Another great find for you! XaraXtreme - the Open Source that never happened.

Daniel

While I was working on the Bezigon tool algorithms I was researching into how other programs have implemented pen tools - and I learnt a great deal about bezier curves and their handling - as well as the various ways in which curves are approximated for smoothing.

And while doing so, I stumbled on this motherlode!

XaraXtreme the aborted project of making Xara Open Source for Linux. 20 years ago in 2006, Xara decided that they wanted to make their program Open Source for Linux at least.

This, I reckon, was because Xara made a very grave strategic error - they refused to develop their product for Apple. At the time Steve Jobs was out of Apple, and Apple looked like it was about to die. Who could have predicted what came next? Charles Moir, the director at the time, had to make a call: Spend his limited resource on a dying platform or spend it on Windows. He chose Windows. But it backfired on them spectacularly.

So eventually, I speculate, they wanted to make a backdoor comeback through Linux. But unfortunately, Xara jealously guarded their blisteringly fast rendering engine, the actual secret all the developers were really after. They refused to let it go. I found trails of back and forth on Way Back Machine. Frustrated developers complaining that it wasn't really Open Sourcing.

But I found one golden nugget: https://github.com/earl-kent/xara-lx - They did release the code for all their tools!

To me, that is amazing. I found the code for Shape Tool - Xara's version of Pen Tool, but which is far more intuitive than Bezier Pen tool. Shape tool allows you to literally shape your curves like putty clay. It is addictively good. It is under GNU General Public License which allows you to study for behaviour and use for any purpose. Unfortunately, it contains bugs which were never updated from the main version of the software. But that's okay. Here's where Catmull-Rom becomes relevant. Xara's Shape Tool uses a modified version of Catmull-Rom Spline.

Shape Tool in Xara is over 4500 lines of code. For comparison, my entire Bezigon implementation was 500 lines long including for tangent nodes.

I'm going to study and rebuild it over the next months - perhaps another great addition to VS!

marce

@Daniel Hi Daniel. I remember Xara for linux. It was a nice software, kind of strange thing running in linux. Nice you can make alive again something of their legacy.

Subpath

@Daniel

I’m one of those people who are familiar with Xara—I’ve been using it since version 1.
Back then, thanks to its speed and its blending features, it was far ahead of the competition
in the field of vector graphics. Even version 1 featured anti-aliasing for vector graphics, which
I always found a real treat for the eyes.

I don’t see why not developing a Mac version should be considered a mistake; after all, PCs
were the most widespread platform at the time.

I see their real mistakes as lying in how often the software changed hands or distributors.
For instance, there was a Corel version called "CorelXara," and things got even worse when
the distribution—at least here in Germany—shifted to Magix, who would always try to push
a cloud subscription on you whenever you made a purchase.

That’s why I bought a version on Steam, which didn’t come with that requirement.
It’s still in my Steam software library, even though I don’t use it anymore—having
switched to VectorStyler instead.

Daniel

@Subpath :
You're design royalty as far as I am concerned if you knew Xara from V1.
So, long story made very short: All your gripes against Xara is completely legitimate. But let me explain why they did what they did. Not developing for Apple was indeed a mistake because it meant they got locked out of a whole new market. Charles Moir openly admitted this, too.

They hoped that Corel, the rival of Adobe, would help them market Xara. But Corel instead tried to bury them, too.

Then, out of money, they tried to get a lifeline with Magix. And it was catastrophic like you say. Development stalled to a crawl. It still has not recovered. But I still keep two copies of Xara on my desktop.

I am not a designer first and foremost. I write for a living, but I design to bring my writing to life. For my kind of work, there are few other software that does what Xara does. For instance, no other software I know of auto creates pages on overflow like a word processor. While I can open PL for heavy compositing work, Xara has a sound raster engine too, and can make powerful edits within the program.

But unknown to many, there's an External Program feature, which allows you to open an embedded image in another program like Affinity or PL, and then have the changes cascade to Xara in real time.

British software and hardware are the greatest success stories never told. ARM RISC is a classic example. Every mobile phone on the planet has ARM chip, but how many know it all started in Cambridge?

Xara was first written for ARM, too. Acorn Archimedes to be specific.

Daniel

@marce : How lovely!
Yes, Xara is abandonware at this point. But I still love it because of how fluid it is. My dream for VS is that it will operate with fluidity and straightforwardness of Xara. I love VS, too - hence my active contributions too. However, I still stumble around a lot in menu options. I need to invest more time to getting to grips with it.

Daniel

@vectorstyler: If you wish to look into their Shape Tool - this is where it lives: https://github.com/earl-kent/xara-lx/blob/master/tools/beztool.cpp

VectorStyler

@Daniel That code looks very complicated.
It would be better if I could run Xara (must be still available somehow).

Daniel

@VectorStyler: https://www.xara.com/designerpro-plus/ - Yes, here it is. Free trial is available.

Subpath

@Daniel

Thanks for the honor, but the nobility was abolished here in Germany
quite some time ago—something I very much welcome.

As for me: I have always been interested in painting and art.
Over the years, I’ve encountered and used quite a few graphics programs.
I worked in screen printing and later in digital printing, where I used CorelDRAW
professionally as my vector graphics software. In my personal time, however,
I’ve experimented with many other programs. Among them, Xara was the shining star—
right from version 1, incidentally. I really enjoyed using it.

I also recall that Xara was originally developed for the Acorn—
a computer that, in my view, was very cool for its time.

Daniel

@Subpath: Oh I am indeed anti-royal family myself. Buncha scrounging pack of vultures who live off the back of hardworking British people. Feck em.