members reporting this problem .....so any of you XaraX gurus got any ideas please before I tear my hair out!!

Thanks in advance

Jimmex

[raynerj]

Hi Jimmex,

Are you using xara X or Xara X1 to start with. There are several builds of xara x1 out there. I think the latest is 8 jun 2004. If you are using xara x1 make sure you have the latest and greatest version.

Let us know what version of windoze you are using and what type of machine... 286, 3 Gig AMD etc. Might have something to do with the video card, not sure...

Let me know what happens. I have not experienced this or remember hearing about this.

[RAMWolff44]

FINALLY, someone else that has experienced the same issue that I have had.

During the beta testing I got a couple of builds that had this issue. When we finished up with the beta testing everything was ALMOST perfect, aside from a few other bugs that the rest of the user base found and Charles and Co. delayed sending the 'final' to press untill these were cleared up, but I guess in the interim I guess the bug must have come back by something getting broken again??

I have downloaded ALL the newest releases since the final's were being posted and all was well untill I downloaded the newest June 15th and low and behold that durned bug is present here and there but not all files, either newly created or r-eopened, have this issue. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Soquili]

I remember it happening once or twice with the 1.0d version, but never found out what caused it.

Richard, are you saying it would be safer for me to continue using the June 7 version than download the June 15?

[RAMWolff44]

I think persons are probably going to have different results. Video cards may play into the equation. I but I tried both my new Martox Millennium P750 and my older Matrox G550 and during testing I was using a ATI Radeon 8850 Series card with all three producing this result at differnt times (during the testing phase I also obtained the newest Mandrake Linux version (10) and installed that. Mandrake does not like new video cards and the ATI was giving me trouble so I reinstalled the Matrox G550. So at different points I was able to use 3 video cards during testing and 4 final downloads).

Maybe it's a combination of video cards, mother boards and memory, I'm not sure nor am I an tech expert. So all I have to go are my own observations and experiences.

The work around for the drop down line width menu not working is to go to the Line Gallery and use that drop down menu, as it works just fine and has during all testing and final downloads.

HTH's http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Charles Moir]

Although we’ve seen to the odd report about issues in this area, this is not a bug we’re aware of. We’ve not seen it, and can’t reproduce it, and no one has detailed it in fashion that we can reproduce. That’s not to say this isn’t a problem, but that it’s very rare and very hard or impossible to reproduce. So unless someone can detail the exact steps needed to reproduce this one, there’s not a lot we can do about it.

[jimmex]

Thanks guys for all of the replies

to answer a couple of questions
First of all I'm using XaraX1 build Jun 7 at the moment which I downloaded on buying the program - previously I was using a demo version downloaded about 4 weeks earlier. The problem seems I have has occured on both versions.

I mentioned in my first post that I installed this Jun 7 download onto a basically virgin HDD just Windows XP , MS Office and some Adobe programs - this was a deliberate tack by me to see if I had a possible conflict somewhere previously.

Again Id like to mention that this is not a regular occurence - I use XaraX up to 3 or 4 hours daily for simple editing work, opening and closing the program pretty regularly during the day and I guess Ive had about half a dozen occurences over the past couple of weeks. As to the work Im doing when it occurs, well Im a technical translator (english spanish) and one frequent job I have is to import bitmap drawings labelled in english into XaraX, create a new layer on which I enter substitute text in spanish, blockinhg out the original text with white filled rectangles on the original imported layer. Hardly power user stuff --- My problem has happened when Ive needed to draw indicating lines on the text layer (such as pointing arrows, underlining text etc) which once drawn I've then been unable to select the line width.

Ref Charles' comment - I appreciate that bug chasing is a hell of challenge when you cant simulate the problem, I guess whats really baffling me is why in over 2 years of working with XaraX pre X1 did I never come across this problem before - especially during the past 9 months when Ive been using an identical PC setup.

As to my PC setup - this is as follows - Asus 7V8X-X mobo, AMD XP 1800, 512Mb DDR PC3200, Siluro GF4 Ti 4200 64Mb graphics card, 80 Gb HDD running Windows XP Professional SP1 b2600.

Thats about all to say except to thank Richard (RAMWollfs) for his comments which suggest at least that Im not on my own on this one!!

Thanks again guys

Jim-mex

[RTK]

I reported this bug during Beta testing, but I could never figure out when, and why it happens. It still stops working on occasion for me... To clear it the few times it occurs, save your document - exit - and relaunch Xara X1.

[bcire68]

I experienced this bug today for the first time. I am using X1 and had just opened a new drawing, selected the elipse tool and drew a circle (using the Ctrl key), I changed the fill color (flat) and then drew a freehand line and tried to chang the line width of the the freehand line. (I haven't been able to reproduce the error)

It appeared to me that the drop down was trying to show, but was not appearing on top. It seemed this way because a black line appeared just below where the bottom of the drop down box is, in it's rolled-up state. This leads me to believe that the drop down is working, but it is showing up beneath the info bar and drawing.

Also when I manually typed in the required line width, the line width of the selected item did remain at what I changed it to. (i.e. it didn't return to 0.5 pts)

Just my experiences and thoughts.

Eric