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

[eobet]

I'm not sure how I feel about "good bye" threads like this, but I feel that I have to write one because I want to vent a little bit, and also see if I get any interesting comments.

I've been a Xara user for about five years had to use Xara X in more diverse professional situations lately, and my cup-of-complaints finally spilled over today. It was my second day on a new job and the tempo was really high, and Xara made me stumble all throughout the day!

I had the task of creating a desktop background for a high-resolution system. So I asked the developer to grab a screenshot of the entire desktop, since the image I was going to make was going to play off widgets and such placed on the desktop.

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.

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).

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

And finally, I have been waiting for over a year for the OS X port and it hasn't come. Xara X is now one of the two very last applications for which I don't have an OS X version and though Parallels/Fusion works around this, it's just one more complaint which has gone unfullfilled by Xara.

The conclusion for me is this:

Xara is not a serious commercial product.

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

I can no longer use Xara for anything beyond basic object creation. All composition or post-processing has to be done in Illustrator and Photoshop.

[jamesmc]

"The image was 1400x1050 and when I opened it in Xara X, I discovered that a standard 800x600..."

I guess you are not used to working in scale eh?

When I make videos, I don't work in the highest resolution possible unless one likes to make incredibly lengthy test renders.

Best of luck on your new software, whatever that may be.

[Daniel]

I'm not sure how I feel about "good bye" threads like this

Invariably they make their author look silly.

[gwpriester]

As the saying goes, "A poor workman blames his tools."

Let us know when you find something better.

My guess is once you start using a new program you will keep asking yourself, why doesn't it do this like Xara does.

(You'll be back, I bet.)

Good luck and we have appreciated your comments and contributions to the community.

Gary

[Luciano]

Eobet,
in case it helps you, here is a 1400x 1050 page.
Sorry I don't understand why it was difficult to get such a page size.

Luciano

[MEB]

Hi eobet,
Seems you had a really bad day... so i can understand your post but not all you are describing are correct.
Please continue reading:

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.

You can customize the page to wahtever size you want: Just go to File -> Page Options -> Page tab. On the paper size drop down select Custom and fill in the desired Width and Weight

You can change the "work area outside" as you call it by changing the Outer Margin in the spread area on the pages tab too.

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).

I have to agree that the layers gallery could be improved a little more, such the ones in Photoshop or Fireworks and this have been requested some times already but if you have some carefull naming the layers it´s possible to control even very complex illustrations. Anyway i think Xara is already aware of this. I remember one thread requesting a similar layer system to that featured by fireworks where Charles himself has participated.

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.

I never had problems with feathering and clipview. I agree that it´s still complicated to edit directly a clipview object. We first have to remove the clip, make the changes to the shape and apply the clipview again. Would be great to to able to edit the clipview object "on the fly" like we do with any other shape.

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!

Hum, this is not true. I agree that we haven´t seen new drawing tools or big core improvements in the past few years but Xara hadn´t neither the resources nor the people to accomplish such level of evolution like Adobe or Macromedia. However they implemented the live effects tool. improved the text tool a lot more, improved the the numer and quality of import and export filters a lot, have "rewrited/reviewed" the code to allow the parallel development of a linux version, and have been fixing and enhancing the program in general. Now with Magix acquisition things will certainly change and more and bigger improvements will certainly be made (more frequently).

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.

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.

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

And finally, I have been waiting for over a year for the OS X port and it hasn't come. Xara X is now one of the two very last applications for which I don't have an OS X version and though Parallels/Fusion works around this, it's just one more complaint which has gone unfullfilled by Xara.

Some of those are not easy to implement i suppose and after the linux version situation i don´t believe much in a mac version being released. But again, the time and effort needed may not justify a mac version. Althought there´s a lot of artists working on the MAc platform, overall the mac represent just 5% of market share.

Besides all this, Xtreme is more than capable to produce/being integrated in a creative workflow. Just looking at what people have been made here at Talkgraphics or in Xara Xone shows how powerfull and flexible Xtreme is.
It certainly can be improved, like anything else, and hopefully we will start seeing a lot more changes/improvements in the upcoming years starting well... this month already!

[Albacore]

Like yourself I have found that Xara is not accepted by the biz or design community, I have to work in Illy in a design office (Books and newspaper supplements) but I use XPro for any work at home and quite a bit of freelance work. Since the introduction of Xpro I have been relatively happy as I can share the work load between each of the programmes.

I can understand your annoyance when you have just started a new job and things don't go well, I have been in the same situation myself and it still continues it is just what happens in biz nowadays it is pressure, pressure pressure.

I find my work place hard work but enjoyable bar the meetings but i would never succumb to stop using Xara as it has been good to me getting me openings to jobs as my portfolio is better than i think people who have more talent than me. I look at the way Illy is being used in my work we currently use CS3 but my work mates use it like version 8. They seldom use transparencies and as for the gradient tool i don't think they even know about it. People don't like reading manuals and because of the pressure they don't get the time to experiment or any real encouragement. As for your situation I do agree since Xara X most of the development is going the way of the hobbiest bar the import and export of PDF's. As a user of Illy I can't say I use the Mesh Tool that you ask for in Xara and the main reason is speed. Because you are using the Pen Tool so much with all the finger hopping that you have to do you get quite skilled at quickly drawing shapes and turning them into trans. just like the way we do it in Xara and in the 3 years I have been using Illy fulltime I have only done 3 drawings using the mesh tool and the same can be said about other tools in Illy.

I am not in your shoes at the moment but I am sure that in a few weeks you will get more confident in your position and work in your new job and will be able to relax slightly and i hope that you will reconsider your position in relation to using Xara as what is the alternative; Corel - too slow, Freehand - in my opinion as good as Xara but not being developed, Illy - to expensive and hard to get a grip with (took me a year)

[joroho]

I never had problems with feathering and clipview. I agree that it´s still complicated to edit directly a clipview object. We first have to remove the clip, make the changes to the shape and apply the clipview again. Would be great to to able to edit the clipview object "on the fly" like we do with any other shape.

Miguel,
I'm not sure this is correct. If I remember correctly, you can click on the inner "keyhole" symbol that's associatied with the contents of the clip and it'll be selected for you to make your changes. The outer keyhole is for selecting the clipping object.

Eobet,
I suspect there are a number of ways to produce commercial work without using "commercial" products. A bad photo taken with my Pentax DS will not necessarily look better had it been taken with a Canon 5D.

Best of wishes using your new, more-expensive, slower commercial software.

.joroho.

[Nostaw]

In five years, I've seen ZERO productivity changes

I'm there with you. There hasn't been changed much at all.

I sometimes think the only one programmer of Xara left years ago and no one up there dares to enter the sourcecodes again(?), you can count the number on one hand of updates appeared in the last 5 years. See how far Inkscape has come in the last 5 years. I could go on but does it help anyone?

I gave up long time ago about the idea things will happen soon, they don't. I'm very disappointed about so many things in Xara and old bugs I have to live with every day and getting into trouble because of using Xara in the first place. The interesting part comes now: For all problems I had in the past I've found easy workarounds so far. It's possible because Xara is an outstanding piece of Software I love to use! So, If I try to see your particular case, here is what I would do:

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...

File > Page Options > (window opens). Page > (Spread) Outer margin > and set the Outer margin value to 4784pix (maximum). You can work very easly outside the work area.

I looked at the options for new documents, but nothing apparently exceeds 1024x768.

File > Page Options > (window opens). Page > (Paper) > Paper Size: Custom, set the Width to 1400pix, Height to 1050pix.

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.

Work from the beginning with the Name Gallery - It is very powerful if you force yourself to work with it.
http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/features.asp (Look for Name Gallery)

...made me forget what objects were in which layer...

Do some clean and tidy up using the Layer Gallery. Hide all Layers. Start with the first layer, set the view quality to 0 if you used alot of transparency shapes. Select the shapes which belong together (no need to group them). Open the Name Gallery and click on NEW, a window appears asking you how to name the group of selected objects - give them a name so you know what these selected objects are about. Repeat this for all objects, layer and layer and create names in the Name Gallery. You can also select various shapes in various layers and put these in the Name Gallery.
Watch the video "Editing properties in the Name Gallery".

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.

My workaround: set all layers to visible and editable, then press CTRL+A and export the entire image using Alpha Channels (e.g. in PNG 32 bit format), and cut it in the proper dimensions in your favourite bitmap editor (e.g. Adobe Photoshop). I still don't use up to date the clip view.

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.

That's one of many things. Don't wait for others, use the tools which help you to achieve your goal, use a combination of programs. One Program to rule and bind them all, doesn't exist yet. You're frustrated if you let beeing yourself frustrated, the power is yours.

[DAL]

I'm not trying to pick on anyone and I said before I'm not a professional but when I look at a pic like gray's GeeBee R1 with so much detail and all the time and work that went into it I can't help wonder about some of the few posts made saying Xara is not a good program. Ok no program is without it's flaws and we always have a wish list of things that might be nice to add in. Surely after seeing some of the work made on the forum here you have to admit if Xara was as bad all that how did they do some of the things shown here? I don't especially like Photoshop but I would never say it's a bad program. I have trouble with it but I've seen other people make some incredible things with it. Maybe Xara just isn't for you but maybe you can look at some of the works posted and think what went into them before you judge to harshly.
Sorry you had a bad day at work and I hope things get better for you whatever your choice is.