Will Xara Ever Create a DTP Program (like PagePlus)?

[theinonen]

Personally I feel that merging everything under one software is a mistake. It is impossible to be all things to all people and trying will only make the user inteface hard to approach, over complicated and messy. Your time working should be used on the task and not wandering what part of the user interface will accomplish that.

The thing that made Artworks and Impression so good and revolutionary at the time was the clean and easy to approach user interface. Everyone from children to grannies could just start doing things and it was possible to get good results by experimenting without spending long time reading manuals first.

For non English people, Impression looks like this:

[Peter Prewett]

There was another Acorn product called Ovation Pro this was converted to Windows and it still available, it is a pity that Impression was not converted.

I use it in preference to Xara Pro for writing as it loads immediately, it is capable of full DTP and have published a number of books using the software.

Xara has a long way to go to have something as capable as Impression Pro or Ovation Pro.

The point is as Xara has grown so has the loading time and its complexity. Perhaps an Impression windows version could be produced and linked with Xara Pro rather than be incorporated.

Peter

[tonylondon]

For me the drawing tools are paramount. However as Xara have widened the program to add peripheral features such as web design (which I never use) and photo enhancement (which I use rarely) it was logical (to me anyway) to expand its DTP features too, as they have recently started to do. I welcome it. However not at the expense of drawing tools. So Phil gets my qualified vote.