"Xara is pleased to announce that it intends to make its flagship graphics product, Xara X, open oource. Xara is also working to bring it to the Linux and Mac platforms. Xara X is the world's fastest and we believe the most versatile graphics software. It's primarily a vector graphics program but is one of the new generation of cross-over products that handles photos and drawings with equal ease."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
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Xara X is a wonderful program. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. I used it since its CorelXara 1.0 days (found a CD in a bargain bin; best $5 I ever spent, considering that it would have been $80 if shrinkwrapped) and it's just got better and better. It was antialiased, yet lightning-fast on my 486 with 16 MB of RAM. And as for features -- well, I'm in love with Inkscape too, but Xara X is a more mature program, having been around for a while. It uses its own proprietary format, which (if you're obsessed about open formats) could be a liability, but this format allows you to do yummy stuff like edge blur.
It also knocks the socks off of Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Not quite as many features, but ten times more intuitive to use.
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2005-07-13
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All I can say is WOW, this was the first app I ever purchased several years ago and still use it almost every day in my work, Xara is one of those programs that *just works* I've never found anything more productive for web work. Today open source had a big step with such a gem joining it's ranks, it's was an awesome tool for $199 and having it in the hands of all programmers makes it that much better. I can't believe it, Thanks Xara for this amazing deed 
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2005-07-08
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Xara Sponsors XAR/SVG Converter Development
October 2, 2005
Xara announced last week that it is sponsoring Eric Wilhelm for $10,000 to develop a conversion utility based on Uber-Converter, a library for creating 2D vector format conversion tools. This tool will enable Xara users to interoperate with Inkscape and other SVG-based tools.
http://www.inkscape.org/
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Member since:2005-06-29
Things don't necessarily run faster on an operating system just because it's Linux, Windows or Mac OS. In my experience I've found when there are versions of an application for several platforms, the one that it runs best on is the one it was originally developed for. In the case of code that isn't specific to any one platform the speed advantage will be on the operating system with the most suitably optimized libraries for the task at hand without having to resort to platform specific code.
I like Linux, but you don't just get better performance all round because it's "Linux". I think the next few versions will probably get their best porformance in Windows for a while yet just because it's already maturely developed for that platform.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Linux needs a top-tier commercial-standard graphics program. The Linux desktop has come on leaps and bounds in the last year or so but it still lacks any competitive (with the current Windows and Mac commercial products that is) vector or general purpose graphics program. And although desktop Linux is evolving at a rapid rate, the platform is behind in the graphics market. We intend to change that.
Crusaders..interesting. What motivation would they have other then what they stated above.
Member since:
2005-09-26
Is this a reaction to Microsoft moving into this area?
Partly, yes..
Any company has to be worried when a giant like Microsoft decides to get into their market. Time and again Microsoft have demonstrated that money overcomes innovation and technical merit. In our opinion the first versions of Microsoft Expression will not be a threat to us, any more than to Adobe. But throw millions of dollars at it, and by the time they've got to version 3, a few years down the road, it might be competitive. Even without this, you can be sure that just through their sheer sales and marketing clout and dollars, they will sell more copies of Expression in a week than we'd normally sell in a year.
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All I know about Xara is that lucx uses it to make his Charamel themes for Firefox and Thunderbird:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/5041755/
Charamel's my favorite theme though, so that's a good sign right off the bat
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This looks like good news, for Inkscape, for Karbon14 and for wxWidgets, but also for Xara X. I don’t see why this can’t be mutually beneficial to all Inkscape and Karbon14 get potential code for reuse, wxWidgets get a big application that shows problems and developers with an interest in fixing those problems, Xera X gets its ports to Linux/Unix and MacOSX. The only bad point is that now the Linux market is to full with FOSS software for them to ever think about porting their products.
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There is an amount of pressure that larger applications force on their respective toolkits, especially if the toolkit is Free Software as wxWidgets is. If you read the Filezilla 3 development thread you will find that the programmer finds things in the toolkit he doesn’t like and produces patches. The same will happen for Xara, they will find things they wont like and produce patches. Just look at QT and KDE, GTK+ and Gnome.
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i just love this. It is a very cool program, i've used it, and management has just decided to embark on a very creative strategy which is also a necessity because it competes with gians like MS and adobe. Perhaps someone will port it to haiku some day as well.
I hope this type of business model works for xara and others.
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WOW,WOW, WOW !!!
This is an awesome piece of software.
Small, fast and very powerfull. I just finished 2 posters to present with my Physics MD Thesis. Unfortunately I think it's only available on Windows but with source code open, it could be ported to Linux.
I use Inkscape and have it instaled on my Linux. Altough Inkscape is powerfull XaraX seems superior, especially in ease of use.
This are definetly great news.
If ported to Linux theres one less reason to use Windows.
For now on the only one I can think of are games and that's just it.
Alves
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I used to use Xara on windows before i wised up to using linux. The only program i ever truly missed was Xara. It is easy to use yet extremly powerful, and this is good news for the OS comunity. And i see in their FAQ's that they are in talks with inkscape, which is also Great for OSS.
All in all OS Platforms need a trully great graphics program, and with no offence to the great GIMP and others, we have not got there yet. This is going to help move the OS destop enviroment grow into what it should be, market leaders in all areas of PC use, leaving Propriety software in its tracks...
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it's parents ran on acorn risc-os systems with no HD and 1/2 Mb of RAM where it was called ArtWorks .. excellently engineered software, intelligent desigm and very fast rendering .. its the algorithms baby - and this big boys can't beat it ... i think they must have some serious catching up to do now that this is GPL and they can't "buy" it.
i also rememer the very impressive Impression suite of DTP for similar spec'd machines .. i personally produced excellent documents with 8Mhz 1MB RAM and no HD. the applicaiton loaded from 3/4 floppies - compare that to today's bloatware.
Member since:
2005-07-06
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/about/ at the bottom of page
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> Yeah, I saw those too... o.o Is Cairo really that far behind right now?
Really would like to see the code of their benchmark: Cairo uses floating point numbers for coordinates, but when rendering to non-integer coordinates it is dog slow still. Carl and his team are working on that, but cairo is not there yet.
Big question now is: Were the Xara guys fair and rounded their coordinates, before passing them to cairo or did they abuse this issue for looking better than they are? So if you Xara guys are serious about FOSS, do the right thing now and show the source code of the benchmark.
Would be good anyway, if they'd release the source code of their rendering engine right now, because if they really have better algorithms than cairo, then this issues should be fixed in cairo now, before it gathers too much adoption: Maybe compatiblity has to be broken, for bringing cairo on pair with Xara.
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I have always found 2 critical things hindering a complete Desktop GNU/Linux from becoming. That is a competent VECTOR (Coreldraw, Illustrator) graphics application and a complete ACCOUNTING (Quickbooks, Peachtree). If this Xara is as good as I have read so far... then there's just one more to go.
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Not only is Xara a awesome application for vector graphics, it's a ground breaking that Xara plan to make it's product open source.
Yes It's started, the bullet train that is Linux has just taken a huge speed boost. Maya, Shake, Xara, if your ever in doubt that Linux is not ready, that train will run you over.
Great news indeed.
Member since:
2005-09-14
This is really some news-worthy bit to report! With MS probably gearing up to attack Macromedia's Flash-suite (Sparkle & Co coming with Windows Vista) the OSS community is going to need some further strong player in the domain of graphics-design software. The displayed performance advantage (probably due to superior software-design) is something desperately needed in OSS solutions. I hope this open-sourcing of Xara will also help a project like Cairo to improve its render-speed on the conceptual level of algorithms... even before putting hw-acceleration into the equation.
Best regards...
MacSlow
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2005-07-06
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Please, excuse my ignorance but... How is that supposed to be a good move for Xara? I mean, _if_ (yeah, that's an "if" for the time being) Xara realease Xara Xtreme under the GPL licence, how are they going to make money?
Please, don't flame! Don't get me wrong! You'll be hard pressed to find a more fanatic user of GNU/Linux and other free (as in speech) software. But in this particular case, what does Xara win (excepted for the fact that Xara Xtreme -the software, not the company- will likely survive from any assault from MS and Adobe).
But please, enlighten me: how can this help the monetary bottom line of a commercial company?
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The answer is in FAQ's. They want to compete with Microsoft and Adobe.
Any company has to be worried when a giant like Microsoft decides to get into their market. Time and again Microsoft have demonstrated that money overcomes innovation and technical merit. In our opinion the first versions of Microsoft Expression will not be a threat to us, any more than to Adobe. But throw millions of dollars at it, and by the time they've got to version 3, a few years down the road, it might be competitive. Even without this, you can be sure that just through their sheer sales and marketing clout and dollars, they will sell more copies of Expression in a week than we'd normally sell in a year
So we decided to do something dramatic. Many have suggested what we're doing is extreme. We believe this is the only thing that will make a difference.
* We've launched a brand new version of Xara X (called Xara Xtreme). It's faster, easier to use and has new Photo tools - now a much more general purpose product
* We've made huge price cuts to the Windows product, to just $79
* We will be making the product Open Source (under the GPL)
* And will be porting it to Linux and Mac.
In other words we've moved into territory that Microsoft and Adobe cannot follow. They cannot and will not make their products free and Open Source (they can't afford to). They (almost certainly) won't even make them cross-platform (Adobe shows signs of not even fully supporting the Mac platform.)
Member since:2005-09-21
Member since:2005-07-07
You shouldn't forget that the Windows app is gonna stay commercial. They say it's the only way since they include a lot of proprietary tools (like Pantone) and well, this is needed to bring the money in.
Windows guys are quite used to pay for their programs, and let me add that while they have to pay for Xara's app, they can ALWAYS use Linux and OS.
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Yes, they just probably think the most of their money will come from ms users. Linux and Mac users are few.
StarOffice is much bigger than Xara and I think Xara's Linux users willing to pay for support on a program like this can be counted on a hand with missing fingers.
Obviously if their holy mission to change the graphic industry world bringing the penguin in will succeed this will change!
Yes, all they've wrote contains a lot of PR talk, but I hope they believe at least in a 70% of their statement.
By the way, their announced plan is to only ask money to win users for now.
Member since:2005-08-12
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2005-08-31
Xara is really great... this is the only drawing software i really think it work for me... even though i m not a designer... i can make a lot of stuff w/ it...
Porting to other platform is cool too
But... Does that means this company keep losing market sharing and profit? And making it open source is the last step before they die?
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2005-07-09
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2005-09-12
Why isn't it free on Windows?
We have made dramatic price cuts to the latest Windows versions of the software to bring it closer to the free price that Linux users expect. The Windows version continues to include a shipping CD, they can buy a printed manual, and we provide direct customer support to paying customers. In addition the Windows version contains licensed code from third parties (some versions contain Pantone color support, licensed PDF components and other third-party Live Effects plug-ins, fonts and other things) which we can't make Open Source or free.
Having said that it's conceivable that a version of the Open Source Linux port could be converted back to Windows. But it would not be the official Xara version (it couldn't use the Xara name), it wouldn't include any customer support or any of the licensed components we can include. So we hope it doesn't happen, because that would jeopardise our ability to continue. Put simply, if we can't earn money from the product somehow, we can't employ full time engineers working on the Open Source product, and that helps no one.
So what they are actually saying is, they can't survive as a company if the community builds a Windows Version. So they one way or other do agree that its not possible to make any money by GPL ing the code on Windows... Looks more like a PR thing then anything else
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