Why I Don't Use Xara for Design and Web

One of the biggest problems for me in Xara is incorrect translation of fonts to curves. After that, a lot of junk and unnecessary points appear.

I took three letters using Gotham Black.

Attachment 128032

After translating three letters into curves, we get 96 points.

Attachment 128033

And here's how it looks in another program:

Attachment 128034

36 points.

If the selected objects are unloaded in SVG, we will get a file of 5,359 kb, if we do the same in another program, we will get a file of 1,216 kb. And that's just (!!!) three letters.


Also with presentations in PDF. We often need to convert all text into curves and when exporting to PDF we get a giant file with extra points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aciden

One of the biggest problems for me in Xara is incorrect translation of fonts to curves. After that, a lot of junk and unnecessary points appear.
I took three letters using Gotham Black.
Attachment 128032
After translating three letters into curves, we get 96 points.
Attachment 128033
And here's how it looks in another program:
Attachment 128034
36 points.

If the selected objects are unloaded in SVG, we will get a file of 5,359 kb, if we do the same in another program, we will get a file of 1,216 kb. And that's just (!!!) three letters.
Also with presentations in PDF. We often need to convert all text into curves and when exporting to PDF we get a giant file with extra points.

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I didn't have this font so I tried with Lato Black.

I too got a large number of points but I used the Smoothing tool to reduce the O's 36 control points down to 4 @ 100% smoothing.
I superimposed one on the other and set up Outline view and saw minor curve changes so i eased off the Smoothing to a more balanced level and ended up with 8 control points.

Perhaps your other program did all this automatically.

I then Exported > SVG @ 300dpi, Clip path (Adobe) on the Smoothed letters and got a 2.89kB filesize.
The unsmoothed letters were 6.30kB. For this, I then used https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/ and reduced this to 3.89kB.

Sorry but your megabyte values seems most peculiar.
Have you examined the font and a gylph editor? The spurios points might have started in the font designer's hand.

I exported all three examples as PDF/X and, inclusing the background, its filesize was 80kB.

Acorn

P.S. Could a Mod move this the the most appropriate Forum.

Quote:

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I too got a large number of points but I used the Smoothing tool to reduce the O's 36 control points down to 4 @ 100% smoothing.
I superimposed one on the other and set up Outline view and saw minor curve changes so i eased off the Smoothing to a more balanced level and ended up with 8 control points.

Perhaps your other program did all this automatically.

I then Exported > SVG @ 300dpi, Clip path (Adobe) on the Smoothed letters and got a 2.89kB filesize.
The unsmoothed letters were 6.30kB. For this, I then used https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/ and reduced this to 3.89kB.

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It's a shame that you don't see the problem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aciden

It's a shame that you don't see the problem.

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I could not see the problem either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Perhaps your other program did all this automatically.

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for me this would be the problem - xara generates too many points, quite apart from the file size issue


if you have to tweek the letters manually - every letter... every time... seriously, life is too short

and affinity has just recently overhauled and reduced it's points generation...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

for me this would be the problem - xara generates too many points, quite apart from the file size issue

if you have to tweek the letters manually - every letter... every time... seriously, life is too short

and affinity has just recently overhauled and reduced it's points generation...

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It’s again a case of an underdeveloped (abandoned) Xara feature. It works well but the smoothing tool has a few shortcomings. For example:

1. it’s too small (the actual screen pixel size of the slider)
2. has no numerical input
3. cannot be applied to multiple selections
4. does not show the number of nodes

Here’s another example of using the smoothing tool (not text though).
https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...751#post619751