Bouton's Features Wish List for version 9

[amoore]

The UI tint should be adjustable with a slider, it should be also scalable in my opinion. The dark one depresses me a bit, but that's just me.

It isn't just you. A significant number of Xarans have the same reaction to the dark UI. It's not only depressing to many of us, it also produces eye strain fairly quickly.

As for the slider, that might help the general tone, but it wouldn't do anything about the awful icons in the dark UI.

Agreed re the mold tool, the 4-corners deformation request, and possibly the fill transform. Mostly I use the mold tool to fit screen captures into "screens" on clipart computer images. Usually it works well. Sometimes, not so much.

[Gare]

I think it's important for us all to parse out what is important, and what is less important (and trivial).

I don't use the Mould tool every day, but some Xaraists do. I think it's the percentage (perhaps a vote or poll is in order here).

This is probably tactless as incentive goes, but when Xara first came out, it generally ran rings around CorelDRAW.

Evidently, it only outperforms in most areas, but not the Mould tool. CorelDRAW's Envelope tool was mature the version it came out, version 2 or 3, I believe.

I know the coding uses a different model than Corel does, and I've heard Xara engineers call Corel code some pretty nasty names in the past.

So might we have a better model for the Mould tool, while avoiding the crud that Corel does to make the Envelope tool a very robust and flexible tool?

If enough people would use it?

-g

[stlewis]

Can I put in a call for pinnable files - like in the newer Microsoft Office products? So in the Open dialog you can save a shortcut to the files you use regularly.

[MarcT]

Hi, concerning custom brush profiles, I would much like to see an on-screen symmetrical brush profile editor.

This is one rare example where illustrator has really nailed it (Width tool), they should promote that programmer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6hSVVsqyEo

This would be consistent with Xara's general innovative onscreen approach.

Marc

[Gare]

The capability to increase the width (symmetrically) at every control point is a must-have feature for an advanced vector drawing program.

Add to this (please, please) the option to put a fill behind or in front of a path's outline. It would make it a LOT simpler to outline text. Yes, this can be faked by a single step Contour, but PostScript language has a facility to specify fill or outline in front for objects.

As long as Xara speaks Flash and PDF, why not complete the circle and talk PostScript as well?

TIA!

Gary

[mwenz]

I heartily agree, Marc & Gary.

@Gary: I would simply put it like I have before--replicate the entire Appearance Panel of Illy in every capability. It is an incredibly powerful capability.

Take care, Mike

[MarcT]

Add to this (please, please) the option to put a fill behind or in front of a path's outline. It would make it a LOT simpler to outline text. Yes, this can be faked by a single step Contour, but PostScript language has a facility to specify fill or outline in front for objects.
Gary

That would be indeed very handy.

I've cooked an autohotkey script that makes a copy, turn lines to shape, do a .7pt outline, and send it to back to emulate this.
A bit clumsy solution since it involves icon clicking but I do this a lot, especially on text.

Marc

[Gare]

I think it's a far-flung wish to expect massive amounts of code to be torn up to accommodate artists and designers when the trend in new versions has clearly been to automate certain things to get results by people who aren't imaginative enough to figure out how to do an effect manually.

At the risk of sounding negative—because I am being negative!—the time and resources put into a feature such as the Clone Tool could have been spent on something we're asking for right here. I've been cutting holes in photos, feathering the edges and adding a replacement area manually for over half a decade, and I'm not intending to be disrespectful, but the core of my wishes is to improve the drawing part of Xara; that's what it's supposed to do, that's what stole my heart away from CorelDRAW, if I need to retouch something I own Photoshop.

So this is what Wish Lists are made of. :)

I'd love to see features that other programs have supported for years, and as Mike suggested, I'd like to be able to access them on a central palette. The Line Gallery would be a fine host for more features. I'd like to be able to make my own dashed line pattern because none of the presets offer me what I need on occasion. I'd like to be able to make my own varying width strokes, and I'd like to be able to do honest-to-gosh calligraphic strokes. I know that Expression has some patents on their "skeletal stroke" technology" but I find it very hard to understand why this can't be clean-roomed. Stretching a closed vector path to conform to another vector path can't be rocket science.

This is art created with a ten year old program. It's all scalable; some of the elements are bitmaps, but the wheat shafts are a stroke I created myself, and some of the paint strokes are vectors that have a transparency based on a coarse weave canvas.



I'm not showing off; this is not Great Art. But it is expressive, and frankly it's proof to me that a decade-old program can still be exciting.

I'd like less goofy stuff that has a vertical use, I'd like less new stuff that is done better in competing programs. I'd like fewer presets and more opportunity to create my own tools within Xara.

For artists, the new "canvas" is the web, and we really have to watch all the time to see what direction it's moving in.

Please give us the tools and features to meet the new media challenges!

TIA,

Gary

[angelize]

I'd like to see some of these requests ie custom shape profiles etc applied to the shapebuilder tool. I'd like to be able to create a small shape or group of shapes, apply fills and/or transparency, to it and be able to set it as a custom nib for the shapebuilder or the eraser tool. It would also be great to be able to save a folder of these custom nibs and be able to point Xara to it and easily use them.

I would also love to have a transparency slider available on the shapebuilder and eraser tool info bar instead of having to deselect everything and go to the transparency tool to adjust the transparency of these tools.

The Shapebuilder and the Eraser tools are a great start and I really hope that they will continue to be developed and improved.

[Gare]

@Frances,

Your wish is certainly a step forward, but please let me point out that a brush that produces a closed and filled path 1.) doesn’t advance the building block of vector graphics—the path—at all, and 2.) I think a lot of people would be obliged to invest in at least $100 worth of hardware—a digitizing tablet—to take advantage of any added elegance to the Shape Builder tool.

Me, I either use a perfectly decent Logitech mouse, or a physical pen and pencil (that I draw with and then scan); because a shape created using the Shape Builder tool is a “set piece”—it has no dynamic editability such as paths and QuickShapes do, you have to be precise with the stroke, or Undo and try again (unless you use a stylus and tablet).

I’d much prefer that if any more automated routines are added for producing shapes, that they are designed around what Illustrator and CorelDRAW do (and Expression)— that a “core” or “skeleton” is produced when you make a stroke, and this path influences the overall shape of what you’ve drawn when you then modify control points. The Shape Builder produces control points around the path which is produced, and as this goes, there is no hierarchical control to edit the overall shape of the shape once it’s been created.

I’d be happier with more features for paths, and you might be happier with LiveBrush; there’s a $10 and a free version I think. Here’s some examples of elegant strokes.



My Best,

Gary