Xara Xtreme 2.0a DL Oct 10 2005 report

[quanta]

Tested system
=============
OS: Windows 98SE
Memory: 64MB
CPU: Intel Pentium II 400
Sound: ESS Solo-1
Video: Neomagic MagicMedia 256AV

Bugs
====

Xara Xtreme installs Windows Media Video 9 VCM without users' prior knowledge, and it is not used by any component of Xara Xtreme. This unauthorized behaviour is dishonest and waste of users' resources, and must be stopped IMMEDIATELY.

Page Options, Grid, Ruler settings are not saved when creating new document.

TrueType fonts containing overlapping outlines are drawn in reversed colours at overlapping regions. Reverse colours do not happen on other software.

Xara adds a lot more registry entries than previous versions, a lot more than necessary for operating Xara. In the case of Xara Picture Editor, each botton has its own set of registry CLSID! Xara Xtreme should restrict use of registry to storing configurations and supporting shell extensions.

During installation, Xara Xtreme copies gdiplus.dll to the Xara Xtreme, Xara Xtreme\Xara Picture Editor, Xara Xtreme\Xara Picture Editor\Plugins\XPEPlugin folders, which is a waste of disk space, especially when the file is already in Windows\System directory. Xara Xtreme should just use the gdiplus.dll from Windows\System if one exists.

The font list does not show font name properly if the font name consists of non-Latin characters, even for fonts built-in to the operating system (see attachment xaraxx). This does not happen in other applications.

Under CJK Windows, when trying to enter international characters via Font tool, a square is displayed instead, even for fonts containing accented Latin characters. Xara Xtreme should process texts in Unicode, which will also allow the use of Global IME to enter texts beyond Latin-1 region.

After applying skew and rotate effects, the skew and rotation angles are set to zero, making it impossible to reset the settings without undo.

After selecting an object, changing fill type to Fractal clouds and Fractal plasma fill, fractal resolution and fractal graininess setting in toolbar is grayed out until clicking on an object again.

When saving a document to other format, the command is not 'File -> Save As', but 'File -> Export', which is an inconsistent behaviour. Saving a file in any format should belong to 'File -> Save As'. 'File -> Export' should only be used to save only selected object(s).

Miter, Round, Bevel joint settings in Bevel tool do not work.

Special Effect only works on bitmaps. When a vector object is chosen, message 'Operation unavailable: There are no objects selected' is shown. In addition, after applying Special Effect, there is no way to change any applied effect settings without undo. Special Effect should be treated like Live Effect tool, which allows effects to be used on all objects, rearranging effect orders, and edit indiviual effect settings on the fly.

Fractal fill type does not include editing random seed, making fill pattern non-repeatable.

Pressing right arrow key causes grid to be toggled, making nudging object to the right impossible.

Curve handle can't be nudged.

When turning off live drag, nudging still uses live drag instead of just showing object's outline.

When changing an object's Position, Dimension, Dimensions, Scaling, Rotation, Skew via Selector Tool Infobar Controls, an object's outline is not shown, even when live drag is turned off. When using Selector Tool Infobar Controls to alter object's property, an outline should be shown to allow user to preview changes.

After using mould tool on an enclosed object with custom brush line, the object uses 'no-color' fill, has both normal line and custom brush style drawn in fill and brush's default colours respectively, and has alternating brush offset direction from line applied to custom-brushed line.

Format
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'Export Animated GIF' dialogue has Options button overlaps with Help button (see attachment xaraxxd).

Export Bitmap Options dialogue for TIFF, DCX, PCX, PICT, SUN Raster, TARGA, WordPerfect WPG, Xara WEB, uses a different interface with no preview feature. It should use the same interface as other export bitmap formats.

Ordered dithering does not work. No dithering is possible when exporting Xara WEB.

Xara WEB export uses '*.wix' or '*.web' format, yet it say WEB in help, and 'Export Native Format Options' in Export Options dialogue.

PostScript-based export format (Adobe Illustrator, ArtWorks EPS, Adobe PDF, Xara X EPS) uses inconsistent Export Options dialogues. Those should be combined.

Line tool
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When using custom brush, or non-constant stroke shapes/pressure profiles, dash patterns and arrowheads are disabled. There is no logical reason for this restriction, and should be removed. Xara Xtreme should put dash patterns into the spacing dialog. When combining stroke profile with dashes, Xara Xtreme should allow user to choose between constant stroke profiles across whole brush and chop off the line at the dashes, or applying stroke profile to each section. When combining arrow with brush, a default line colour should be used.

The line gallery only allow some shapes in arrowheads collection as heads or tails, not both. This restriction should be removed.

The 'join' in Line gallery is misspelled. It should be 'joint'.

The random settings should include a visible seed value, allowing consistent line to be drawn when random effect is used. This is important for improving portability.

The 'Sequence' progresses in 'Edit Brush Dialog Box - Spacing Tab' does not work.

When changing a brush's shape from normal line to others, the line colour is not preserved. For example, when setting the line colour to red, then switching brush from normal line to foot (default), the line colour becomes black instead of red. When that happens, changing brush shape to anything except normal line will cause the line to be drawn using the brush's default colour rather than the colour in the colour selector.

Suggestions
===========

Format
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MNG, SVG, 16/48/64-bit colour depth PNG, JPEG 2000, JPEG-compressed TIFF, PDF 1.5, WebCGM support.

Greyscale image export support.

Given TIFF is more like an archive with embedded pictures rather than just storing bitmaps in some native pixel format, TIFF export dialogue should choose compression format first, then colour depth available for given compression setting.

When exporting to raster image format capable of storing DPI settings, the DPI settings should be set independent of bitmap size.

Ability to convert between Drawing and Animation documents simply by deleting and adding pages.

When exporting PDF, export filter should allow using LZW compression, since the patent already expired, and text encoding besides ANSI and Unicode.

When exporting to formats the do not support inverted tiling, it should emulate it by using a combined tile containing original, vertical flipped, horizontally flipped, vertical and horizontally flipped images.

Interface
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Mouse Options should support the use of extra mouse buttons on modern pointing devices.

When shaping an object with handles, exact coordinates should be shown, allowing precise editing of objects.

The gallery interface should be changed to Explorer-style interface, which allows more intuitive ways to manage gallery items. For example, to add custom brush and clipart, just drag a drawing object to the gallery window.

Draw tool
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When drawing shapes containing intersecting lines, Xara Xtreme should offer different logical filling options, with OR(union) as default. For example, when making a 5-pointed star by drawing 5 points, XOR fill only colours triangles, AND(intersection) fill only colours inner pentagon, OR(union) fill colours both. This will solve the problem of incorrect rendering of TrueType fonts containing overlapping outlines.

Text to curve should offer more alignment options, such as the text's placement height relative where to the line, whether or not to stretch or tile the text, choosing how to wrap text around sharp corners.

Fill tool should show exact coordinates used by the fill handles, allowing precise editing of effects.

Texture based fill type (eg: Bitmap, Fractal clouds, Fractal plasma) should support offset tiling options. Under offset tiling, the resulting tiling pattern would look like the isometric grid.

Bitmap fill should be generalized to allow using vector drawing object as fill pattern. In addition, Xara should include a user-adjustable clipping region to handle non-rectangular objects, and 'wrap around' option that enables tiling of hexagons, triangles, or other shapes.

Bitmap fill should include a perspective option, allowing horizon-style texture be applied to objects.

Conical fill should be extended to include the ability to alter the arc angle, and asymmetric conical fill support. For example, if the conical is set to black at 0 degree, white at 180 degree, then red at 270 degree, the conical fill swept from red to black between 270 at 360.

Three Color Fill, Four Color Fill should be generalized to allow gradient be done on circular/elliptical fill type, the gradation nodes will be similar to linear and diamond fills, but will have conical gradation sweep. Similarly, an elliptical Bitmap/Fractal Fill will deform texture into sector regions.

Repeat inverted tiling option should be avalable on all fill types, not just for bitmap and fractal.

Bevel tool should include a 'height' tool, which adjusts the 'height' of a bevel across its length, allowing custom bevel patterns, similar to the handles in Fill tool and profile in Contour tool.

Contour tool only changes fill colour of the border of an object, and Bevel tool only changes the light map of the border of an object. Therefore there is no logical reasons for to exclude Bevel effects when Contour effect is used, or vice versa.

Allow creating custom arrowheads. When custom arrowhead is used, Xara Xtreme can choose to preserve or discard arrowhead's original colour(s).

Special Effects filter should be extended to allow effect to be applied to only selected colour channel(s).

Allow changing joint/cap type on individual corner of a line.

Instead of manually adding overprint objects, Xara Xtreme can allow users to specify the misalignment values for each colour layer used by the litho printing presses. When Xara Xtreme sends commands to printer, it will send altered geomentry values for each colour layer, to cancel out printer's distortion.