Dear Xara...

There has been a hot discussion around the accuracy of Xara dimensioning: https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...-more-accurate.
One resulting Bug, re-identified, is the number of significant figures available when working in mm Units. A new Unit with a 1:1 mapping has no such limitation.

I have tried to summarise the issues/bugs in the following design: Xara - Precision.xar.

  • A Line should have a Perimeter when it has a Line width (LW). That perimeter would be twice its Length plus twice the Line Width, not just its Length.
    • If it has LW None or 0, then you could argue its Length is correct.

  • A line should have an Area when LW is not None or 0.It should be its Length time the LW, not 0.
  • The SmartShape for a Rectangle (Shift+R) should return a Perimeter and an Area not not 0 for both.
    • If you Ungroup, the Perimeter should be 2(W + H) not 2W + H, where H is the Height.

  • The SmartShape for a Text Panel (Shift+C) suffers from an incorrect Perimeter as above.
    • The Text Area of the default extends beyond the Panel so inputting W: 200pt returns a wildly larger value.
    • Further, after the SmartShape is Ungrouped, it is not possible to input 200pt. When the page Units are mp, the result is always off, e.g., H: 200pt --> 199,998mp; H: 200,000mp --> 200,002mp.

  • For a Rectangle (M), you cannot input 200pt and get 200,000mp in either the rectangle input or the Selector input.
  • If instead I create a Circle (L) and Make Line of its nodes, I can fully control its W & H but its P & A never match to the exact value.

I can instead of the above complication readily create a shaped rectangle from four constrained nodes using F4.

The best, however, seems to be to use the QuickShape Tool with 4 sides.
The resultant is fully accurate and can be handles as a Rectangle or a QuickShape so one can still include rounded corners.
Accuracy for P & A is maintained all the way down to rounding for a circle.
The bonus, for me, is your HTML Filter still renders this as a SPAN with a Fill colour.

In summary for fullest accuracy, use the QuickShape Tool (Shift+F2).
It may seem counter-intuitive but it all but replaces all the other object creation tools with better accuracy.

I look forward to your improvements to the conventional tools you present.

Acorn