Running Xara on Mac OS X with shared font support and without Windows/VM!

[gingerbeardman]

In my old thread about Xara on Mac OS X, I mentioned that one solution might be running Xara under CrossOver (this is a wrapper for the technology known as "Wine" to all the Linux fans). This sort of solution emulates the Windows subsystem, so does not need a copy of Windows to be installed within software like Virtual Machine software like VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or VirtualBox.

Anyway, at the time of my post, Xara ran in CrossOver but with a few issues - the worst of which was that editing text would crash the app.

For the past few weeks I have been a registered/supported user of CrossOver and have been in communication with their developers to try to add official support for Xara. Whilst they are reluctant to spend time supporting what they consider a small-user-base application, they continue to refine their software and one of the recent changes has had the side-effect of improving support for Xara. The Xara text tool no longer crashes the app!

Though there are still some minor issues: selected text does not appear selected, resize handles do not show on objects (rotate/skew show fine), OpenType font support is sketchy (TrueType is fine) to name the three major ones preventing me from using it full time.

TL;DR
Xara Designer Pro now runs without crashing in the latest nightly builds of CrossOver. This support will reach the retail release soon.
You can access your Mac fonts, no need to have to duplicate them in Windows.
But there are still a few issues before it is classed as perfectly usable, see above.
No need to buy a copy of Windows and use VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or VirtualBox.

DEAR XARA...
If I can get these results on my own with little time and effort, imagine what Xara could do if they were communicating with CrossOver/Wine themselves.

Anyway, I will keep you all updated with further news. If anybody has any questions then fire away.

Cheers,
Matt