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New cross-platform Vector app [looking for your support]

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40hz:
but pros seem to mainly avoid it so far
-tomos (January 09, 2013, 02:22 PM)
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They work with what they know best. Once you've mastered Photoshop and Illustrator, why bother to hassle with something else? CS does it all.

And CS is also what everybody else uses  - which is important to remember.

When switching jobs, having a transferable set of skills is crucial to one's career prospects. Knowing CS gives you that.

Carol Haynes:
Xara can export Illustrator and EPS file formats (never used it so I don't know what the fidelity is like).

I agree that Xara is a little schizophrenic these days but the basis of the package is, and always has been, vectors - right back to its origins as ArtWprks on the Acorn RiscOS platform (yes I had a copy).

The schizophrenia comes from adding in photoshop type functions (including support for PS plugins!) and web design. You can however simply ignore those and just concentrate on vectors.

tomos:
The comments on their progress link are very interesting

This one is harsh but thought-provoking:

Doc Pixel 10.01.13 @ 01:32 pm

Random first thoughts after reading the comments here: Henry Ford on innovation: "“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Sorry to be so blunt, but re-creating Freehand as it "was"... is a dead end. As someone above this post mentioned, iDraw is an example of what future vector software will look like and be built upon. It is also software initiatives like this that pull in investors by the boat-load. Making business and software decisions by listening to people still declaring their hatred for social platforms: very short-sighted and they should be ignored. People declaring their hate and refusal to even try illustrator, leads me to believe that if StageStack deviates in the slightest way from Freehand... which these people know and have an undying love for... they will be the biggest complainers. In that regard, it's a good thing they are not socially connected... because no one will even hear their complaints. Other than probably their customers who will have to endure another round of whining and complaining why they can't get their projects done on budget and punctually.

Design-software at this point NEEDS the tech-savvy social connected crowd. New innovative and inspiring tools for young ideas and people designing for themselves and their generation and shaping the world "today and tomorrow". Note: I just turned 50 a couple of days ago. I had these same discussions 25 years ago explaining why we don't need a GUI to $150k typesetting machines; we need NEW software that takes advantage of the new Macintosh and PC platforms of the future. People like Bob Sander-Cederlof delivered that way back then... can Quasada do that today?

A 3rd Party plugin from Quasado to open old Freehand files will never ever see the light of day. Patents and copyrights held by Adobe, and the original API platform no longer being supported to get at the binary code makes it a "dead end project". The Rosetta PowerPC emulator code will never be reverse engineered so that Mac users will ever be able to install Freehand in current or future OS versions, similar to the resons above. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit.

There is no need for a new Freehand unless it is built with future considerations like touch and pen input for the future, and RGB is the base design color model. Period. Because CMYK is also a dying (dead) technology. INFO: Last year ebooks broke the 50% mark of all books sold on Amazon. Newsprint and magazines have been on a downward spiral for the last 5 years, and it will continue at a pace never seen before. Within a short period of time, whatever is still "printed" like packaging, will surely be 100% "digitally" printed, where the RIP will be doing RGB conversions according to the inks in the system. This could very well be from 4-16 at a time and encompass a spectrum far exceeding that of any 4-16 color traditional printing press. Ask Heidelberg. I have. The statistics and trend in the traditional printing markets are scary bad.

Add to the digital printing the fact that paper has become a very expensive commodity, to the point where traditional printing/publishing is becoming far too expensive to consider for old-school advertising, marketing and daily/monthly publishing. Ads in newspapers or magazines were mentioned above in a comment: I hope it was just being sarcastic(!) Should Quasada also deliver demos on diskettes and CD's? Besides the financial benefits of going digital, the added benefit is that it's FAR more ecological. A topic that the younger generation is becoming fully aware of in school. The consequences if they ignore conservation are more than evident. As far as I'm concerned, death to dead-tree publishing can't come soon enough.

My Summary: 1) stop wasting your development money building a "better mousetrap" clone from yesterday. 2) reconsider your strategy and think where you want your software to take young designers and publishing in 1 year, 2 years, 5. 3) How can you leverage the young designer's energy and desire for "new" tools, learn them, and new ways of being productive; shining a light on THEIR world, not those of their parents, me or any other old folks commenting here. Social communication, interest and "tuned-in" investors are all but guaranteed when you find the right combination of must-have tools for the "Future Designer's Toolbox". Build that!
(I formatted the text)

40hz:


It's history folks! Stagestack is no more.

This sad news from Libre Grapics World:

Stagestack faces dead-end, source code release considered
Alexandre Prokoudine 10-Jan-2013

Stagestack, a work-in-progress vector graphics editor is facing the dead-end after failing to become a financially self-supporting project. Developers are thinking about releasing the source code now...

--- End quote ---

Full article here.
 :(

tomos:
^ Ah well ...

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