When Are We Getting A Mesh Paint Tool?

[eobet]

And was it as intuitive as AI? How much more intuitive could it be other than literally dropping the colours where you want them? Something I'm sure would apply to a mesh fill done in Xara.

1. Illustrator has a thick gradient bar, whereas that line you're supposed to aim for in Xara is very thin, hard to miss, and therefor I didn't think you were supposed to aim and drop anything on it either.

2. Illustrator has small triangles (arrows) for every color attached to the gradient, aiming towards the bar. The color is also slightly beveled, indicating a button you can press. I bet one of the first things every Illustrator user does it accidently drag a color off the bar, which actually then immediately plants the idea in their heads that they can drag colors onto the bar as well.

3. You almost never do drag and drop actions in Xara, whereas you do it quite often in Illustrator, since the layers/objects/compositions tree is so central to keeping an eye on everything you do (moving objects between layers in Xara, for example, is a button).

Also, not having tested dropping colors on the gradient control line in Xara yet, does this mean that they move and stretch as you edit the line? Can this be toggled?

Imo, Xara is very intuitive at the very basic level, and usability stone age at anything more complex (especially visible in the layers dialog and clip view feature).

Not that Illustrator is perfect either (6 bloody tools just to edit the same point is ridiculus).

[remi]

Eobet, please take a look at the tutorial videos under the Help Menu -> Movies.
There is a great video called "Complex fills" under the section "Fills".

But it's Off topic in this thread, because we are talking about a Mesh Paint Tool and not the current Xara Xtreme Fill Tools.

Remi

[Xhris]

...To see the difference with other projects: The new Inkscape 0.46 version comes with a new Paint Bucket Tool, a new Tweak Tool, a new 3D Box Tool, a so called "Engraver's Toolbox", the new Live Path Effects ("Path along Path", "Pattern along Path", "Stitch Subcurves" and "Gears"), new angled Guidelines and much more. That's what I call progress with new vector tools. ...
Remi

Well on closer inspection, this is not what I would call overly substantial progress. The new features in principle with this new version are useful, but as is seemingly typical of open source software and the lack of a need to be perfect owing to it not costing people money to buy, the implementation of these new features is mostly poor I hate to say. The new fill bounded areas tool produces shapes that are terribly inaccurate, the tweak tool is good enough but seems unpolished, the 3D box tool is a poor man's 3D tool and it's results are far from intuitive to accomplish (not to say it isn't useful however). This new version may have a few nice new tools in principle, but they are not as well executed as they could be alas. The point being, it doesn't matter whether a software package brings out new tools in droves if they aren't particularly impressively executed. Quality over quantity. Xara has been a bit slow on the new 'vector tool' front in recent releases (with just cause if you read the history), but the improvements smack of quality and thought. To me, it is thus not really justified to knock Xara for having few new tools because Inkscape is bringing them out in droves, when Inkscape's implementation is relatively poor. This of course shouldn't be read as a knock at the effort that's gone into the new Inkscape tools--it's clearly a lot, but I'm just summarising what I see.

It's often ironic that Xara is knocked for its lack of new vector tools, and when the quality of different software tools is raised, Xara is suddenly criticised for quality in areas that don't concern vector tools at all, e.g. import export filters. Some of the poorer import/export filters are likely historical in explanation anyway; when first created they were perhaps adequate, but haven't been touched since due to higher priority things and now look aged. There are a few accuracy issues in Xara under some extreme circumstances when subtracting etc. shapes but these are few and far between (and likely a bug) and don't affect general day-to-day use, especially when compared to normal use of say Inkscape's fill bucket tool which is clearly inaccurate by default, severely limiting it's potential use to just 'crude' hand-drawn cartoons. That Xara can't get away with this kind of thing, but Inkscape can, suggests an inconsistent and hypocritical judgment criteria. While open source graphics software is great, I would not really describe it as anything remotely like competition to proprietary software; how many genuinely professional graphics artists use Inkscape, and if they do, where is the evidence?

Anyway, I just think Xara is subjected to overly harsh, undue and unjustified criticism at times (for reasons explained in detail elsewhere relating to user impatience, and unavoidably, relatively slow development), and the arguments for that criticism don't really hold water. I'm pretty confident we'll see some impressive (and well executed) things come from Xara in the next few years due to an increasing workforce and thus man hours.

[handrawn]

Nnot going to get into the debate about xara versus inkscape on the usability level, thats well covered.

As far as the paint bucket tool goes - this is a great tool.
Just the fact that it will vector fill an unclosed shape is worth it for me [the settings of small medium large gap appear to be relative to zoom].

[remi]

Yes, the quality of the Paint Bucket Tool depends on the current zoom level (study the relase notes).

@Xhris: Xara was a vector graphics pioneer - no question - but I'm not able to see new vector innovations from Xara since years. Perhaps the reason of this is perfectionism (I know of the problems resulting in this - believe me). Perhaps there are also other important reasons. The problem is, the software business is unmerciful. There is a strong commercial but also Open Source competition.

I can't see that Xara's output comes with extraordinary high quality in the last years. Perhaps there are not so much problems as in other tools, but it's too far away from being "perfect" and yes, some of the implementations are on the same "awful" level as in other products. Look at the problems with the terrible TIF import performance (yes they delivered a bad function to the customers), the PDF import (the code is not from Xara Ltd. and we see a lot of problems with PDF import here in the forum), the poor SVG export filter (again, a poor solution delivered to commercial customers from Xara Ltd., not to mention the lack of a import filter), the problems with the Font Gallery (the CPU is singing folk songs, whenever you let the Gallery open during drawing), the inaccuracy when doing boolean operations and ...

Tomorrow we will see, if Xara's current business strategy is going well or not.

Remi

[handrawn]

(study the relase notes).
Remi

on the 'to do list' can't do everything at once

[remi]

You should do "First things first", Steve.

[handrawn]

Remi - I've been using the tool in the beta since long before the release notes were written

Point taken though

[Albacore]

Remi I think you are being over critical here. For example the Tiff problem was corrected within a few month as was some of the import problems with PDF. For many years the cries form this forum was "gives us PDF" which was done and the problems that we still have with PDF are not all Xara's faults some blame must be laid at Adobe. Now I can only talk from an Illy point of view and yes Live Paint has big pluses like showing varying colour options but you can get that info from adobes Kuler programme with ease all bar the geyscale feature. But this topic is on the mesh tool which is being partially ignored now and I think that people should have a go at using this tool in various programmes from CD, DrawPlus, AI, FH and Inkscape and state the one that is easiest to use from a users perspective because at the moment I find using transparencies the easiest way to get the right shading and colour to a drawing.

Yes I think the last release was a con and I will carefully study and use before purchase the next version of Xpro before I buy.
Yes I agree that the development of new tools since 1999 has been poor if you exclude Live Effects.
No I don't agree with the implementation of an SVG filter is important as it is only being used by open sourced programmes and I would not class that as a professional format as it has never taken off.
Yes I agree that the font engine require work.

But there is loads of other work to be done in other areas of our programme and if this topic is a wish list rather than a discussion about the Mesh Tool I would like to see real vector brushes, more development in a Pathfinder Tool and a superior Clipview or Mask. But as you can see all my request are for improvements no new tools just plain old refinements there would be some tools that I would like to see but these are down my wish list. I still think that this discussion should revolve around the Mesh Tool and stick to that.

[Xhris]

Yes I think the last release was a con and I will carefully study and use before purchase the next version of Xpro before I buy.

I think this is going to turn out to be another unfair blemish in Xara's history. It wasn't a con at all really. It was clearly apparent from the numbering that it was not a main release, but a minor upgrade (Xara even stated this). The price reflected this, and Xara recommended you only upgrade if you want (further evidence it wasn't a con). Secondly, all those who did upgrade will pay less for the next upgrade as a consequence, and so no money was lost per se if you did buy it. The reasons why it was released were also out of respect of the Xara users; Xara's recent acquisition required a new release for Magix, and Xara wanted Xara users to have the latest minor changes they'd been working on up to the Magix release (plus a few more). I can't see Xara having done anything wrong at all, or conned anyone, and in fact been nothing short of thoughtful to their users. Anyway, back on topic: I doubt there'll be a mesh tool in the next version; people have been asking for other things for longer that can't be achieved in any other way--like text improvements and improvements to PDF and the font gallery etc.