Why is it now so difficult to submit a bug report?

I've just been trying to submit a bug report with Xara Designer Pro's export of a clipped photo to a .pdf but the new process for submitting bug reports is very cumbersome. It used to be so much easier but now you have to go via the Magix site it is much more complex. One particular inconvenience is that I can only upload a Xara file or a .pdf showing the problem if I first put them into a .zip file.

Also how do I view past bug reports or progress on this one?

Is this a problem for everyone or am I missing something?

Hi Rob

Let me see if someone from Xara can shed some light on this.

Moooorning

Magix deal with all frontline desktop support but if you have a bug I can take a look into it and log it with the developers. Feel free to send me an email with your bug report - robert@xara.com

Thanks
Rob

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply and your kind offer. I did eventually manage to submit the bug report and don't want to cause any confusion by sending it twice so please let me know if it is still worth me emailing it to you. My main concern was that the bug reporting process is now so cumbersome compared with the past and that the reporting form only allows a single file to be uploaded and that file cannot be in Xara or .pdf format unless the files are first put into a .zip archive file. That makes it awkward to provide evidence of a problem with .pdf export from Xara! I also couldn't see how I could see previous bugs that I had submitted or progress on this particular one.

I'd have thought that it would be sensible to make reporting potential bugs be as easy as possible otherwise people won't bother.

hmmm good point, bug reporting shouldn't be painful or awkward. I'll try pushing Magix to see if they can do anything or if not maybe we could throw together a form for this...

Thanks
Rob

I'm coming back to this thread again as I have now had several responses from the Magix Support desk and I have to say that I am very disappointed with the level of support so far. It took several emails backward and forward for them to understand that I simply expected a Xara file to look the same once exported to .pdf!

The latest response I have had is just to say that when photos within a graphics file are exported to .pdf they are compressed and that is the reason why the shape of a photo is changing during the export. Surely this is not an acceptable situation? I frequently design posters and flyers in Xara which need to be exported to .pdf for professional printing and I need to be able to reply on being able to export an accurate representation of a Xara design to .pdf.

I have recently discovered another fault with Xara (nothing to do with .pdf export but a problem with printing when a very complex vector graphic shape is present in the document ) but I am very much put off attempting to submit it as a bug report as I'm not sure I have time to go through the complexity of the error reporting process to be followed by misunderstandings of what I am trying to submit and eventually an explanation that that is what happens!

Just create a new thread in this (Dear Xara...) forum with your printing issue and give step-by-step directions how to recreate it. Xara devs follow this forum.

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Originally Posted by Boy

Just create a new thread in this (Dear Xara...) forum with your printing issue and give step-by-step directions how to recreate it. Xara devs follow this forum.

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Thanks for the suggestion which makes a lot of sense in most cases but it would be tricky in this instance as to explain the bug I would need to upload a 9MB file which I don't think I can do through the forum? Put simply the problem is that with a particular very complex vector object present in a two page Xara file when printed part of the content of the document is missing. Presumably something somewhere is overflowing but I can't really describe it without showing the specific example. Fortunately I have found a work around of exporting to .pdf first and then printing and then I don't have the problem.

Sorry, the above is probably going slightly off topic. My real concern is that the recent change to first line support no longer being provided by Xara seems to have made bug reporting very difficult and unsatisfactory.

You could post a link here to a file sharing service (such as Dropbox) to where you uploaded the file.

I installed Xara Designer Pro 16 and everything functioned fine until I used JIXIPIX PLUGIN, then XARA locked up and it gave two options [shutdown or wait] now XARA remains locked up. I have reinstalled several times - each time my custom menus has to be set again. If I do restart the computer, Xara remains locked up. I am getting behind with my work. Does anyone have a suggestion of how I may unlock version 16 without reinstalling and having to set up my custom menus? I have reinstalled Designer Pro 12 and it functions properly with all plugins.

Rob, I have been doing print work for years with Xara and my pdf's look great. make sure you change the setting to 300 dpi. If you need help just email me and I can show you.

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Originally Posted by behzad

Rob, I have been doing print work for years with Xara and my pdf's look great. make sure you change the setting to 300 dpi. If you need help just email me and I can show you.

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Thanks very much for the offer of help but the problem is not with knowing how to create a good pdf. Like you, I have been doing this successfully for a long time. The original problem I had (and still does not seem to be understood by Magix Support) is that I have a Xara page on which I have added a photo. I have then altered that photo to a specific shape using a mould and a clip view but on output to the pdf the shape is being changed so that the photo no longer has the same shape as in the Xara file. This is a clear bug in the pdf export routine.

Hi Rob, what happens if you select the Mould & Create Bitmap Copy?

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Hi Rob, what happens if you select the Mould & Create Bitmap Copy?

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Thanks for the suggestion. That solves the problem as a work around and is very useful but the fact remains that the export should work correctly. If you can't reply on the pdf export to be accurate you have to carefully check every element of the pdf just to make sure that nothing has happened during the export. As I said earlier in this thread my real concern is that the Magix support process made it awkward to report the bug and did not seem to understand the problem correctly so I'm concerned that the error won't get back to the developers for them to eventually fix it properly.