I propose that Xara adds the feature of being able to edit the canvas WHILE it is being tiled across the screen.
For example, you specify you want to tile the canvas 4 times across. The image is then tiled 4 times across the screen horizontally, and however many it ends up being vertically depending on the canvas dimensions.
You can then pick anywhere in any of the tiles and edit them however you want. All the tiles are then simultanously updated!
This would make it a lot easier making intricate blends between tiles, and doing Escher like designs, complex patterns, etc.
I've used Xara in the past but I do not recall it having this feature. IF it did, it would be incredibly useful and also open up a whole new market segment for itself. People doing fabric designs would LOVE this feature. It would also be great for regular texture design.
So far I've only seen a few other applications being able to do this, and it's texturemaker at www.i-tex.de. Unfortunately it only works with raster graphics and the drawing tools are very lacking.
Kali at http://www.geometrygames.org/Kali/index.html is another good example, but the tools are also very lacking and raster only.
Corel Painter does make it easy to do tileable images, but it does not provide for a tiled preview, and again it's raster only.
All other tools I've seen take the image or tile AFTER the design stage and then tries to blend it, invariably ending up looking like a cheap filter effect.
I am suggesting this here, for xara, because it seems like the developers are more responsive and agile than folks like adobe and corel...
Any thoughts or feedback? Suggestions for other applications or plugins that will help?
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