Best Vectorise Software, like on RiscOS

[Logo Kid]

IF you have time. However, there are jobs where you don't have to be perfect because its not paid good enough, that's where timesavers like good tracers come in handy.

Then you charge more and do a proper job ... that's always my philosophy ... people will always pay for a job done right. And that's how you build your reputation.

Trancing things my hand ends up taking about 20% of my whole time using xara for commerical work; whether isn't redrawing a bitmap people have sent me, cutting out photos to mask out backgrounds or illustrating / cartooning a real like object. It's a practice as a professional design you get used to over time.

[Sueno]

Referring to the original question about generating objects with holes. Sometimes, where high accuracy is required, it is easier to generate the object from the mathematics. In their wisdom, the Xara Team, have ensured that Xtreme can import Acorn Draw files. Many years ago I wrote an application that generates these files from BASIC under RiscOS. Called !DrawAid, the software is now around as freeware. I have used it to generate some rings with holes as shown on the attached (I hope) gif image. As you can write a general purpose program using variable names to describe the geometry you can generate whole families of objects from the same program. For example, the window frame on the right of the image can have variable numbers of rows and columns of panes of any size.

The BASIC program for the rings is given below.

The two drawfiles and one jpeg that form the elements of the drawing were imported into Xtreme and exported as a gif.

If any RiscOS users are interested, I could put the current version on my web site and give you a pointer. There is a manual and lots of examples.

Rings Program:

REM *********************************************

REM DrawAid Version 3.33 11/11/06 March
REM Example demonstrating PROC_ring
REM and the use of grouping

LIBRARY "<DrawAid_Lib$Dir>.Procedures"
PROC_report_errors
PROC_DrawAid("Rings")
PROC_finish
END

DEF PROC_Objects
PROC_set_units(mm)
PROC_ring(width2,black,dark_green,100,80,30,40)
PROC_new_group
PROC_ring(width2,black,dark_blue,70,80,30,40)
PROC_ring(width2,black,red,70,80,10,20)
PROC_end_group
ENDPROC

REM *********************************************

[Nostaw]

Referring to the original question about generating objects with holes. Sometimes, where high accuracy is required, it is easier to generate the object from the mathematics. In their wisdom, the Xara Team, have ensured that Xtreme can import Acorn Draw files. Many years ago I wrote an application that generates these files from BASIC under RiscOS. Called !DrawAid, the software is now around as freeware.
REM *********************************************

This is very interesting! I wish Xara would have thought of an Script Language, like an XaraAPI where every parameter can be called to create or manipulate existing shapes using any Script language (like VBscript, PHP or whatever script language you prefer). That way anyone could script his own plugins, small tools, or simply automate repetitive tasks.

SoftimageXSI (www.softimage.com) has this script feature and its just mindblowing. Anything you do is recorded into a text editor (history), you can copy, edit and mark text, or simply click RUN and it runs every command in the history window. You can add own buttons into the Application's Gui which run then your own scripts. Own scripts can also create in runtime an own GUI, like sliders or radiobuttons, in which you can control any objects or create objects with - its really powerful and you gain full control of the application itself.

Back to you, too bad i'm not on RiscOS any more, looks like interesting application.

[Peter Prewett]

Another piece of Software I miss from RiscOS is FontFX which manipulated fonts which could be inserted into ArtWorks and can in fact be transferred to Xara Xtreme.
This can be done via an emulator but this is a little long winded.
Does anyone know of an equivalent.
I have not tried to upload an image before must master it, one day!!

[Nostaw]

Another piece of Software I miss from RiscOS is FontFX which manipulated fonts which could be inserted into ArtWorks and can in fact be transferred to Xara Xtreme.
This can be done via an emulator but this is a little long winded.
Does anyone know of an equivalent.
I have not tried to upload an image before must master it, one day!!

Oh my god, now that you mention it! I Remember !FontFX - this was a really simple but very powerful font manipulation tool! Still up to date I don't know any tool on PC which comes close - maybe FontCreator (http://www.high-logic.com/fcp.html), but it only imports bitmap fonts (a version i tried 3 years ago). An inbuild Font creation tool within Xara to test a font and to export to .otf or .ttf could help out alot I guess - well next century maybe