Handful of dedicated users
I was reading on another thread that this forum is not run by xara admin (people assigned from xara/paid by xara). That this forum is run by dedicated hardworking individuals who have a life of their own but yet they contribute to new users and pretty much keep xara alive.
Is this correct? If so I am totally shocked!!! Had it not been for people like Gary, Egg, Acorn and few others, the product itself would not have a chance of surviving. This community is the living life blood of Xara. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Not a happy day for me, if this is true, or have I been living in a cave for the past few decades? :confused:
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Quote:
Originally Posted by
behzad
I was reading on another thread that this forum is not run by xara admin (people assigned from xara/paid by xara). That this forum is run by dedicated hardworking individuals who have a life of their own but yet they contribute to new users and pretty much keep xara alive.
Is this correct? If so I am totally shocked!!! Had it not been for people like Gary, Egg, Acorn and few others, the product itself would not have a chance of surviving. This community is the living life blood of Xara. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Not a happy day for me, if this is true, or have I been living in a cave for the past few decades? :confused:
Talkgraphics is owned by Xara and hosted by Xara. So Xara has a person keeping the machines on-line. Moderators and "dedicated" contributors are not Xara staff, as far as I know. There are a few members who are Xara staff and a couple who have total control over the Threads and Post content but rarely intervene. I think we have one controller who is on a retainer.
We have no insights other than experience. My full time work happens to be IT business analyst with a Masters in design of information systems from 1990 but for 16 years before that mending anything, large, small and invisible.
Acorn
Re: Handful of dedicated users
As far as I understand it, except for the personnel who's tag says "Xara Staff Member" or "Administrator" EVERYONE else is a forum member/user. Some like Acorn etc. have taken on responsible roles to keep the forum running smoothly, but have NO affiliation with Xara.
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ss-kalm
As far as I understand it, except for the personnel who's tag says "Xara Staff Member" or "Administrator" EVERYONE else is a forum member/user. Some like Acorn etc. have taken on responsible roles to keep the forum running smoothly, but have NO affiliation with Xara.
Quite right!
Re: Handful of dedicated users
So xara should be grateful to you guys. They should also listen more attentively to you all when you make recommendations and report bugs etc... But from hanging around here for the past decade, I do not see much backup and support from the mother ship.
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Quote:
Originally Posted by
behzad
So xara should be grateful to you guys. They should also listen more attentively to you all when you make recommendations and report bugs etc... But from hanging around here for the past decade, I do not see much backup and support from the mother ship.
We are extremely grateful to all the volunteer moderators and contributors who have stepped up over the years to give encouragement and support to other members of the TG community, please don’t think otherwise.
As for listening to recommendations and bug reports, that is more complicated! Moderators are often beta testers as well, and we wouldn’t run a beta program if we didn’t intend to take the feedback seriously. We also pay attention to anything suggested in Dear Xara, even though we don’t discuss those suggestions in thread. But what you have to bear in mind is that there are many owners of Xara products and I bet if you asked every one of them to nominate their Top 10 feature requests you wouldn’t get 2 complete matches. And that means many individuals are going to be disappointed because at least some and possibly all of their personal top requests aren’t implemented.
Interestingly the last time that Frances organized a TG poll on the top 10 feature requests from Dear Xara, the top 3 choices were Open Type, Table support and text in shapes – all of which have been delivered in the last year or so, and all are under further development. This might surprise you, since you’ve read the feedback on recent updates in TalkGraphics and clearly come away with the impression that we’re not listening. But the fact is it’s human nature to notice and mention the disappointments, especially if the features delivered are of no interest to you personally and it's not humanly possible for us to deliver everything to everyone! Finally I have to mention that of course we also have to take account of industry developments, our own strategic goals and hopefully add in some of our own innovations (that maybe no-one has asked for) too. If we didn’t we wouldn’t still be here after all these years.
Kate Moir (@ Xara!)
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Thank you Kate, you see, it is the communication like yours that will enlighten myself and others on this forum. A more active role of xara members on the forum will help the misunderstanding that may linger around here. I am not reading every post on this forum so thanks again for clarifying this issue.
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Quote:
Originally Posted by
webmaster
We are extremely grateful to all the volunteer moderators and contributors who have stepped up over the years to give encouragement and support to other members of the TG community, please don’t think otherwise.
As for listening to recommendations and bug reports, that is more complicated! Moderators are often beta testers as well, and we wouldn’t run a beta program if we didn’t intend to take the feedback seriously. We also pay attention to anything suggested in Dear Xara, even though we don’t discuss those suggestions in thread. But what you have to bear in mind is that there are many owners of Xara products and I bet if you asked every one of them to nominate their Top 10 feature requests you wouldn’t get 2 complete matches. And that means many individuals are going to be disappointed because at least some and possibly all of their personal top requests aren’t implemented.
Interestingly the last time that Frances organized a TG poll on the top 10 feature requests from Dear Xara, the top 3 choices were Open Type, Table support and text in shapes – all of which have been delivered in the last year or so, and all are under further development. This might surprise you, since you’ve read the feedback on recent updates in TalkGraphics and clearly come away with the impression that we’re not listening. But the fact is it’s human nature to notice and mention the disappointments, especially if the features delivered are of no interest to you personally and it's not humanly possible for us to deliver everything to everyone! Finally I have to mention that of course we also have to take account of industry developments, our own strategic goals and hopefully add in some of our own innovations (that maybe no-one has asked for) too. If we didn’t we wouldn’t still be here after all these years.
Kate Moir (@ Xara!)
There should be a like button...
Quark does a poll for new/improved features every two years. Maybe 20-30 items, mostly pulled from the Quark FB closed group and from the (little used) forum. These are ranked, like Frances' TG Poll.
One thing to note is even if something ranks overwhelmingly in first place, that feature may or may not make it into the very next release. The main reason is that this first place item may well need a lot of background preparation work inside the code, which means it stands a good chance of breaking other things as they may depend on that code. It can be quite a process to get to that #1 feature. It may take two or even three major revisions to get it worked in.
An Xara example would be OpenType Feature code (for which I am grateful). Adding it in isn't an easy process and it has to take iterations. Xara began with the logical things such as ligs/discretionary ligs and stylistic set (SS) support. About that stylistic support...I suggested during the process it was being added to enable the use of stylistic set "friendly" names. OpenType fonts have had the ability for the font authors to enter friendly names for SS. Many do these days. It was added even though it wasn't actually planned to be added. Xara products are among a small handful of applications that can even read and use those friendly names in fonts that have them.
While no application developer is on a development pace I like, or maybe "you" like, (and Xara is a bit slower than most of the applications I use), it does happen. There are current diversions from the desktop applications, they have a new product with a still limited team. This same thing happens elsewhere anytime a new product is concurrently being developed even if some new developers are added to the group.
I agree with behzad about the more active role of higher-ups at Xara. In this very recent past (a few weeks), I am seeing your (Kate's) presence more and I encourage it to continue.
Mike
Re: Handful of dedicated users
Yes, good point Mike, I must add development time and complexity to the list of factors we have to take into account when considering the wish lists. Popular and Easy is the dream combination, Popular and Difficult requires some harder decisions and may call for some patience - Open Type being a good example.
And yes, you will continue to see some more Xara presence!
Kate Moir
