I am sick, sick, SICK OF THIS!!!

[Mark Goodall]

Frank

We have been looking at the animation problem for some time, but we have had great difficulty in reproducing the problem you describe in 1.0c.
If you supply us with the .xar file which reproduces the problem we will look at it, if you have already supplied our tech support with the file, then apologies, but could you supply me with it to ensure that it doesn't get lost in the system.
It may help as a short term fix if the number of colours in an animated GIF is set at 256, though, as I say, as we cannot reproduce the problem this may not be relevant.

TIFF problems
As regards the TIFF export problem, this is very, very strange, we cannot reproduce this at all, it does seem to be linked to some combination of OS configuration and applications/drivers.
If you do have Photoshop, then I would suggest exporting as a PNG ( which has all the capabilities of TIFF, including compression ) and then re-exporting as TIFF from there.

Mark Goodall
Xara Ltd

[Mark Goodall]

Egg

Exporting bitmaps can take a long time if
-Resolution of bitmap is high
-Bitmap has lots of pixels
-Objects being exported include a large bitmap which is scaled down, the high quality scaling down of bitmaps we perform in the dialogue can take a long time, this can be switched off using the never smooth bitmaps option in options->view

Mark Goodall
Xara Ltd

[Big Frank]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your response

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> It may help as a short term fix if the number of colours in an animated GIF is set at 256, though, as I say, as we cannot reproduce the problem this may not be relevant. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You will note if you look at the URL I attached that using 256 or 64 colours does not make any difference, at least not in my version. The fact is that the only way to produce a competent gif animation in XaraX is to use Optimisation Per Frame, which makes for a hefty animation, even in my tiny examples which have just 9 frames each (one hidden). Whether you use transparency or a different colour depth seems to be immaterial.

I attach the xar file for your guys to look at.

--
Big Frank was
http://www.wognum.org/files/madewithxarax.gif

[Klaus Nordby]

Frank: "Yet when a real bug is pointed out nobody at Xara Mansions can find the two minutes required for an acknowledgement."

I'm with you, Big Frank!!! Xara's total silence when we point out important issues to them, whether in this forum or by email, is quite maddening.

Even a dumb, standard form letter reply would be preferable to total silence.


K!

[Erik Heyninck]

Well: I have a Pentium 800 coppermine on an ASUS CUSL2 motherboard with 256MB 133 Ram (2x128). I removed my networkcard and my soundcard and my Wacom tablet and my printer and my scanner.I installed a brandnew harddisk, a maxtor udma100 20Gb. I formatted it with my guaranteed virusfree diskette. I installed Windows 98 SE (4.10.2222A), no options. I installed the new Detonator drivers for my NVIDIA 32MB videocard.
I only installed XaraX, and had the same TIFF problem when trying to export from the Name gallery.
Afterwards I installed some other software to check Win, and the install was OK.
So I wonder how there can/could be a problem with drivers. The registry was as new as a newborn babe (from reductionnist point of view).
I know that 2K or NT4 are more stable, but Xara should work with 98 too, so this can be no argument.
I don't know how I could go more "basic".

This is not searching needles in the sand, simply a scientific test whether the problem could be inside my PC or not.

Of course there are ways around it, with or without Xara. But it IS strange that not anyone can reproduce this problem. I don't understand it at all...what more can I do?

[Nathan Heagy]

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with Gary here. This problem, which is actually more far reaching than you state, is horrendous!!! It is serious and still we have not seen ANY update from Xara. They continue to delay their products and not update them. THIS IS WORSE THAN COREL.

I currently export all my images as RGBA PNGs and let imageready convert them. It does a much MUCH better job than Xara.

Nathan

Nathan Heagy
<HR>
Blow Your Beef Away
Cow Comics!

[gwpriester]

Frank

I know how vexing some of these bugs can be. I was working on a comlpex version of my wood drawing when Xara crashed and I lost the entire results of about 45 minutes work.

On the other hand, I just finished a tutorial for Designer.com using DRAW 10 and sheesh, it felt like trying to run in a swimming pool. Everything I tried to do, that could be done in seconds in Xara, took for bloody ever. DRAW has some very powerful features and tools, but boy, at what a price in terms of performance.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[Big Frank]

You're right, Gary. I have CorelDraw10 and Illustrator 7 and I use them only if I absolutely have to. The problem with XaraX is that it is so bloody good that when one does find a genuine bug (as opposed to a niggle) it is like being hit in the face with something that hurts when you bash it into your face!

Let's hope the grey suits at Xara Towers are listening and issue the next upgrade soon.

--
Big Frank was
http://www.wognum.org/files/madewithxarax.gif

[Ross Macintosh]

Reading about Erik's woes with Tiff export from the name gallery I thought I'd give it a try.

I had an imported jpg selected and gave it a name in the name gallery. In the gallery it allowed me to change from the default gif format to tiff. All was fine until I hit the "export" button with the named bitmap selected. Xara X responded with the following error:

Floating point devide by zero at offset 0x0037DEC3

Upon clicking the error message button, the application was terminated. My system is a 833mhz PIII with 128mb ram, running WinME.

I should note I have no problem exporting tiffs directly from the file menu's "export...".

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[tikka]

In case it is of interest I can repeat the error described by Ross on a computer running W2K. However it does not seem to restrict itself to TIFF exports - GIF will also cause the same error.

In addtion to being able to export using the File menu command as Ross describes. I can successfully export by clicking on the triangle to the right of the name in the name gallery. I only get the error when I try to use the Export button.

Given the work arounds this does not seem to be as much as a showstopper as the other problems mentioned above, but nevertheless shows that there is still some work to be done!

Ric