Soooo slow...

[jassony]

I was working on 871kb xara file with 4 blends, and everything was so slow. Everytime I moved anything even by 1 pixel the whole screen went through a slow re-draw. I timed it (ctrl+shift+T) and it took 41.800 seconds at normal anti-alis at full anti alis it took 43.450 seconds.

To test it further to make sure it was the blends causing the problem. I opened a 1.5meg file created in Xara2 that had no blends but lots of bitmap fills and the re-draw was very fast.

Back to the file I was working on, I removed the blends, and everything speed up.

I'm working on a brand new (2 weeks) computer, so don't think I've got a "bottle neck" 256 meg ram and a nVida 16meg video card.
Judi

[jens g.r. benthien]

Judi,

it doesn't mean anything to have a brand new machine. If Win 98 or ME is pre-installed on that machine, go to -> start -> run -> msconfig and hit enter. Browse through the menu and you will be surprised what is started by the system before you even moved your mouse one single pixel.

In addition, performance relies on a multitude of variables: board design, chip sets, bus speed (in most cases with jumpers), speed of mem chips, controller speed, controller settings, controller drivers, graphic card manufacturer and driver - chances are very high today that you already have built-in bottlenecks on a machine off the shelf.

When I work on a 8 meg file with lots of bitmaps in hi-res, shadows, bevels, blends, perspective distortions etc, the speed decreases a bit, but not much, and my reference machine is a CAD system with only 128 megs RAM and a 233 MHz Pentium I. BUT: it runs on NT, which makes a real difference to the 'normal' OS.

Check your new system thoroughly. Is there anything running in the background that eats up resources? If you don't need that background task, disable it with the msconfig utility. However, be careful, because chopping off an important service might ruin your set up.

Unfortunately you are a bit off my reach - I would love to make your system a F1 racing car :-)

jens

[Trekart]

Dennis,

If you want to keep your custom settings between installing different versions of Xara, simply do as I do and save the relevant reg key to a file.

I really hate having to spend time meticulously setting up customised tool bars, so I have saved the "BarsNormal" reg key to a file, and after installing a newer version of Xara, simply add this back into the registry and voila, my custom bars are all there.

Stu.

[Erik Heyninck]

Hi Stu, I've never done anything with the registry before, but having a partition on my HDD to "learn and play", I'd like to try this out as I can learn a lot from it. So I'd appreciate it if you could explain this a little more, if this doesn't take too much of your time.
For example, where in the regedit do I find these files?

[mike engles]

Hello

I, among others, have tried this by saving the whole registry entry for Xarax. This does not work.
It is strange that using just the 'Bars Normal' key works.

Thanks for the tip. Perhaps one should save the separate keys in the XARA 3.0 subdirectory.


Mike Engles

[rutharnold]

I find that it's the glow-type shadows that really cripple the redraw and save speed. I literally have to go off and make a cup of tea or surf the web for a few minutes whenever I want to do a ctrl-k copy, or save the file, or whatever.

I'll be delighted if you can fix this!

In the meantime, I'd be even more delighted if you could fix the install shield bug on the CD because I can't get the damn thing reinstalled!

ruth arnold
spacehoppa.com

[Trekart]

Okay, saving the settings is quite straight forward.

Open Regedit and select the HKEY_CURRENT_USER key.

Drill down to Software -> Xara -> XaraX -> Version3.0

Select the BarsNormal key and then "Registry/Export Registry File". In the Save Dialog box ensure that in the "Export range" at the bottom, Selected branch is selected before saving the key.

That's all there is to it. If you ever need to restore the toolbars, just double click the .reg file you just created to add the info back into the registry.

Personally, I think using the registry for all these settings is a bad idea. With Xara 1.5 you knew where you were, it had its own .ini file in its own directory, which only took up memory when the application needed it, and you knew what to copy in order to preserve your custom settings.

Bring back .ini files!!!

Stu.

[Klaus Nordby]

"Select the BarsNormal key"

It ain't necessarily so! Not if you use XaraX in full screen mode, as I do - and which all ought to do who wants to maximize their screen space. Why would anyone need to see that menu and header all the time?

So "BarsFull" is the relevant key for saving this setup. If it works, that is - this Registry key saving stuff is often a leap in the dark.


K

[Erik Heyninck]

I appreciate it!