Wish List for V12

[Gare]

My problem, Eric, is a problem of scale and of time. It's not a deal-breaker that Xara Designer doesn't get the whole numbers right without manual intervention. It's a nuisance.

For example: The last month's site I did for the Xara Xone, last August? It took me over 90 minutes, while the meter is running, to get the screen captures all nice and even along the edges, as professionals are wont to do (, because I had over two score of images to go into the Content Management System.

What I expect is that if a program calls itself "Pro", then it should accommodate those people who do sites for a living, with the least amount of unavoidable grief put on the buyer of such software.

By the way, I, too, cannot justify buying Photoshop merely for making images pixel-perfect around the edges. I'm not even using the Cloud version, but stayed at CS6 as part of my working tools. Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 can do the same thing with edge pixels for under $100. But this is hardly the point.

This is a Wish List. I'd like to see it continue without contention. I've argued for prioritizing this list just as you have, Eric: I feel that this is a drawing program first, and a web designing program second, and yet the majority of the wishes here are for more/better website creation tools.

So I'd be a hypocrite if I told you to leave my wishes alone here, don't downplay them, but I'll put up with the inconvenience as long as I've registered it here.

It took three versions to get the brush effects I've been pleading for.

I'll just wear knee guards in the future if I'm going to be down on my knees for this long.

My Best,

Gary

[PhilM]

Hi Gare,

Like Egg, I'm not sure I fully understand what you're asking for. I think possibly what you're saying is that when a design is exported as a bitmap you'd like Camelot to stretch/compress it slightly to ensure that the design is a whole number of pixels wide and high and thus exactly fits the bitmap... Am I right?

That would mean that a circle in the design might not be an exact circle in the exported bitmap but you'd put up with that for the convenience of not having to fiddle with the bitmap edges. Still right?

Phil

[Gare]

That's exactly what I'm obsessing on, Phil, thanks. :) We need whole integer exports, or, for example, I get one or two pixels in width of a transitional color, which usually is incompatible with any solid colour background. Example:



And it's been this way for versions and versions, Phil, just like the presumption that any bitmap copied to the clipboard shall be recognized as sRGB. This plays almost as much havoc with images destined for print, as the partially opaque edges on bitmaps that were created with fractional integers.

The bitmpa editors I use clamp the floating point to a whole amount.

Can Xara Designer do this, too?

One who exports scors of images to WordPress from Xara every day, :)

Gary

[jvila]

I don't know if I am understanding all the conversation but what I can say is that I faced problems when I export to bitmap that has text inside and text is not placed exactly in a pixel, when I see that bitmap on screen text looks blur then I have to reposition text to a rounded pixel to get a perfect representation on the screen, if I have a choice that everything I place where placed over whole pixels will be very in handy.
I am not an expert and maybe I am doing something wrong or not but that is what I repeteadly face.
According borders, again, may be We are talking about the same issue but every time I clip objects you can see a border around the clipping.
best regards.

[StevenWWinters]

Could a "Snap to Pixel" option work to allow you to only draw objects on full pixel boundaries? I don't think stretching on export is the right solution due to the distortion it could introduce.

[jvila]

I think I found a work around.
I set the grid to 10 px maximun space and 10 subdivisions.
Set snap to grid.
Now everything seems to work fine

[Gare]

We have Most Recently Used for font styles, colours, and some Live Effects, but not Make a Bitmap copy.

It's quite frustrating to press Ctrl+Shift+C to Make a Bitmap Copy, the depth box says TrueColor+Alpha, I correct it to read TrueColor (NO alpha), ba-da-bing, done. So I go on to the next piece I want to export, and wouldn't you know? TrueColor+Alpha again.

In one Xara session, can you make the Bitmap Copy>Color Depth "sticky"?

TIA,

Gary

[Sheff]

Mike, we can agree, then, that there is a lag, and for me, a stultifying one.

Can we edit a file to remove the new brushes? All I use are the ones from previous versions.

Is anyone else a non Art brush Xara user?

I don't stay in Xara all day; I duck in an out as I need it and loading the brushes EVERY time I lauch Xara, and why is my selection then unselected?

Why can Photoshop load all the fonts on a system on first use of its Type tool within 3 seconds? And I have over 1,000 typefaces loaded, mostly because every program Earth wants to involuntarily adds template fonts to my own list of retail (read "expensive, not shareware stuff or lookalike") typefaces?

We should have an option (in, um...Options) to decide to load or not load Web fonts, which is behind the curve for developers and designers in 2016 anyhow. You rent them from a place that has an incredibly fast server and multiple download points around this planet.

-g

I use the Art brushes more than I use the scatter brushes. I use the Art brushes to create slight variations for bitmaps of repetitive objects that I use frequently.

Regarding fonts, I'd also like to have a method of creating my own folders in the Fonts gallery so I could organize the fonts I use by job/client, just like the brushes in the Line Gallery. As of now, I never use the fonts gallery, but only use the Font's dropdown to choose fonts because they at least separate out the Google fonts, whereas Fonts gallery doesn't do any font organization at all. What's the point of having it if it doesn't add any benefit? There used to be folders in the font gallery, but they've long since disappeared. Now there's only a single "installed fonts" folder. I mean at least they could put in "fonts used in this document" as that already exists in the fonts drop down. The name gallery shows all the fonts, but you can only select them not apply them. The Fonts Gallery by far is the the most useless gallery at least for me. And by useless, I mean, I no longer use it, not that it doesn't have potential value. When I first began using Xara, the Fonts gallery was one of my most used galleries. But since about version 9, or maybe earlier I haven't really touched it at all.

[Gare]

I think we could use an undockable Text Gallery instead of the options we have on the Infobar. My screen resolution forces me to use the alternating ser of buttons, I can't see all the formatting options at once, and the decision to put inter-character spacing on the "top" set of options I feel isn't the best choice.


Short document DTP is a snap with Xara: I'd like to see more robust options and just put them on a Gallery, please.

TIA,

Gary

[Albacore]

If I was MD in Xara/Magix I would be in terror, wailing and weeping because the beta version of Affinity is out now for windows. If it does what it shows in You tube on the Mac well it's a serious threat even to Illy never mind Xara who made the mistake of not colour managing their docs when it was first developed. This mistake has held our programme back, as so as I am told/imformed, it is written into the core of the programme and it can't be changed. But here is another UK based small software house that took the risk and developed the product for the Mac and is now doing the same for windows. It even sells the product for the Mac for about the same price as a months rental of the Cloud version of Illustrator. Now I was never a lover of DrawPlus it was clunky to use but when you watch some of the vids for Affinity now all over the net it looks good. Here the promo for the Mac to watch: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/