Node Handles Should Snap To Node Handles

[steve.ledger]

I have observed that in the areas of object interaction and manipulation, and in node editing, Xara Xtreme lags CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator— neither of which handles these tasks in the same manner, but either of which easily outpaces XX.

I haven't used CD or AI for as many years as yourself, but I do have to use it at times, to be honest I find that comment somewhat at odds with my own and many others experiences. Interesting that you find Xtreme 'lagging' in areas it is known for it's speed and ease

• Guidelines can't be angled.

(From Xtreme help)
Any object placed on the guides layer becomes a guide object. These can be any object type including lines at any angle, irregular shapes, and quickshapes. You can create, scale, and delete objects on the guides layer as usual, but they always appear as thin dotted red outlines; any applied line width or fill color is ignored. This information is retained, and if you later move the object from the guides layer to a normal layer, line thickness, and colors are shown again.

[ss-kalm]

• Using the mouse, an object can be rotated only from its rotation handles, not from an arbitrary point along its curve.

The centre of rotation can be placed anywhere - just drag it to a required location

[BobInce]

With the selector tool individual object nodes are not visible.

You can turn their visibility on and off from the 'show object edit handles' button in the selector tool infobar. I usually keep them on.

the program doesn't indicate that you you've selected one!

Works for me.

I usually do what you're talking about by selecting the path, going to the path tool and quickly scrubbing a box over the whole object. All the nodes become selected and you can drag/snap the shape by any node you choose. Peasy.

[Piyono]

You can turn their visibility on and off from the 'show object edit handles' button in the selector tool infobar. I usually keep them on.



Works for me.

I usually do what you're talking about by selecting the path, going to the path tool and quickly scrubbing a box over the whole object. All the nodes become selected and you can drag/snap the shape by any node you choose. Peasy.

BobInce, I know about that button.
I must not have been clear: editing a single node is exactly what I DON'T want to do.
I want to drag the WHOLE OBJECT using my selected node as the anchor point. Anyway, the point is moot because I found out how to do it. Thanks, though.


Piyono

[Piyono]

The centre of rotation can be placed anywhere - just drag it to a required location

I know that. I was referring to the fact that *regardless* of where the center of rotation is, the object can only be rotated by using the bent arrow handles.

Illustrator has the Rotate Tool which allows me to grab the object from *anywhere* and rotate it. The benefit being that I can select a particular point on the object and by rotating, snap this particular point to the path or point (or inferred tangent) of my choosing with great precision.

Piyono

[Piyono]

I haven't used CD or AI for as many years as yourself, but I do have to use it at times, to be honest I find that comment somewhat at odds with my own and many others experiences. Interesting that you find Xtreme 'lagging' in areas it is known for it's speed and ease

Illustrator is definitely more complicated than XX and surely has a steeper learning curve, the trade-off being that it offers the designer a greater degree of precision and control. Such is this designer's experience, at least.

(From Xtreme help)
Any object placed on the guides layer becomes a guide object...

I know. It's great, and sometimes I want objects as guides. Of course, sometimes I want rotating guidelines. Guidelines are infinitely long. This can be very useful in some situations.

Piyono

[steve.ledger]

I've been using Draw for roughly 20 years and Illy for nearly 13.

I fully realize that XX has no aspirations to be either of these two applications and it clearly has a lot to offer on its own terms. I'd dabbled with it in the past but this was my first time actually trying to use it for serious vector work. I decided to give it a shot so I put a solid seven or eight hours (cumulative, over the course of a day and a half) into a few design sketches, including many trips to the help file and online video tutorial page.

20 and 13 years experience with CD and Illy compared with 8 hours with Xtreme ?

Basically I'm trying to say that before I wrote in to vent I had a pretty good handle on what the program does well and where it falls short.

Fair go - I'm not so sure 8 hours of usage is qualification enough to whinge about Xtreme yet.

[Piyono]

20 and 13 years experience with CD and Illy compared with 8 hours with Xtreme ?

Fair go - I'm not so sure 8 hours of usage is qualification enough to whinge about Xtreme yet.

Touché.

To my credit, though, while I've never used Xtreme this extensively before, I have noodled with it in the past — an hour here and an hour there. In total I'd say I probably have more like 16 hours of time invested in it.


Again, I have a good sense of the 'feel' of the program and I think it feels great. If I didn't I wouldn't have kept trying it, and I certainly would not have spent any energy posting about my experiences in this forum.

Here's looking forward to more frustration-fueled discussion!



Piyono

[BONES]

At this stage, I would say that is my level with current versions of Corel and AI [stopped using Corel and AI daily at v7], which is why I would always assume that I didn't know what I was doing rather than those applications couldn't do what I wanted.
Yes, Xara's snapping is not very good [sometimes I can't get it to work at all] but it just means that over the years I have not relied on it. e.g. If I want to perfectly align objects or nodes, I do it by entering precise values into the X/Y position fields, etc. Most of the time its actually easier because I don't have to zoom in close ot know that it is perfectly aligned. Other times I will just zoom in and do it visually - if looks aligned then it is aligned. Other times I wll work with grids and/or guides, it just depends what I am doing. Its trading one set of actions for another. You might be more used to one but as someone who does things lots of different ways in different situations, I can assure you no one way takes any more time or effort once you are into that mindset. It really comes down to teh user being more flexibile in how they approach a task.

[Piyono]

Its trading one set of actions for another. You might be more used to one but as someone who does things lots of different ways in different situations, I can assure you no one way takes any more time or effort once you are into that mindset. It really comes down to teh user being more flexibile in how they approach a task.

Oh, for sure. I'm the first to admit that I'm mired in my own set of work habits, but we both agree that Xara has a ways to go with node editing.

Piyono