I am a very long time Xara user (from the time of the first Corel Xara) and some year ago, before being involved in designing filters for Inkscape I designed a lot of brushes for Xara.

Gary Priester who wrote the following tutorial is a good friend and a very kind guy : http://outsider.xara.com/tutorials/june09/

In fact I would attract your attention to what seems to be for me the most interesting novelty in Xara Xtreme 5, the Object Gallery. It's one more step to a smart control of the document structure like they already exist in 3D apps. For example the nicest I know is the one of Cinema 4D.

ivan