Thanks handrawn. A two screen setup was just a momentary flight of fancy. Thinking about it I don’t really have the desk space plus I still have my sights trained on getting a cintiq!Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
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Thanks handrawn. A two screen setup was just a momentary flight of fancy. Thinking about it I don’t really have the desk space plus I still have my sights trained on getting a cintiq!Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
Just try it. You've nothing to lose.
I've use two screens at home and at work for years. I'd hate to go back to a single screen.
If you want to try it, borrow a spare screen from a buddy, or even buy an old one from a thrift shop. Apart from the screen (and maybe cable) there's no cost.
I used a 1600 x 900 primary screen and a 1280 x 1024 secondary screen for years until recently, and never saw any drop in performance.
if you want one Jono I can let you have an old 23 inch HD [1920 x 1080] - circa 2011, never use it since I got the cintiq, and it will get me in her good books as she considers it 'kelt' [clutter] - I'll cart it to Beverley, if you can cart it home ;)
Wow brilliant thanks S. I’ll be in touch, drinks on me!Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn
my pleasure :)
This thread is the most depressing thing I've read all year.
Okay so given that the consensus view here seems to be that XDP is a dead duck for anyone with a higher resolution screen (read "almost everyone who is serious about graphics") what can any of you recommend that we use instead of XDP?
J
PS Out of interest, what do we think is the ultimate problem here? Is www.magix.com killing it off deliberately ? (i.e. much like Corel tried to about 10 years ago)
And have any of the original developers now jumped ship to start again from scratch? It would seem that that would be the only hope for poor old Xara...
I don't think Magix is killing it off deliberately, but perhaps they are killing it off unintentionally ...
i think the issue is that xara are now focused on web design and document design with a lot of emphasis on templates and other 'shortcuts' to make it easier for 'non-designers'
they 'parked' the desktop with magix so they could concetrate most if not all their effort on the cloud app(s)
if it were me in your position i would get a second inexpensive monitor and take on board what acorn (and others) have said (assuming the 55 inch option is not practical)
the learning curve may be easier than a new program since no interface is like the xara one
if that did not work i would look at affinity or corel draw - i don't know what you do but both have good and bad points - illustrator is overpriced in my view on subscription
that said i am not in your position because i have never limited myself to just one program... and i don't currently have the problem myself
BTW - i am not at all sure most of those, that serious, would have been using xara in the first place - i do animation, which is not always that forgiving, 2k is fine, i could work with standard HD most of the timeQuote:
Originally Posted by shiphen
again i think the company have made a reasonable commercial decision to go the way they apparently have - not without risk, but nothing is - but you can only spend so much on yesterdays product, no matter how good it is, if it is not a commercially sound venture - products come, products go, the company has to surviveQuote:
the only hope for poor old Xara...
To me, it's just so SAD. I have been using Xara since Xara Studio (c.1995)
I have always used XDP in intense bursts. I am mostly doing pretty basic graphics, creating shapes etc and occasionally doing things to photographs.
I love much about Xara including its speed and anti-aliasing... how transparency works... How easy it is to create shapes from lines and then use them to add & subtract etc from each other.
> products come, products go, the company has to survive
True. However looking again with fresh eyes, even ignoring the 4K scaling problems (making menus hard/impossible to read) there is still quite a LOT wrong with Xara's interface.
1. When you put an arrowhead on a line it finishes BEYOND the end of the line. [WTF?!]
2. When I need to be accurate, I spend my life turning the grid on and off from view, because when you zoom out it floods the screen with a sea of "+" marks. Techically correct, but not helpful! But turning them on/off is fiddly, with lots of clicks.
3. I also keep needing to change the way snapping works. Again doing so involves many clicks.
4. How "Scale Line Widths" changes the way snapping works is frankly bonkers.
5. XDP has a bug that when you change the centre of rotation of a shape it does idiotic things and the next shape rotates in some bizarre way (I forget the details).
6. "Lock Aspect Ratio" does something deeply irritating to the way the selection handles work, that is also VERY non-obvious to any novice users.
I could go on...
But my general point is that XDP needs an interface that is much more obvious to new users. I showed XDP to a highly 'computer literate' friend the other day. He's talented guy. He's done a fair bit of graphics in all manner of different applications. But he was quickly cursing and swearing at XDP.
Look, the fact is that interfaces have evolved since 1994 (!!) and Xara need to adapt. e.g. PowerPoint is much more obvious to novices. eg There isn't a quick and easy way to rotate an object by 90 degrees - even my mobile phone has that! - but instead one is forced to type the angle of rotation in manually each time. (And are most users really expecting it to default to ANTI-clockwise? Maybe... but I somehow doubt it!)
To me, the slow death of Xara is nothing short of a tragedy.
It sounds to me like Xara need a whole change of management ethos. Someone there needs to read "The Lean Startup" (by Eric Ries) and apply its principles of getting close to real new users.
Can't they just sell the whole thing to someone who at least gets the basics right?