Error message

[Shaman]

Hi:
I've run into this a couple of times. The first time, it didn't matter. This time, however I had about 20 hours into the project and while it wasn't for pay, I was thinking about using it for self-promotion. I had about 30 layers going and imported a bitmap into it to apply texture. Saved and closed it last night after putting the bitmap into a layer. Wanted to take a fresh look at it this morning, but when I tried I get a blank error box that waits for acknowledgement, then:
"Xara LX failed to load the design."
"This is an early demonstration version of the program which does not yet support all of the data types that can appear in XAR designs."

This even though I created it on the same computer, same version of Xara. Seems like this happened after I imported a bitmap to use in the last project this happened with. Tried to open it on another Linux computer I have and even tried just importing the file. No luck.
The bitmaps I use were made up in The Gimp and saved as .jpgs. Is there another format I could save bitmaps in that will work better?
Any other program I could use to open the file and save a good copy? It was essentially finished, just thought I might tweak it more.
While I'm at it, is there a way to save bitmaps into the Bitmap Gallery, alongside the default (Xara) bitmap? I know you can do it on a per project basis, I was just wondering about a longer term method.
Thanks,
Scott

[Soquili]

Hi Scott,

I had that message before on one of the earlier builds. Have you tried opening the .xar file on a Windows machine running the commercial version of Xara Xtreme?

I was able to recover my file and save it, when the file was copied back to my Linux machine Xara LX could open it.

[Shaman]

Hey Bill:
Thanks!
I had been thinking that I'll probably need to borrow a Windows laptop, hopefully find and download a demo version of Xara Xtreme, open, and export in a usable file format. Your experience confirms that it will probably work and will be worth the time to try.
Also going to look for a longer term solution, try to make it happen in another file, see what makes it happen and what I can do to avoid the problem (# of layers, bitmap import format, etc.) .
Meanwhile onto Bugzilla to see what else I can learn.
Scott

[Odat]

How big is your file on disk?

I recently had this happen to me, worked on something and saved it, then quit for the day. The next day I couldn't open the file, tried it in windows, no joy. Then I discovered that the file was actually 0 bytes long, as if it didn't actually save.

This happened only once, and with the most recent build.

[Shaman]

Hey Odat:
Thanks for the thought. I checked and it's 17.9 kb, which seems comparable or even a little big, the original size of the bitmap that I imported into the file was 10kb, so it makes sense. I found the first file this happened with, it was around 186 kb, again it was accounted for by the size of an imported bitmap. Overall file sizes on .xar files look even smaller than Illustrator files. There is something in both, just can't open 'em. But I'll look out for that problem in the future.
Scott

[Shaman]

Hi:
I've run into this a couple of times. The first time, it didn't matter. This time, however I had about 20 hours into the project and while it wasn't for pay, I was thinking about using it for self-promotion. I had about 30 layers going and imported a bitmap into it to apply texture. Saved and closed it last night after putting the bitmap into a layer. Wanted to take a fresh look at it this morning, but when I tried I get a blank error box that waits for acknowledgement, then:
"Xara LX failed to load the design."
"This is an early demonstration version of the program which does not yet support all of the data types that can appear in XAR designs."

This even though I created it on the same computer, same version of Xara. Seems like this happened after I imported a bitmap to use in the last project this happened with. Tried to open it on another Linux computer I have and even tried just importing the file. No luck.
The bitmaps I use were made up in The Gimp and saved as .jpgs. Is there another format I could save bitmaps in that will work better?
Any other program I could use to open the file and save a good copy? It was essentially finished, just thought I might tweak it more.
While I'm at it, is there a way to save bitmaps into the Bitmap Gallery, alongside the default (Xara) bitmap? I know you can do it on a per project basis, I was just wondering about a longer term method.
Thanks,
Scott

Hey All:
Hope you are all doing well!
For any keeping track, I have not been able to trigger any kind of crash due to inclusion of bitmaps and multiple layers. The factor(s) causing those crashes (inability to access files) appear to be random or at least, unknown, for now.
And I've tried, got a good design or two out of it!
I did finally and accidentally, trigger 3-4 crashes (yeah I AM stubborn) of the program and computer with a file that included an older tt font that I loaded on Mepis from a CD, Isadora, classy font, shame if it won't work. May use it again, especially to see, think I subbed another font off of the same CD, no problems.
Will let you know if there is anything else.
Meanwhile, make mine Xara!
Scott

[Soquili]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for keeping us informed.

Does the font you are thinking is the cause of the crashes have fancy ligatures, broad or long flourishes?

We have had some issues with some fonts in previous versions of the Windows versions of Xara X, and X¹. However, the problems were within the fonts and not the graphics program itself. Although some programs are more forgiving with their font usage than others, the fonts may appear to be fine in another application. If you have a font creation application, you can usually determine if a suspect font has some abnormalities by opening it for editing. Unsual hinting and/or node types and/or inappropriate path directions can cause a font to crash some applications.

[Shaman]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for keeping us informed.

Does the font you are thinking is the cause of the crashes have fancy ligatures, broad or long flourishes?

We have had some issues with some fonts in previous versions of the Windows versions of Xara X, and X¹. However, the problems were within the fonts and not the graphics program itself. Although some programs are more forgiving with their font usage than others, the fonts may appear to be fine in another application. If you have a font creation application, you can usually determine if a suspect font has some abnormalities by opening it for editing. Unsual hinting and/or node types and/or inappropriate path directions can cause a font to crash some applications.

Hey Bill:
If you are talking about a script font, one that attempts to duplicate handwriting, no. But it is different than standard fonts. I've attached an example .jpg, so you can see what I'm talking about. The other thing I remember is that I had the font on one layer, then copied and pasted (to another layer or the same) and each time that I set it above the other and changed to white (gray) with the sliders (RGB). Then I believe the problem (computer lockup) occured as I started to move the feather slider to try to create a highlighted effect to make the font stand out. Done that a few dozen times before over the 6 weeks I've been using LX. One factor might be that 2 weeks ago I loaded fonts from my cd. Before that had been using the fonts that came with this distro, thought the font I substituted was also from the cd, but you may be right and it's an individual font issue. Seems as though I've also noticed spacing issues with other fonts from that cd in graphics/text apps in Linux. Good to know there is a way to evaluate fonts, have not used font creation apps, will dive into one and see what that font looks like.
By the way, downloaded the latest demo of Xara Xtreme and ran it last night in XP, went to open the file I was originally having an issue with (hours of work, etc.) that was saying it wasn't sophistaced enough to run it. In XP trying to open the file gave "spurious internal error", and didn't open it. Same result with attempting to import it. It's gone. Oh well. Started the redo.
Scott

[Soquili]

Scott, the extended decenders on the letters is more of what I was refering too. The font you have shown could have some incorrect hinting, nodes or path directions. Fonts that I have received as parts of a collection on CD seem to have more issues than individual fonts purchased from a foundry.

Before writing off that file, you may want to try Expander.exe to try and recover it or maybe a portion of it. You can find it at http://www.xaraxone.com/html/shareware.html. It is a Windows appication, but I have used it to recover a corrupted file created using Xara Xtreme Linux Edition by copying the file to my XP machine.