Pen Tool

[Frogula]

Designer Pro X9 is my first experience with Xara and I had zero clue that this "Pen" tool even existed. I was looking all over the interface and started thinking you guys were calling something else the generic name "pen". But I Finally figured it out and I enabled it with the xareg utility.

Why would Xara not include the pen tool on the flyout?

The "Shape Tool" actually works better for me and my brain and what I tend to draw, for now, but still - more options are better.

Makes me wonder what other cool stuff has been quasi-hidden??

[JET]

Why would Xara not include the pen tool on the flyout?

The question "why", of course, would have to be answered by the vendor (Xara). Logical assumptions would be:

Xara just doesn't believe in it, and therefore doesn't consider it worthy of attention. (This is even evident in Xara's own marketing verbiage.)

Xara thinks the click-click-bend method of its Shape Editor tool is something new (it isn't), breakthrough (nope), and inherently superior (nope; just less commonly familiar, now that FreeHand is discontinued). Believing this, Xara doesn't want to expend energy on fleshing out its half-baked Pen tool, much less re-think a truly better primary path-drawing interface which provides for both methods in one elegant tool (which, as has been explained in detail, has also been done before).

So Xara continues to "half-include" its Pen to asuage those customers whom Xara believes "just don't get it" about the "superiority" of the Shape Editor, in hopes that being "half-hidden," it will eventually wither on the vine.

So I'm with you (but inversely); if Xara believes that, then it should just remove the Pen altogether and clearly demonstrate the objective "superiority" of its Shape Editor. And Xara should be willing to bear the consequences, which is that large numbers of long-experienced users of all the leading Bezier drawing programs will continue to regard Xara Designer Pro as just another hobbiest's tool due largely to its deal-breaking sub-standard treatment of what is quite arguably the most important tool in a serious Bezier drawing program.

The "Shape Tool" actually works better for me and my brain and what I tend to draw, for now, but still - more options are better.

The operative phrase is "for now." Drawing Bezier paths all day every day, it doesn't take long to discover that (unless it's all you've ever developed proficiency with) the click-click-bend method--while useful and valuable--is still unnecessarily tedious and inefficient most of the time, compared to the ubiquitous defacto standard Bezier interface. As explained, the predominate interface has become predominate for good reason.

JET

[Albacore]

I tried teaching Scottish pupils to use the Pen Tool a few years ago when I was still teaching Graphic Communication with poor results. I had 2 rooms for graphic com. one with PC's using C/Draw while the other was Acorns using Art Works (Xara in a previous life) and all wanted to use the Acorns using the Shape Editor as they quickly got results. That is the nub of it as they only had 1/3 of a year to write an illustrate a design brief as well as produce promotional material. My experience with the pupils using the Shape Editor rather than faster computers amplifies Jet's point that it is designed for hobbiest's who don't have the time or patience to learn how to use the Pen Tool. In all honesty it took me 3 months working with the Pen Tool to get fully comfortable using it and to teach pupils how much faster it was. But that was the time when Corel was clunky and slow at re-drawing so when xara came out for the PC we went with that over the whole school as it was so cheap.

When I start work in the real world I had to very quickly get up to speed using Illy which was OK as I was working for myself at that time and I could practice without someone looking over my shoulder. I find now that I am quicker working in AI using the Pen Tool than doing the same workflow in Xara but I don't use the pen tool in Xara as it is hopeless as a tool, always, always the Shape Editor. Again I have to agree with Jet if they don't include the standard bezier tool with all keyboard shortcuts they will not attract anyone away from Adobe or Corel.