Xara LX and the leading, bleeding edge of free software graphics

Jan 19, 2009, 16:08 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Terry Hancock)

[ Thanks to steve hill for this link. ]

"As a result, you won't find this new application, called "Xara LX" in the main distributions yet. In Debian, it is filed under “non-free” in the unstable "Sid" distribution. However, this is an opportunity to get a sneak preview of what's coming.

"Vector graphics applications have many different goals to meet, and so it's no surprise that they differ a lot both in what they make possible and in what they make easy. Xara Xtreme is targeted at high-end illustrators, so it puts the emphasis on the "possible" side of this balance rather than the "easy".

"In practical terms, though, most of the time, vector graphics applications are used to make relatively simple drawings, such as the CUPS filter diagram that I drew with Xara LX for this article, and to make use of existing libraries of graphical assets. This therefore may not be a completely fair test of Xara LX's strengths. After all, the selling point that Xara hits hardest is Xtreme's rendering speed: how long it takes to re-draw the image you see on screen each time you make changes to the drawing."

Complete Story

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