Xara on Mac?

[james_frost]

I seem to remember seeing a thread similar to this one a long time ago.

From what I remember, the Xara guys pointed out that much of Xara 2 is written using very Windows specific graphics routines highly optimised for using Windows and PC device drivers (which gives it its high performance) and that an attempt to create in the Mac would effectively mean a complete ground up rewrite.

Presumably this is the same situation with XaraX.

In my opinion we'd end up with two average products rather than one superb one if it was decided to create a mac version too.

James Frost

[Thomas.Sorrill]

Gary's right. Xara X will run under a Windows emulator for the Mac (and although not as fast as when in a native PC environ, it's still damn quick). As for creating a native Mac version, the main difficulty is that the basic engine of Xara X is written in Assembler (very mac unfriendly). This is what keeps X compact and fast..and easy to use.

To do a native Mac version would literally call for a redesign from the ground up, engine and all. And once we get to that level, we would be talking about two fundamentally different programs, and the Mac version would prbably be slower due to the engine redesign...and cross platform compatibility between X pc and X Mac would be very difficult due to the different prgram architecture. In other words, passing files back and forth may be impossible to do without any errors/bugs.

The development team would literally have to double just to focus on a Mac version and they may never catch up to the PC version in terms of features since the lead time to completion would be stretched passed the horizon (verbal gibberish that means it would take a lot longer to build a new Mac product than it will to add more features to the current version of X, so the two products may never reach parity in terms of feature compliments).

Unless of course, you want us to stop future development of Xara X for the PC and focus on the Mac only product???

T

[gwpriester]

I might point out that the Mac version of CorelDRAW 10, which was supposed to be released some time ago, has not been released, nor do I have any idea when it will be released.

Maybe it's time for the Mac users to see the light and come over to where the action is :-)

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Sever So Humble...

[Steve Newport]

Great responses guys! Some very good points. The whole reason I asked this is because I was at my Moms work the other day, she works at an advertising industry, and I was observing one of the artists for the day (Great job, isn't even work!!).
After seeing him work for a while I asked what vector program they used... He said freehand. So I was trying to sell him to Xara: I brought him to xara.com and showed him the works of Vladimir Konstantinovich then brought him here and showed him all you guys's stuff. After seeing him work in Freehand, it seemed sooo... unorganized and weak, and just knew Xara could do better, but this opinion was completely biased. So I wanted to let him try X out for a while to see if he liked it better and eventually get the company to start using that. Problem is, the whole company uses Macs [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] ! Oh well, guess he'll have to waite. Thanks for the great discussion

Steve Newport

[gwpriester]

Steve

The problem with most design professionals is they are not computer and software enthusiasts. The use a computer to get their job done and what their software cannot do, they don't do.

I think in terms of keeping up with the state of the art, FreeHand (including FH 10 which I reviewed for Communication Arts Magazine--next issue) is light years behind. DRAW, Illustrator 10 and of course Xara X have much more evolved features. On the other hand, for someone in advertising, FreeHand is probably a good choice. It's text tools are very good, although maybe not as thorough as DRAW and Illustrator.

But more to the point, these guys don't spend time in conferences like this. They don't read computer magazines and most of all, they don't want to (god forbid) learn any thing new!

If the art director was creating web graphics, you probably would have had a better time getting his attention.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Sever So Humble...

[Ross Macintosh]

Question for Thomas: Sir, I read a while back that Xara was the result of 45 person years of programming. Do you know (or can you find out) what the current count is? I presume you folks put in a few hours creating the X version - hours probably not included in that old 45 person year number.

I have one more thing to add to my earlier post. When I used my powermac 6100/66 I had a 486mhz dos compatibility card in it running windows95 (I think). I used to run the first corelxara with the application residing on a scsi zip drive disc. Remarkably it performed reasonably well - all the problems I had related to the poor compatibility (ie weak printing) between the mac and the dos card. Because I couldn't print any of my xara creations it got me interested in web graphic development bacck in 1995.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[qmr]

nice to see comments from you sensible chaps to balance my rant.. actually vid editing on a mac is sweet, and I first started with photoshop 2.5 on a powermac. But like Gary says, macs crash spectacularly, you learn all sorts of new words.. and as for Freehand which I use for offset and some flash, (and I've done some very good work in it) - freehand vs xara is like stereo compared to a tinny little tranistor radio... you have the scenario of an expensive monitor, fast computer etc and the screen displays in freehand are antique.. crinkly, fuzzy, erratic zoom views.. you have to have faith that the design you see onscreen will actually look sharp, smooth, print beautifully.. and thats the problem. I dont have the faith. I dont think Steve Jobs is a god and I dont care about Bill Gates business deals. For a groucho marxist, OS devotion is one step away from flat earth enthusiasms for me.. Freehand, Illustrator, even draw, drive me nuts compared to xara. Freehand is more correctly called Freudhand.. Xara has this remarkable characteristic where you can seem to find your own way to do just about anything your design needs in the program. Just using the core toolset.
And as Ross says, its you the idea generator that matters not the computer you use. OS doesnt matter but often your choice of software does.
My first animation, me destroying the computer with a sledgehammer.. I did it in windows paint. I still think thats a cool program too. (not really but you get the point..)

Q.

[Klaus Nordby]

Thomas: "Unless of course, you want us to stop future development of Xara X for the PC and focus on the Mac only product???"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I wish the Mac would die. It's a good OS and machine, but the existence of that platform is largely only a source of trouble - as anyone knows who has ever dealt with a service bureau. Just imagine all the duplicitous man-hours Adobe, Macromedia and Corel must spend just to make dual platform software. So I'm mighty glad that Xara is not wasting its resources on a Mac version.


K

[Big Frank]

Ooooooooooooooooooooh, wonder how long before this post is deleted FFS

Just lock the damn thread if you dont want anybody to reply

[steve.ledger]

Take it easy please Frank..

You just got caught up in thread merging.
The other post was moved to the current 'Please Give to Mac Xara products' thread.

Your post then became irrelevant.

Moderation goes on all the time at TG, sometimes you notice it, mostly you don't