Xara have now completed the first release of the Xara LX source code under the GPL license. This release was timed to coincide with the Libre Graphics Meeting currently being held in Lyon, France and means that more than 90% of the source code for the application is now public.
The source is available as a tar archive on the web site and also via Subversion. See our updated web site www.xaralx.org for details.
We’ve also updated the recommended pre-built downloadable version of LX to 0.3. There are now many working drawing tools and features - you can now draw shapes, color them and use the fill, transparency, blend, shape editing and other tools. See www.xaralx.org/developers/documentation/what_can_xara_lx_do_now.html for the long list of features that work.
The web site also now includes significant design documentation to help new developers coming to the project quickly get up to speed so they can start to make contributions to the code base. See www.xaralx.org/developers/documentation.html.
Now is a great time for interested Linux and Mac developers to get involved in the project. It’s at the stage where enabling more features that aren’t quite working in LX is quite straightforward – in just the last few days both the freehand and blend tools have been enabled! Pick up the source, build it following the build instructions provided and then try some tweaks to the code and see if you can enable more features that aren’t yet working. See www.xaralx.org/developers/sourcecode.html.
Regards
The Xara Team