You can’t compare a beginner’s graphic program like Xara to CorelDRAW.
It’s true that Xara have a few cool feature that CorelDRAW doesn’t have,
and that normal !!! (... and CorelDRAW have a lot of features ans possibilities
that Xara doesn’t have).
Look, between competitive programs,
(in this example for drawing / illustration programs)
(for example CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Xara X, ACD Systems Canvas, etc...)
they individually have all their super super cool features that other don’t have,
that’s one of the most significant reasons to convince folks to buy it.
That’s true that is some little features that Xara X have a I would like to see in CorelDRAW.
But this is not a valable reason to Corel spend some millions to buy Xara,
because if they want, they can program and ad those few features in a future version.
Take a look to this two website, there is some macros to add to CorelDRAW:
On the contrary, Xara Ltd. has been around since 1981, while Corel was started in 1985.
Xara Studio was licensed to Corel for a short time and in that time, as any company would do if they had the opportunity, they pilfered what they could out of Xara to improve Draw and IMHO I do not see what they actually ported over. I find Draw to be slow and clunky and limiting, or the features that need to be more on top are buried under to many dialogs, at least to me!
I happen to own XaraX, Draw 11, Illustrator 8 and Serif's DrawPlus 7 and RealDraw-Pro. XaraX, for me, is much more intuitive and DOES have more interactive features that play nicely with each other than does Draw.
Try creating a beveled shape and then applying drop shadow to it while retaining the chosen fill. I tried this in Draw and in the end I just closed the program down after messing with it for over an hour. The feature sets do NOT play nicely with each other, IMHO!! My attempt in Draw: Created a Star shape, filled it with a bitmap fill. The bitmap fill disappeared when I applied the bevel extrude, nor could I apply a shadow to the object once I had the beveled extrude. The only way to do this was to transform the beveled vector to a bitmap and regardless of the DPI I chose the Anti-Alaising still did not smooth out the jaggies. So the quality of the bitmap was pretty ugly looking to me. But I then could apply a shadow!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif Another area that is need of work is that there is no real time fill tool. If you appy a bitmap fill and want to resize it you have to enter numbers in the boxes provided in the Edit dialog, not ever a slider is provided and you don't see the results untill you click the OK box and the dialog box closes. In XaraX you have TOTAL control over ALL areas while retaining a fully editable vector shape!!
Yes, there a LOTS of cool features in CorelDraw 11 and I love the interface, admittedly but I would NOT consider it all that intuitive!!
I must add to this long post that XaraX is NO beginners vector program. It's fast and intuitive and just plain works the way I think it should. I don't get that satisfaction from Draw 11 or any previous versions. I know you are staunch supporter of Draw but please don't say things about another program that is untruthful.
I happen to be a huge fan of Corel and I was very happy to see it taken over by Vector Capitol, I would NOT want to see the company go away. I love WordPerfect and I fully support the company and if they took the time to really rework Draw 11 from the ground up then I would most certainly give it another go but as it stands I got much more intuitive satisfaction from DrawPlus 7 from Serif then I ever did from Draw 11! You have Draw11 which you prefer and many folks really enjoy XaraX and produce very HIGH quality work.
If you wish to take the time to read through Xara Ltd's company page then go here:
Here is a Search I did for Vladimyr, who is one the more successful users of XaraX. I know Vladimyr and he was kind enough to send me sample .xar files for me to tear apart and indeed he uses vectors like a true master to achieve his finished images. Take a look and if you can produce something like this in Draw 11 I would be interested to view the images!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
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