Giving up on Xara! It's not commercial software...

[pauland]

That is only because they know everyone knows they paid XX% more and so they 'must' be making more money than those that bought the HP Pro notebook. Nothing to do with the style, only the impression of being paid more.

In the ancient past (a couple of decades at least ) that was known as "keeping up with the Jones's".

LOL I understand the sentiment, and often it's true, but in this case you are wrong.

I use a Dell and a home made PC. I recently bought an old Mac G4 so that I'd get comfortable using them (after being asked to work on one at a clients).

If money wasn't a problem I'd buy a Mac. I love the way they look. I love just to look at them. I don't know why, but I've never particularly liked the design of any PC I've seen.

If I had some swish looking Mac Notebook or desktop I know it would help me with my clients first impression, but it's not the major reason I'm drawn to them. They just look beautiful.

I don't try keeping up with the Jones's at all, but I know what I like.

You might imagine I'd also like to buy a Ferrari or some Porsche, but I wouldn't even if I could afford it. Maybe an Audi though..

Paul

[handrawn]

LOL

Saying that any changes to a UI will be detrimental to you is a pretty bizarre statement. How can you say that something is better or worse before you've even seen it?

Paul

I didn't say it would be detrimental - I said [effectively] that I like it just the way it is

My work flow has been designed for it - my fingers know where to walk to.
Inkscape is the second most familiar.
I am not about to change my workflow if I can help it.
My over-riding loyalty is to my work.

Its possible that it might be better if it changed, but I might not bother to find out if the changes were radical - now weren't you just implying that's how things work a post or two back? first impressions or something...

oh and I've just seen your last post Paul - #71 - I build my computers and I love the way they look and feel - but what I really really love is good work done by talented people, some of whom use very old machines and software.

[eobet]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Derek is right.
Its actually quite rare to hear a regular xara user knock the interface...

The general interface of Xara ix pretty good, imo. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head which I have recurring troubles with is when I have one straight line which consists of two points. The editing tools of Xara always wants to create a closed object out of it if I'm editing both ends, so I need to deselect it between each alteration I make. Also, I've found no easy way of extending a line in one direction along its tangency.

But the palettes, those are the one caught in interaction stone age. They display virtually no information beyond its very singular purpose. No information what's in a layer and no information how a named object looks like, for example.

Also, I ask, while Xara was innovative five or even ten years ago, what have they done lately?

How about a view mode which colors every object with an outline according to which layer its in? Or for example, something which will let me know what will be exported as a bitmap and what will retain its scalability.

Alias invented the radial menu, Macromedia invented (?) the tiling palette interface, there have been whole new interaction paradigms developed in recent years, and Xara has stood completely still.

I know that you all still think Xara is a perfect like the wheel, but some day someone is going to invent flying, and then you'll be stuck on the ground (uuurrrgh... that was a horrible metaphor, sorry for that... I guess I'm trying to say again that Illustrator and Photoshop is used commercially and are constantly moving forward, while Xara isn't).

[remi]

Ok, do we all feel better now?

Eobet, you're free to use each software package you like.

Good luck
Remi

[MarkMyWords]

I understand your points entirely Eobet and, to an extent, share your frustrations and misgivings about Xtremes future, but it seems a lack of resources mean Xara can only focus on a few improvements.

Until and unless Xara get a massive investment (if they even want that), we will just have to live with things the way they are.

[jedfrechette]

I can sympathize too. I've only been using Xtreme regularly for ~1 year but I find I'm using it less and less and am unwilling to invest the time necessary for my proficiency with it to reach the next level. There aren't many major issues, aside from it being Windows only, the death was a death of 1000 cuts.

There are endless workarounds and fudges for the quirks, missing features, and bugs that I've encountered but I don't want workarounds I just want to work. That being said, I'm glad that it works so well for so many of you. Much of the art that I've seen on this forum is truly inspiring.

Best,

[sgiff]

just putting in my two cents, I know some of this has already been mentioned.

"The image was 1400x1050 and when I opened it in Xara X, I discovered that a standard 800x600 white page hid behind the loaded image. A minor annoyance, perhaps, but it seems that the work area outside is limited, so when zoomed out, I wasn't able to scroll all the way I wanted. I looked at the options for new documents, but nothing apparently exceeds 1024x768."

As mentioned, just change the page size to fit your drawing, yes there is a limit but you can work in scale if the page size you need is too large.

"I then went to place the image into a layer and lock it, and after an hour of work I had about five or six layers depending on what I wanted to export. But working in such a high pace made me forget what objects were in which layer, and I found no simple way to discover this. The layer ui hasn't evolved in at least five years for Xara, while both Corel and Adobe have excellent tree views detailing exactly what they contain (including groups and clip views)."

It's very easy to find what layer or select objects on multiple layers. Much easier than Illustrator or any other app I've used" Just [alt+click] on the graphic and it will cycle through each object that is in each layer under your cursor, then just look at the status line to see what layer some object is on. Also you can do this with clipview or any other objects. If its a grouped object same thing use [alt+click] to select the group you want and then use the [tab] key to cycle through the objects in a group. Simple, easy.

"The necessity of exporting in the first place was because of the absolutely awful and (again) after five years still very basic clip view function in Xara, which is very difficult to edit and apparently can't handle feathered objects properly."

"You can feather a clip object or an object inside a clipview easy as has been shown."

"In five years, I've seen ZERO productivity changes (disclaimer: which have affected me), only cosmetic changes and changes made to please the hobbyist community!"

I disagree, in 5 years there has been very "few" workflow improvements, most of the improvements have been very large functionality improvements like Flash and PDF and CMYK, multipage docs, compatibility with other apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, which are huge improvements, how can you say cosmetic that is a joke!! The smaller stuff however has been ignored as you say, like the ability to rotate a group of points independently so that you don't have to slice a characters arm off and then reattach it just to reposition it. Or how about being able to update an imported image dynamically so that you could be working in Photoshop on a bitmap and then just update your changes in XARA instead of having to re import the image and merge it back into your scene.

"During the years of posting on this forum, I've had Charles Moir reply to me that it was embarrassing that the new Xara X didn't remember object rotations when that was a feature of even Xara's predecessor, and that STILL hasn't been added."

Yes, you are right about this, I don't know if embarassing is the word but unfortunate and time consuming.

"The situation is similar with mesh fills, which have been promised for more than three years now but apparently Charles & Co wants to get it ever so intuitive. I'm inclined to bet that they haven't even started on the feature yet."

Mesh fills are still a complex way to do something simple which is shading. I suggested putting in an pixel based airbrush so that you could shade objects and when you select an object and then paint on it, it would automatically mask your spray with the selected object. Easy and fast!!!

"And for years I've complained about the lack of accuracy in Xara X and when I finally get a really good thread going about it, I get no response from Xara and the moderators, instead of moderating, shut it down:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...light=accuracy"

Can't really say much on this since the thread isn't there and you don't explain what you mean, however the one thing that bothers me is that exported PNGs are not quite as sharp as what you see on screen. Exporting automatically adds some pixel sampling/smoothing which I don't like there should be an option to export exactly what is on the screen.

"Xara is not a serious commercial product.

Anyone who uses Xara for serious commercial work is lying to either us or themselves. "

Ha, that one is funny. The only reason this could be is that Xara hasn't put forth the effort to go up against adobe with hardcore mac vs. pc like adverts that show how much better Xara is. But if you are talking ease of use for creating professional illustrations then you are wrong. I create high-end pieces that I would put up against any other software or work that is done using any other software, and I make a lot of money doing it.