The controversial eraser tool

[pauland]

John, I have put the case that the eraser tool could be a great thing in some circumstances. I don't have to prove that it's better, I just put that view forward.

Many people using Xara don't see the point of an eraser tool. The video shows the tool being used to good effect and while you may not see any value in what the video shows, others may find it enlightening.

I don't know why I find myself involved in a petty battle of word semantics about whether an eraser tool is trying to emulate some bitmap tool or workflow, when many competing vector toolsets incorporate it already - erasing vector based shapes without translation to bitmaps.

Xaras workflow for doing such operations as removing sections of vector shapes by point manipulation or shape subtraction works but is downright clumsy in an organic workflow as shown in the video.

To be honest John, I really don't care if you like the easer tool or not. What really matters is that people who are currently using xara for illustration and cartoons continue to find that xara is the best possible tool for them to do their work.

I would say that the video shows a phenomenally fast workflow that could be achievable within Xara using the eraser tool if it were present and speed their workflow. You clearly disagree.

Out of curiosity, I had a play at crudely repeating the workflow shown in the video using a pure vector editor - Flash. I can draw the lines and fill them using a brush tool. I can put them in layers and erase the vector shapes with an eraser tool and replicate the workflow of the video exactly without using any bitmap based tools at all. After I've erased a section of the vector shape I can play with the nodes and drag around points.

I really wish that rather than trying to kick a suggestion into submission (that's all this is - a suggestion), you let other people who use the product to do work similar to that shown, to decide whether that's a good way to work rather than try and push aside a perfectly good suggestion.

Xara may not wish to implement an eraser, but I'd rather people using Xara for the kind of illustration shown in the video, have a chance to air their views and support the idea (or not) rather than it just be buried and then those users eventually decide that there are better ways to do their work without Xara.

It's not about winning arguments with me John, it's about users having a voice about what suits (or does not suit) their workflow. I might be wrong, but at least I've tried to show a suggestion for progressing Xara as an organic drawing tool, rather than keep the Xara drawing workflow preserved in a museum.