Rob asked me what my highest priority was...

Ok – I could spend a lot of time on this but I don’t really have it, so here are my thoughts right now:

The bottom line is number 1 - that is what I need right now most of all, as I don’t do the line art in xara, I import it as SVG vector having created it in raster and vectorised it – but I’ve included the rest because they are important [to me]

1] clipping
When you are adding highlights and shadows to a drawing one classic way of doing this is to constrain the visibility of what you are adding as you add it – my preference is to use photoshop style clipping, in other words the ability to ‘paint’ or ‘contrain’ objects you are creating within the boundaries of an existing [clipping] object as you add them – in xara you cannot do this, you can only clip afterwards so you cannot actually see what you are doing in realtime – you can edit afterwards, but this is not organic it is a real time waster

2] brushes
custom brushes need any overhaul, this has been well covered. But for me a greater priority would be absolute pixel nibs for the shape builder tool, thereby bringing it into line with inkscape’s calligraphy tool – otherwise when using the angled nib to draw with, as opposed to editing, you cannot zoom at will and keep the nib size relative to the drawing

3] layers
It has been said that groups in xara are the equivalent of layers in photoshop – ok, but this is not helpful if you are porting from xara to photoshop in PSD; you really do then need nested layers otherwise organisation in photoshop and equivalent editors is difficult


4] group editing
Following on from 1] there is often a difficulty with xara drawing in that you cannot see the actual results in real time – another example of this is group editing: being able to edit within a group by double clicking is great, but you cannot see the effect in context until you save and exit the group – how to solve? I guess you could have an optional view rest of document behind [locked of course], or you could make the new view update in real time