Output to devices

I have been using Xara for about a year now and I find it so fast and easy to use but as a sign maker it does have some vital limitations. It would be really neat if Xara could output paths for vinyl cutting and what is more important output to a RIP for large format printing.
I can export text and shapes to AI or EPS for plotter cutting as long as there are no effects added. However when it comes to fades and rasters which get used a lot for my large format print work I have to export as PNG or JPEG. This is OK to a degree but the sizes that I have to print some of the jobs show ugly pixel edges to text and what should be nice crisp vectored shapes.
My question is, is there anything in the pipeline that could go some way to solving this problem?

Before anybody says anything, yes I’v seen it, it should be “OUTPUT”
I know I should type with one finger not two (sorry)

I corrected your typo.

There are several sign makers here Tabian. I suspect there is a third party RIP application for generating what you describe.

Have you done a Google search for such an animal?

My son is a sign maker too. Perhaps this inexpensive alternative might be just the ticket...

Sure Cuts A Lot Pro - Design & Cut Software

I supply files to a local sign maker as PDF as well as .ai & .eps and he has no trouble opening them. Don't use a lot of RGB effects like shadows as there are always ways around that but do use transparencies which are rendered as bitmaps on export. Is it the driver that is causing the problem or software that is used I think my sign maker uses FlexSign????.

It’s FlexiSign 8 that I’m running and some PDF files come in OK. I just created two 3D blocks with lighting and they came in na bother but then I tried to open a PDF of that old wall clock from a tutorial that I followed some time back and all I got was three lines. So it looks as if complex files are having some difficulties on import.
Still a problem...

Will need to have a look at old tut and see if there is a problem which I could identify. With the 3 lines that you describe could it be a memory rendering problem?

My computers memory is much better than mine, with 8G RAM and two GeForce graphics cards all water cooled. This thing is faster than my car so what next...

Will try that tut tonight then and see what happens will be back tomorrow morning with some sort of answer. If my memory is as good as my 16Gb it was a 2 part tut that Gary produced for the pendulum clock.

Good Lad! 16Gb, I’m impressed. Look forward to see if you had any luck with the clock. If you like I can email the Xara file to you...

Well there is only one way you're going to get this to print and even then there're so many areas that are going to be out of gamut that it wouldn't be worth the trouble and that is to save it as a .tiff file. It is all the wood effects, the transparencies and the complex fills that cause the problem. These are all RGB effects and OK they can be rendered by the PDF export filter as a rasterized area but they overlay each other so many times. I am on the 2 tutorial, now 2/3 of the way through the drawing, the drawing size is huge, as I have used a 300 dpi, wood effect instead of Gary's 96 dpi that you get with the gallery as I don't think 96 is good enough. Have you got a reasonable bitmap editor? if you have, then export as a .tiff file and open it up and see how much is out of gamut as it may print if you correct Hue & Saturation that would be enough without going to the trouble of painting out the highlighted areas. Will keep trying to see if this works but it will be Monday before I get the chance to finish it.

The other thing that could resolve the problem is to make a vector wood grain pattern effect. They are a few Illustrator tutorials out there which you could use but you would need to be very accurate setting up your pattern so that it would look seemless when you applied it over an area.