Bouton's Features Wish List for version 9

[petervandriel]

i've been using xara for ... well... ages (more than 10 years).

And I really love xara. But there's always room for improvement. So here's my list:

1 - pixel mode: if you design for apps/web you want does sharp pixel edges!
2 - beter...beter... beter.. export to ai and psd.... we love xara... rest of the (pro) world never heard of it!
3 - shadow tool improvement. more realistic falloff (as mentioned bij someone else here) and inner-shadow
4 - shape distort grid (see photoshop)
5 - custom stroke shapes
6 - combine strokeshape with arrowhead.
7 - copy atributes options (what will be copied)
8 - instances libary (bit like flash)
9 - move a group in a Clipview (now you can only move a single object)
10 - more blendmodes (in transparentcy)

I hope someone will read this and grand one of my wishes:-) (nr 1+2 please!)

greetz,

Peter (www.selmorelynx.com for my work)

[MarcT]

Great suggestions Peter, my favorites are 4 and 5.

One of you wishes is already granted, if you press ctrl+alt and click a couple of times it will cycle through the subgroups in the clipview.

Marc

[steve.ledger]

9 - move a group in a Clipview (now you can only move a single object)

You can move a group inside a clipview via double-click to 'edit inside' (since Designer Pro version 7)

[petervandriel]

thx that helps!

[Sheff]

Pressure sensitivity and stroke shape improvements. I'd like to be able to have pressure profiles applied to stroke shapes. Right now, it's either or. If I want a stroke shape that tapers at the beginning and end, I'm stuck at one line weight. If I want pressure sensitivity to control the thickness of the line, the end caps at the beginning tend to default in a blog and sometimes it tapers, but usually you have a blob at the other end.

What I'd like to see as an option is to be able to draw with the freehand tool and have it keep the stroke shape, but apply a varying thickness to the line. Or apply a varying thickness to the line based on the initial(or average) pressure of the pen.

[Gare]

Hear, hear, and I feel that the whole custom line feature needs a rethinking and retooling. You can't create your own custom stroke, which is what Creature House Expression encouraged you to do, and they are the engineers who Xara, Adobe, and Corel have tried to imitate.

Actually, I find perhaps 3 of the entire preset collection useful in my work.

Dear programmers: please let the genie out of the bottle and let us make our own strokes?

TIA,

Gary

[Sheff]

Hear, hear, and I feel that the whole custom line feature needs a rethinking and retooling. You can't create your own custom stroke, which is what Creature House Expression encouraged you to do, and they are the engineers who Xara, Adobe, and Corel have tried to imitate.

Actually, I find perhaps 3 of the entire preset collection useful in my work.

Dear programmers: please let the genie out of the bottle and let us make our own strokes?

TIA,

Gary

Agreed regarding Creature House Expression. I'd love to have something similar to Skeletal Strokes.

I have a workflow where I create the stroke in Xara, copy and paste it into Illustrator, then copy and paste it into Expression to make the stroke. Then I create the artwork, then I copy and paste that in to Illustrator and do it again to get it back into Xara.

Once the stroke is back in Xara, the only thing I can use to manipulate it and maintain its integrity is the mould tool.

Cutting and Pasting directly between Expression and Xara results in them passing bitmaps back and forth rather than vectors. Illustrator just functions as a 'translator' for Xara.

It's a huge pain in the ass.

I try to use Xara as much as I can, but I find that I have to cut and paste between other vector apps to use features where Xara comes up short.

I'd also like gradient line fills that move along a path. Having to turn a line into a shape or a clipping path to do this is also tedious.

Sheff

[ernie-f]

I know now is too late but maybe it will be observed in the future versions of Xara.

I agree with all this wishes 100% and will sugest some more.

For me as a graphic designer for print, I wish a better color management for printing in CMYK.
A proof preview like in Adobes CS or in CDR since v. X5. The hyphenation has also named „angelize”. A mesh-fill is named too.

The trace module is not usable. Why not integrate the OpenSource PoTrace like in Inkscape?

And YES Gare, I'd to work with Expression for a while too. A bunch of helpfull setting and tools like them, will look great in Xara.

In positive expectation

from Germany

Ernie

[Gare]

Hi Ernie!

Where's Bert?

As far as Auto-Trace goes in Xara:

• It's about as accurate as CorelDRAW and even if it was totally useless (which it isn't), it's still free.

I've not tried Po Trace yet, but I just downloaded it.

Professionally (or at least to get stuff done quickly), I own the desktop version of Vector Magic, which does a wonderful job of posterizing and tracing bitmaps.

I confess I'd like a Gradient Mesh feature like Illustrator, but between feathering and transparency, you can do an aweful lot of complex shading without the feature (I'd still like it, though).

My Best,

Gary

P.S. I think I should change the name of this thread to "Version 10 requests", huh?

[csehz]

P.S. I think I should change the name of this thread to "Version 10 requests", huh?

That is pity if the wish list for version 9 could be renamed to version 10 requests, because slightly meaning that the proposals were not heared/implemented in version 9.

Maybe would be worth to start a completely new even in that case, seeing that Views: 19,529 it was probably the most visited topic in the year