A Dragon waves it's tongue
Xara Xtreme has updated to version 5…….
Like a lot of upgrades nowadays it was hardly worth the bother. Companies seem to focus on new users (Read Hobbyists) so long term niggles and bugs are ignored because users have found ways to put up with them and the don’t sound sexy in the sales blurb. On one level I can hardly blame them they are just trying to make a living. But as a victim of shrinking budgets the only way I can get by is to work quicker. To me that means fewer clicks and sharper tools - exactly what the software designers seem not to be delivering and that makes me very frustrated.
Deep Breath….
Case in point. I stupidly got all excited about the:
‘Improved ‘rapid sketching’ support for the Freehand Tool.’
The first real drawing tool in about 10 years? Not really. All it does is to stop the line you are drawing connecting to the previous one by turning the auto join feature off for half a second. Well that is what it should do but because the auto connection settings default to 12 pixels it doesn’t work if you draw that close to the previous line. It also makes life hell because if you do want to re-draw a section of you line you have to wait half a second before you are able to. This really ruins your flow and is not at all rapid. I can’t really believe that this was tested by anyone who actually draws with a stylus.
All is not lost however. A couple of users have created a little app called XaReg which allows the user to monkey with Xara’s registry settings and get the tool a bit more rapid. I have turned the end hit detect down to 1 from 12 and turned the auto join to 75 milliseconds from 250 and turned on auto deselect on so I don’t get control points after drawing. A usable tool- Hurrah! ( Though why these settings aren’t available from the main app I’ll never know.)
The Dragon above was done to test this tool, previously I’d have to press the escape key between drawing every scale. Now thanks to XaReg life is indeed a little nicer.
In my opinion the best ever vector drawing tools are still Expression 3.3 which is no longer being developed. (You can find it FREE from Microsoft if you dig around – Not Expression Design which is a filleted version for Microsoft’s web design suite and therefore crime of the century) I think Expression came out in 200o and it is amazing that no-one has come close since.
Enough ranting – I’m off to draw stuff
…Time passes and I calm a little. Just to clarify for the record. Xara Xtreme Pro is the best vector software out there but Expression does have better freehand brushes.
