Xara is 25 years old. The open source project is not one year old at this time, but it is progressing rapidly.
I was enjoying playing around in Xara Xtreme LX and this 'happened' :)
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Xara is 25 years old. The open source project is not one year old at this time, but it is progressing rapidly.
I was enjoying playing around in Xara Xtreme LX and this 'happened' :)
beautiful Bill!!!!
Thanks Bob. I guess you and I are the only ones that think it's neat looking ;)
I noticed there have been 4 views (downloads).
I only lurk here Bill, not being a Linux user. But it's very neat and always interesting to see how rapidly XaraLX's is progressing. (You need to change your fonts to shapes :D )
Hi Egg. Thanks for speaking up instead of lurking. I forgot to change the fonts to shapes before :o I'm getting old and forgetful about such things.
Here's another 'doodle' using the latest 'unstable' release, the font has been converted to shapes :). Last night I was getting an error when trying to bevel the Chancery font that came with Debian Linux. Tonight it works wonderfully. The bevel applied without error and the responsiveness of the tool is much improved from the previous r 1596 I was using.
Using Xara Xtreme LX is like using the Windows version (with a few limitations for features still being developed). I don't havea Mac or know anyone that uses one to ask if they have success using it on their platform.
Hi soquili,
Iīm another lurker in this forum. I donīt have a linux box runing, thatīs why i donīt spend much time here... something iīm already working on.
Two days ago iīve tried Ubuntu but since i didnīt have any space available to install it (neither i want to try changing my partitions right now - too risky), iīve playing just in "live mode" with the OS.
Iīm trying to find a way to get a new hard drive without spending too much money just to install ubuntu and runing Xara LX. I know it includes some features that are being developed in Linux and missing from the windows version. The psd export, some improvements on text handling are some things i would like to try...
Iīm really surprised with the fast development of the linux version. Never thought it would be so quick. For the fist time iīm confident that the open-source of Xara xtreme will really help to speed up the inclusion of new features in Xtreme. Thatīs all i could wish :)
Hope to have ubuntu and xtreme LX runing really soon here... so i can do more than just lurking.
Miguel
I came I saw I lurked. I took the gold and ran.
I don't use Linux anymore, have a couple old boxes I could dump it on. Only reason I used it before is because one of business partners was a guru of sorts in UNIX/LINUX and ran the network for us.
Never understood why it has taken LINUX so long to come up with a working GUI. I mean didn't X-Windows for UNIX come out in the late 1980s? I did the UNIX/CPM/DOS command prompt thing before and not really looking forward to staring at a blinking cursor. :)
Hi Miguel - I believe that new features added to the open source version that do not violate any GNU licensing will be added to the Windows version at some point in time. A hard drive to run Linux shouldn't be very expensive if you can find a dealer of reclaimed or refurbished hardware. I'm running it on a 13GB hard drive and a 500MHz AMD processor.
James glad you are at least lurking here. The gold was done on the fly using the HSV sliders in the Color Editor. Just something to quickly test the bevel function in r 1623.
You are correct about X-Windows. The Linux GUI's have been available for years, it's just that they all seem to suffer from time lag. The newer releases have improved alot. KDE is more responsive than Gnome in my opinion, but I like Gnome better for some odd reason. You can have Linux boot up to a GUI, or you can have it boot up to a graphic interface where you can select amoung the GUI interfaces you have available or to a terminal mode. For servers I prefer terminal only.
I agree with you, Bill. Using a shell is the way real Administrators are working! Working with a UNIX-Shell is faster for doing System-/Database-/Webadministration stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soquili
The GUI for Linux was there, from the beginning. The big problem was, that there were not so many Software Companies willing to port their Software to Linux. So, the Linux Community was on her own and has to develop their own programs (Open Office, Gimp, Web-Browser, MP3-Player, ...) together with a lot of improvements for the GUI (KDE, Gnome, ...). But this is history, because since three or four years there is also plentifully Linux software for Linux Clients available - and now, Xara Xtreme LX. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesmc
In the meantime, Linux is a big player in the server fraction (Fileserver, Database-Server, Webserver, Proxy-/DNS-/LDAP-/Firewall-Server). You'll find no company which owns a important server software, who doesn't port their software to Linux too (Oracle, IBM, Sun, Novell, SAP, ...). And James, I know why your business partners was using Linux for network stuff - because the Internet is built with Linux technologie and Linux is more stable and faster than Windows in a server environment.
The only open question is, if working in an pure Linux environment without Windows on the Client is really possible? I personally prefer Linux in a server environment and Windows on my notebook - in the year 2006. But who knows, what has the future in store?
Regards,
Remi
Why not ? If you don't need specific software (written only for win) it's possible. Last 3 year I have only Linux on my computers, and I'm happy :DQuote:
Originally Posted by remi
On my notebook I have Gentoo (alone) - works perfectly try :)Quote:
Originally Posted by remi
I've got to agree with Korab on this one, I don't see why not. I've been doing it for 5-6 years. My ability to hack together a couple of data analysis scripts in Python or Matlab certainly doesn't qualify me as a developer, however, I would place myself in the savvy user category. With the porting of Xara and the recent progress that Inkscape is making the final gap in reliable software that I need is about to be filled.Quote:
Originally Posted by remi
With that being said, I don't think there are any programs that I use regularly which aren't available for nonfree operating systems. My laptop runs OS X but it is strictly for mobile use, the Linux box is definitely my workhorse. Use whatever works for you and from what I hear Windows works now. Although having mostly abandoned it in the Windows 98 days it certainly didn't work back then.
What keeps me on Linux is the fact that I can't remember the last time the OS crashed and I don't need to run 5 different programs in the background just to keep me safer on the Internet. I have also become addicted to multiple desktops and 'apt-get xaralx'.
Jed
Hi Korab,
hi Jed,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Korab
I understand, that you're able to work with Linux and don't need specific Windows software.Quote:
Originally Posted by jedfrechette
But that's my problem: There is no Linux version of
- Macromedia Dreamweaver (yes, I'm also able to code pure HTML with Eclipse, but sometimes I like to use a WYSIWYG-HTML-editor)
- Macromedia Flash
- Adobe Photoshop (it's a "little bit" better than Gimp)
- Adobe Illustrator
- Carrara Studio 5 Pro (I like it because of their really good interface)
- Hexagon 2
And the most important: Xara Xtreme (there was no Xara Xtreme LX under Linux in 2000/2001).
Some other software packages are available under Linux (IDEs like Eclipse, Office-Packages, Systemtools, Communication-Tools, ...).
Remi
I use Dreamweaver 8, Flash 8, Fireworks 8 in Ubuntu via Wine.
references by mail if U want ( nemes.sorin@gmail.com ), because here is a bit out of topic.
anyhow, the way that Dreamweaver 8 can work under Linux just make me to think - how powerfull he can be if Adobe can do a Linux native version.
Yep, having the applications you need is always the deal breaker, as it should be. Being a user of Super Cool OS 1.0 doesn't do you much good if all you can do is play solitaire.Quote:
Originally Posted by remi
On the other hand, software availability works both ways. For example, a very important criteria for me when shopping for a new software package is whether or not it has reasonable cross platform support. Learning to use any moderately complicated software package efficiently requires a significant investment in time. Therefore, although I am currently happy with the operating systems that I am using I want to know that when that changes I won't have to learn an entire new set of applications at the same time I am learning a new os. That is part of the reason why I try to encourage people who are considering switching to Linux to start by switching the applications that they use everyday.
Unfortunately, most companies selling proprietary software probably won't be providing Linux versions any time soon. Which is part of the reason I commend Xara so much for opensourcing Xtreme. They even got me to buy a copy of the Windows version. To bad it doesn't run under Wine.
Speaking of which seeing as SorinN addressed your Adobe needs somebody has to mention Blender. :) From talking to people who use it you should plan on spending a day or two getting used to the interface but apparently after that it is quite logical and intuitive.
Cheers,
Jed
I just started learning Blender this week, and I can second that. It takes a day or two to wrap your head around the interface, but it's an excellent piece of software once you're acclimated. In fact, there's some methods of dealing with vertices that I wish had analogues in Xara's node interface.Quote:
Originally Posted by jedfrechette
Neither of those XARs open on MacOS X because they contain PNGs and the file IO code has not yet been upgraded to byte swap PNGs (or that's the story, at least). I expect that the same will be seen on Linux PPC. This is Bug 929 "Failure reading PNG bitmap".Quote:
Originally Posted by Soquili
Are you willing to post a XAR with has neither a PNG nor a JPEG - the Mac will probably open it? I appreciate that the artwork shown here does need a background picture to work.
Ben
Hi Ben,
The only bitmaps in the .xar files are those created within Xara Xtreme as bevels and fractal plasma fills. No bitmap images were imported to create the effects or backgrounds.
I edited the second gold file I posted above. I was surprised that Xara Xtreme LX did not recognize the existance of the bevels when I tried to remove them. I had to convert the shapes to Editable Shapes, and Ungroup to remove the bevels. I simply deleted the factal plasma filled rectangle used for the brushed metal effect. After removing the bevel from the text, I added an outline so it could be seen clearly. The shapes for the screws were removed completely as they were mostly beveled shapes and wasn't much remaining after removing the bevels.
Ben, if you receive the same error when trying to open the attached .xar file there is something more amiss than .png and .jpgs being used within Xara LX to simulate bevels and fractal plasma fills.
EDIT: Further examination of the original file shows that when first opened if you select a beveled object and then the bevel tool the program reports the bevel as None. If you make any change to the object, the bevel tool then recognises the bevel and reports it's type and allows it to be edited. I'll download the latest revision to see if this behavior is still happening.
Bill, this is Bug 1234.
Regards,
Remi
I can open that file. At the moment, there is a bright red cast to most of the files that I can open, as though looking through red cellophane (a few weeks ago it was blue), but I am pretty sure that it is rendering the same as your preview, and it is (to at least some extent editable).Quote:
Originally Posted by Soquili
Ben
Thanks Remi. I got distracted doing yard work and didn't check to see if it was already on the bug list. Temperature today is only 104 F (40 C) degrees, so it was good weather for yard work compared to the evenings this past week.
Ben, it sounds like there is a considerable colour shift you see from the Linux files. Do you see the same shift when opening a .xar created in the windows version? Probably so, as I can open files from either version and see the same colours.
I'm curious as to whether or not you get an error when you apply a bevel to an object as you run Xtreme on your Mac?
It's not a colour shift, exactly (or at least I don't think so), but a very intense pure red background that seems to bleed into everything else.
Yes, bevels work fine for me. I can create a polygon, make an inner bevel and use the pointer dial ti illuminate it.
I suspect this is caused by the "colour" initially set in the bitmap when rendering with transparency. This should be "fully transparent black" which on Windows/i386 is 0xFF000000. If this has not been correctly modified (or has been incorrectly modified) fo endian issues this could be being interpreted on the Mac as opaque red?
Gerry
I agree. If I ever feel that this is my pigeon, I will file a bug on it. I can't recall what the state is on Linux PPC - last time I tried to load a file, it did not work as well as the MacOS version.Quote:
Originally Posted by GerryI
I am fairly sure that nothing is swapped correctly, floating point values, Layer names and 32 bit colurs!
Ben.
I've fixed that particular one in r1676 but there is a lot of it about.Quote:
Originally Posted by GerryI
Alex