Updates are Web Design Heavy - Look at core program!

[Acorn]

All good points, but we should also remember that graphics are a big part of web design as well. One produces graphics that may be used in a web design. I’m constantly looking for new graphic detail for graphics used in web designs. I’d agree with looking at the core graphics package.

Well put Bill. I have often said that even the purest graphical art needs to be advertised or marketed so the best you can achieve in a web presentation will trump social media and flyers hands-down, noting Xara can achieve these as well.

Acorn

[handrawn]

so what you are saying [broadly speaking] is that, wheras you can produce meaningful graphic art without web, you cannot produce meaningful web without graphic art

rather reinforces the OP's point I think; too much attention to web, not enough to the core facilitation; part of this is because xara like the pre-packaged template/blocks/OCC approach, rather than the seat of the pants...

EDIT - I take the point about advertising and marketing in so far as it goes... but only if need such, and you are wedded to xara as your 'do-everything' program

[Acorn]

so what you are saying [broadly speaking] is that, wheras you can produce meaningful graphic art without web, you cannot produce meaningful web without graphic art
rather reinforces the OP's point I think; too much attention to web, not enough to the core facilitation; part of this is because xara like the pre-packaged template/blocks/OCC approach, rather than the seat of the pants...

No, I am saying there is always a synergy between art and craft. It is the same coin.

I think, in the past, graphic artists have asked for an incorporation of a feature usually present in a competitor's product. The trick is to explain what you are trying to achieve and demonstrate the current limitations. I didn't appreciate the pressure pen aspects much until the recent exchange; Xara may not have either. I just bought an Inspiroy Ink H320M for a play.
Equally, I've never seen solid arguments for have a mesh. If we do, it has to hand vector objects, I would suggest, and retain the result as a vector.

I try and work up interest to Xara through User Stories, a posh way of showing what I want to achieve. Sure, most is web and DTP and many have never materialised but at least I have a go.

Recently, I enumerated the steps to achieve rounded corners. Now I know how to, I can use a macro recorder to create a new function. Perhaps Xara, in time, will implement it.

Acorn

[handrawn]

ok, understood

you have been using this software and it's precursor[s] for a long time, me I only started autumn 2003, when I needed a vector editor to work with early Toon Boom in the days when that program was as much used as a flash alternative as anything else; Toon Boom has come a very long way; xara keeps on truckin' along in it's own sweet way

from the beginning I looked on xara as a budget option; I still think of it as a budget option, but it is now a very expensive budget option in comparision to affinity, except for the web which affinity does not do

I use it for a small set of operations because the UI makes them easy; I frequent this forum out of habit now and look back on the days of thinking 'one program does everything' with some bemusement

I think my definition of art and craft differs, we have been there before; art is the inspiration and chosen direction, craft is the implementation of this

[Acorn]

@handrawn, I like our musings. I can use a pen to draw. I need to know where to put it. The second I touch my media, it is down to my craft to tell me how to manipulate the pen and my art tells me when to stop.

My art always says Put the pen down now!

Acorn

[handrawn]

step away from the pen!

was it einstein that said 'life is like bicycle, in order to keep your balance you need to keep going'... and klee's advice was to 'take the line for a walk'

in any event, one of the first things you learn at art school is 'that in order to draw well, you must learn to draw badly'; you may find that your drawing always starts off badly, few can concieve the finished work in every detail before they start out, and those that do are mostly derivative, or hacks.... it is a journey