Best method to export a shape from Xara, and import it into Photoshop as vector?

[handrawn]

egg - what you say may have implications for websites, I realise that, but for graphics I am not at all sure

[Acorn]

You need to be aware that Xara's svg now exports bitmaps via the data uri scheme and not as bitmaps as most folks understand them. As an example view here
This isn't exported as a jpg within the svg file but is exported directly within the html (?) such that the dom contains code to generate the image and doesn't call on an external file such as 'tiger.jpg'.
If you look at the page source it contains the following to draw the image:
It's a data uri code. I don't even pretend to understand 1% of it but the image is within the page code and doesn't require a call to another external file.

Egg, that that you are going is trading an HTML call to an image over one to an image. Both are of a similar size so the download time will be too. Data URIs (Base64 encoded) are larger than the original. Data URIs are not cached.

Never simple, is it.

Acorn