most wanted drawing feature - for Rob

[handrawn]

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

[pork]

Rob asked me what my highest priority was...
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

Despite that I support the idea for clipped real-time drawing, you gave me the following idea:

The shadow tool could offer a "link" to another object to clip the shadow. I don't really know how the GUI for the link would look like, but maybe like when linking a blend or text to a path, you select the "shadow" (which in Xara terms is actually the object creating the shadow) and the clipping object and then click that shadow-clip button. And since we can specify white as a shadow color, it would even be possible to use this for highlights.

But this would be more fixed to a tool, while you actually talk about clipping everything one does. And if "everything" includes dropping a shadow with the shadow tool, then I'd of course support the big concept and not the small concept.

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

I want to see the objects in the background, too. When version 6 (?) brought the edit-a-group-without-ungrouping feature, I immediately thought that Illustrator lets me do that ontop of the other objects. Inkscape does it, too.

[handrawn]

been asked to make clear in this thread that this is for version 11 see here: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...432#post511432

[Rob-Xar]

Thanks Handrawn. Now for £20 I'll put a good word in for you :P

[handrawn]

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