I have zero interest in a fight about which program is better, so if that's why you are reading this, stop reading.
Recently, I've been frustrated by the fact that some projects require I submit files in Illustrator and some require Xara. I have previously drawn all of my maps with Illustrator CS3, and would like to continue doing so, but need to be able to deliver functional .XAR files as well. I have Xara Xtreme Pro 5.
I've tried opening my AI files in Xara, which usually imports them just fine; it expands the pattern brushes in the process (no big deal) and apparently converts my pattern swatches (for lithology) to a white bitmap object, which is annoying but probably workaround-able. However, when I open the file in Xara in order to save as an .XAR, the layer architecture has been completely removed; it gives me a layer titled "text extracted from PDF" and one titled "imported from PDF" in which it has lumped all of the separate non-text layers from my original AI file into a single layer.
Is there a file format that works functionally in both programs? Is there an export format from one to the other where I won't lose anything?
There seem to be too many egos and/or old habits at play for the caving community as a whole to ever adopt a standard, but I'm not interested in having to learn multiple cave survey programs and multiple illustration programs in order to be a productive cartographer. I don't want to stop working with either group, and (frankly) I'm getting tired to listening to diatribes from the group who didn't win the "which standard will Jeff adopt?" contest.