Xara Xtreme for Linux running on Ubuntu |
|
| Developer(s) | Xara Group Ltd |
| Stable release | 7 (Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro) / May 25, 2011 |
| Preview release | 0.7 (Xara Xtreme for Linux) / August 11, 2006 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux |
| Type | Vector graphics editor |
| License | Proprietary, GPL (Linux version) |
| Website | www.xara.com |
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is a 2D vector graphics editor created by the British software company Xara, which was acquired by German company MAGIX AG in 2007, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary. It was previously sold under the names Xara Studio, Xara X and Xara Xtreme. There is a pro version called Xara Designer Pro (formerly Xara Xtreme Pro).
Contents |
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer was originally developed for Microsoft Windows and the commercial version currently runs only on Windows. Versions up to 4.x can be run on Linux using Wine.
Xara Xtreme for Linux (formerly Xara Xtreme LX or Xara LX for short) is the open source version for Linux.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is notable for its usability and fast renderer.[2] Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is also notable for being among the first vector graphics software products to provide a fully anti-aliased display, advanced gradient fill, and transparency tools, features now common to many vector graphics editors.
Among vector editors, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is considered to be fairly easy to learn, with similarities to CorelDRAW and Inkscape in terms of interface. Alongside the vector illustration tools, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer also includes an integrated photo tool, including auto-enhance, cropping, adjustment of brightness levels, red-eye fix, 'magic' erase, panoramas and content aware zoom. Efforts have been made to render the application appealing to web designers by adding tools for popular effects such as drop shadows and bevels. Designer Pro includes a wider range of tools for creating web pages and websites, including creation of NavBars & menus, mouseovers & pop-ups, browser preview and ftp upload. Both Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Designer Pro also let you create Flash animations (without sound, as of version 5)... using almost all of the special Xara drawing tools.
| Version | Description | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Xara X | commercial version | 2000 |
| Xara X¹ | commercial version | 2004 |
| Xara Xtreme | commercial version with commercial plugins | 2005 |
| Xara Xtreme XS | a light version of Xara Xtreme without plugins and no bevel/shadow/outline tools, commercial version | 2006 |
| Xara Xtreme PRO | commercial version with enhanced functions | 2006 |
| Xara Xtreme and Xtreme PRO 3.2 | improved typography (Pro includes Xara 3D6) | May 2007 |
| Xara Xtreme and Xtreme PRO 4.0 | April 2008 | |
| Xara Xtreme and Xtreme PRO 5.0 | June 2009 | |
| Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 and Xara Designer Pro 6 | GUI redesign and tool updates and enhancements | June 2010[1] |
| Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 and Xara Designer Pro 7 | May 2011 |
Xara Xtreme for Linux (or Xara Xtreme Linux Edition) is the open source version of Xara Xtreme. Formerly, it was called Xara Xtreme LX or just Xara LX; the abbreviation LX stands for Linux. The "LX" name is retained in some places (for example, the executable is still called "xaralx").
The first version was released for Linux in October 2005, and Xara Group Ltd announced it will release the source code of the trimmed down version under a free software licence, the GPL, and seek community help in porting it over to Linux and Mac OS X using the wxWidgets toolkit.
At the opening of the Libre Graphics Meeting 2006[3] in Lyon, France, Xara released most of the source code of Xara Xtreme for Linux in an updated website with details on how to access the sources. According to the Xara Xtreme for Linux homepage, the released source code contains "the majority of the Xara Xtreme source code". Currently, the only part of Xara Xtreme for Linux that isn't under GPL is the CDraw rendering engine, that is only available in the form of static libraries for a few selected CPU architectures and at that only with support for the GCC C++ compiler, though reportedly Xara is working on preparing that code for publication as well.[n 1]
Xara has also granted write access to their subversion repository for some external developers. The website also carries stable and nightly Linux builds.
The 0.3 beta series for the first time allows use of the new *.xar file format for the open source version. Previous versions only supported opening and playing with bundled demo files. Version 0.5 was the first to also have functional save feature. The current beta version is 0.7.
A version for Mac OS X is not yet working but is under development, and there is a call for developers on the open source project web site.
The progress of the Linux version has stalled and the program's website has not been updated since August 2006. No commits to SVN source code repository has been happening for same period of time.
A new project, xarino, was created in December 2008,[5] which provides access to the project's source code. A new mailing list was established in May 2009.[6]
|
|||||||||||