Bouton's Xara Stuff: Volume 3

[Gare]

You're welcome, folks—

Clipart is something that's pretty lame not to share. I get freemiums and freeware fonts and photography all over the web, and I'm just trying to balance the scales a little, as it were.

And to drum up a little ▓▓▓▓▓ traffic, because otherwise, tg is getting BOR-ING. 🌞



-g

[Acorn]

And to drum up a little ▓▓▓▓▓ traffic, because otherwise, tg is getting BOR-ING.

It's boring because Xara is failing us in not engaging and assuaging concerns about its products, its direction and support. Rob-Xar does a great front act but without the rest of the cast showing up, all we see are curtains, metaphorical and literal.

I want the products to sing so true artists and designers can focus on their craft. Web presentation is a necessary adjunct as without the mechanism, all the art in the world would become niche.

Acorn

[Gare]

For me, acorn, I've tried to find a suitable backup program if MAGIX manages to sink Xara...have not found one.

Xara's not the only game in town, but I cannot throw away an investment of decades getting comfortable and productive. Moreover, I wrote a tutorial on how to do something I felt was not demanding, and I discovered Affinity Designer doesn't have Blends or Contours, Inkscape—admirably cobbled—is missing a few shape manipulation features, Illustrator doesn't have a color-tagging feature, CorelDRAW, in addition to being expensive and on a subscription plan...I could go on.

But won't.

Hey, I gave away some neat ampersands and really don't want to start lamenting over the very program I used to organize and refine the ampersands.

And I realize I started it.


My Best,

Gary




(Here's a good one for St. Valentine's Day)

[Acorn]

For me, acorn, I've tried to find a suitable backup program if MAGIX manages to sink Xara...have not found one.

Gare, insightful as ever.

My backup solution is to keep my Xara Desktop applications accessible through their version 11 invocation as I don't think Magix or Xara can sink them as the Cloud linkage is nebulous.

Acorn

[Gare]

I forget the exact features, but I have version 16, all four of them I think (!) installed. And because Xara takes up so little hard disk space, and because you can but a 7TB drive for $100 here in the States, I leave several version on my system.


This card required I use Xara Designer, Photoshop, ArtRage, Corel Painter, and about 3 days of work.



Because it's my spouse Barbara's birthday!

Happy, Happy when you find this post, darling!


xoxox,

Gary

[Acorn]

Gart

Gare, hijacking the alphabet too: Gary, Gare & Gart - the YET Triplets.

You did overlook a few useful metrics in your creation of that wonderful stained glass - innate talent and years of practice.

Acorn

[handrawn]

my backup plan is to keep xara ver 11 and hope whatever direction the company goes they will say afloat so i will always have access to it

[Gare]

Gare, hijacking the alphabet too: Gary, Gare & Gart - the YET Triplets.

You did overlook a few useful metrics in your creation of that wonderful stained glass - innate talent and years of practice.

Acorn

I do not understand math in the least; that's why I use a computer. I expect metrics is a shortcoming across the board, in this instance a draughting board. :)

"Gart" is a mistyping of "Gary"; the T being next to the Y, on my keyboard at least.

I'm not being defensive (not, NOT, NOT!!!) but I do know how to spell, but I never learned how to type. I can hunt and peck with the best of them; when I received my first contract to write a book, and totally oblivious to the art of typing, I think Barbara and I shared several bottles that night!

Here is something I designed especially for my Desktop.

I'm probably alone in my hate, hate, HATE for the XD desktop icon. I've always felt there was some mysterious power to the character X.

I've also always believed TV works because there's little people inside it.



The design scales well to a 64 by 64 pixel size, as you can see at right here; I put the Taskbar vertically on my Desktop and you can see a custom toolbar featuring the icon.

Download it if you like, to see its simplicity, or use it as I've done. The text can be removed and it's curves, not text. The font is called Merlin Hand from Linotype.

Have a good beginning of the week!


Gary