Giving up on Xara! It's not commercial software...

[MEB]

Miguel,
I'm not sure this is correct. If I remember correctly, you can click on the inner "keyhole" symbol that's associatied with the contents of the clip and it'll be selected for you to make your changes. The outer keyhole is for selecting the clipping object.

.joroho.

Wow! i´ve been working with Xtreme so many years and never have "seen" that second "keyhole" (the one that control the clipping object) until now! I´m feeling so embarassed...
Thank you for pointing me that joroho.
Learning everyday.

[Nostaw]

Miguel,
I'm not sure this is correct. If I remember correctly, you can click on the inner "keyhole" symbol that's associatied with the contents of the clip and it'll be selected for you to make your changes. The outer keyhole is for selecting the clipping object.
.joroho.

Ha, after all these years I learned something new! Welcome to my new friend: Clipview! I could have saved alot of time in the past using it! That's what you get for beeing a lazy bastard like me not reading the manual... hehe Thanks joroho!

[MEB]

Ha, after all these years I learned something new! Welcome to my new friend Clipview. That's what you get if you're lazy bastard like me not reading the manual... hehe Thanks joroho!

LOL, welcome to the club!

[jamesmc]

Quote:
"Originally Posted by Nostaw View Post
Ha, after all these years I learned something new! Welcome to my new friend Clipview. That's what you get if you're lazy bastard like me not reading the manual... hehe Thanks joroho!"

Giggles at Nostaw.

[Nostaw]

I guess me and Miguel B. have partly to thank eobet for pointing out that there's more to "Xara: More than meets the eye (TM)"!

Isn't this thread true irony? eobet's upset, I fell more in love with Xara and smiled to myself and I bet Miguel had a moment of truth too

jamesmc: I can't see the keyholes in the image but I got the idea. Pass me on the donkey hat for I will sit quiet in the corner all day

[raynerj1]

Personally, it never dawned on me about the outer margin... Been working with a 8 inch outer margin for years! To say the least I just made mine bigger (with no need for viagra)!! I also feel like a dunce...


I never cared for the clip view. I just slice and dice using intersect shapes/ slice shapes/ add shapes/ subtract shapes... Part of my default setup is having the arrange menu right on top of the screen... makes it all a piece o cake.

Just to try and help out someone else, here is my top toolbar layout...

[Ron Duke]

You can also hold down the "ctrl" key and click on either the clipped item or what it's clipped to in order to select which one you want to edit.

Eobet,
Having a day like that just frutstrates one, takes the wind out of your sails so to speak. Sorry for your difficult experience.

I have learned alot about using Xara over the years, and yet, I realize there's alot more for me to learn. Not ALWAYS, but most of the time I find that what limits me, is me, not the software. Certainly there are things that all of us want to see improved or added, but that is going to be with any product evolution. I guess you have to way the plus and minuses of each program and choose which works best for you; or as someone suggested, continue to use multiple programs if it helps you acheive your goal.

I certainly hope you'll be back, Eobet, I've enjoyed your contributions.

ron

[Xhris]

Let’s start dissecting…:

…The image was 1400x1050 and when I opened it in Xara X, I discovered that a standard 800x600 white page hid behind the loaded image…

No sh*t Sherlock; that’s the default page size.

…I looked at the options for new documents, but nothing apparently exceeds 1024x768…

Solution: Utilities > Options > page tab, and set page size to be whatever you want, e.g. 2000x1500 pix.

…But working in such a high pace made me forget what objects were in which layer, and I found no simple way to discover this…

Solution 1: turn off the layer visibility. If the object you’re looking at disappears, then it’s on that layer.
Solution 2: Look at the status line on the bottom of the screen (which tells you everything) and with the object selected, it will tell you exactly which layer it is on.

…both Corel and Adobe have excellent tree views detailing exactly what they contain (including groups and clip views)…

You could learn how to use the Name gallery and define classes of objects yourself that are independent of groups/layers etc. The Name gallery is very powerful actually. In fairness, some people do want the layer gallery improved.

…clip view function in Xara, which is very difficult to edit and apparently can't handle feathered objects properly…

You’d probably need to be more explicit with details there to help us understand what is difficult and what you mean by not being able to handle feathered objects properly.

…In five years, I've seen ZERO productivity changes (disclaimer: which have affected me)…

Maybe some productivity changes will be included in the new version of Xara? Didn’t you say you were using Xara X1 as well (which is pretty old now).

…Xara X didn't remember object rotations…

Again, more details needed here to understand what you mean.

The situation is similar with mesh fills, which have been promised for more than three years now but apparently Charles & Co wants to get it ever so intuitive. I'm inclined to bet that they haven't even started on the feature yet.

Well, the last I heard about this was that the more intuitive use of feathering techniques can produce identical results, and thus it was no longer a priority feature.

And for years I've complained about the lack of accuracy in Xara X and when I finally get a really good thread going about it, I get no response from Xara and the moderators, instead of moderating, shut it down:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...light=accuracy

It seems for that time, everything that could be said was said and was deviating a lot. You can always raise the issue in the future if it’s not remedied, or discuss new items concerning it.

And finally, I have been waiting for over a year for the OS X port and it hasn't come…
…Xara is not a serious commercial product.

Like a lot of the points mentioned here, the complaints are not with what Xara is, but what is it not, and what it is not falls down to the size of the company. Compare what there is and how it works, proportionally, with the competition. We are all ‘frustrated’ that we don’t get what we want. At least Xara is growing now.

I suspect people’s frustration is based on the fact that they love it really, but are pained that it isn’t everything they could ever want. Xara in this respect is a victim of its own greatness.

Most of the issues you’ve raised here with what Xara actually is, i.e. its apparent faults, are (and I mean this in the nicest possible way) down to your ignorance of the product.

PS. And I'm now aware that I've repeated most of what's been said.

[pauland]

eobet, it's been interesting to see how a raft of complaints about Xara software has turned into an affirmation of how good it is by other users. I hope that you are encouraged by what you find and suitably educated with regard to some of the points that you made. It's amazing how many times I've been stumped by some things in Xara only to have a simple solution given to me by members of the forum.

I don't consider myself to be an illustration professional, but from the sheer quality of illustration that I see produced on these forums, I can't help but wonder how anyone can dispute it's suitability for use in a professional capacity.

Good luck with the new job and hopefully a new introduction to the tools you are using.

Paul

[DMerchen]

hmm...learned quite a bit from this single thread. Thanks eobet. So, I have a question. Is there a way to have the ruler displayed when you open the program? It has become very important to me and I would like to just have it open. Like you displayed raynerj1. Thanks for the help.