Alien Skin and Xara

[mwenz]

@Mike: Up to and including version 6 EC AS products did work perfectly with Xara, AS changed their code to be compatible with Adobe's newest versions and that broke compatibility with Xara. AS don't want to work with Xara to find a fix. I'm not a programmer and I wouldn't have a clue what it would take to make EC7 play nice with Xara but I can't see that Xara would want to bother with AS if AS won't work with them.

It's in Xara's best interest to make their program work with newer 8bf filters. Not the other way 'round. It isn't that Alien Skin has to accommodate Xara's manner of doing things.

Photoline has two programmers. The owners. They figured it out. I suspect Xara could as well. Corel has more people and money to throw at it, but they didn't even have a bump in the road to making their stuff work with AS's stuff.

Here's the thing to me: I don't care if Xara can ever work with newer 8bf filters. I don't manipulate images in it per se. Certainly not the PS-type of filters/effects. That's what real image editors are for (aside from everything else they can do and XDP will never do).

The issue of newer standards for PS-type of filters will only grow "worse" over time unless Xara decides to actually become compliant. This applies to many other issues...like import/export filters as well. Xara could become irrelevant if it does not choose to throw money and time at these issues. Oh, not irrelevant as regards the more simple vector work I do. But certainly in oh so many other ways that are increasingly important to Xara's user base.

Only time will tell once the new version of XDP arrives whether investing in us, the users, is important. Instead of bell & whistle "improvements," Xara should expand and improve upon its core capabilities. And lest anyone think this type of message is pointedly unfair towards Xara, it's not. It's the exact same message I hammer on Corel, Quark, Adobe and others over. What good are new capabilities if long-standing issues go unresolved? Like I mentioned to the powers that be at Corel and Quark the other day, I would gladly pay the upgrade price if existing capabilities were enhanced, old issues resolved, work-flow issues improved, etc.

Now, I well understand the above doesn't sell new licenses and there will always have to be the "new" things added. But doing so at the expense of stagnation of current capabilities is also not a good model.

I am looking forward to the next version. As I skipped the X10 release, I am sincerely hoping some of these things get addressed. I like drawing in XDP--but I don't have to. I can use other applications. I simply prefer XDP and in its current state (for me, X9) it does well for what I use it for...I would just use it for more things if Xara would make the thing more current in capabilities and the way it functions.

Mike

[steve.ledger]

It's in Xara's best interest to make their program work with newer 8bf filters. Not the other way 'round. It isn't that Alien Skin has to accommodate Xara's manner of doing things.

But Mike, in order for Xara to do so AS must also work in consultation with the Xara devs. It's not a one sided affair.
Besides which, Xara's camelot core is ancient. It just may not be possible.

[mwenz]

But Steve, you should also read the paragraph after the one you quoted. From what I remember in the beta section of their forum, they didn't do anything special to enable AS's plugins to work when AS went from version 6 to 7.

I suspect it is a code issue.

[steve.ledger]

But Steve, you should also read the paragraph after the one you quoted.

An irksome assumption you've made there, Mike.

In any case, the only people who can comment with any authority are Xara devs after all, you're almost implying they're being lazy..

[mwenz]

you're almost implying they're being lazy..

I think that if this issue was important to Xara--Xara here meaning the powers that be--then we wouldn't be discussing it.

If Xara, Corel, PL, needs the cooperation with AS, then ask yourself why AS won't work with Xara but evidently did with the others.