Xara is strong but has huge weakness

[Danas_Anis]

hello to all,

I am very new to Xara and i come from Corel Draw lands. I had some issues with Corel on my machine so I have tried Xara. I actually liked it and it did quite a lot and it is easy to use. It is quite fast as well however I faced some really weak point of Xara that I suppose should be considered to be a bug, I don't know where to post this information, so i hope this will be a place where dev team will notice this report.

To make everything short: Xara PDF export is not fully functional because it can't really export commercial print level PDF. I failed to export a fairly complicated pdf book when Corel Draw would actually export the same complexity wiht no issues except it would take some time. I tracked down where the issue core is. While exporting this fairly heavy book, Xara uses a lot of RAM and when it gets to use 16002 MB or RAM from 4 possible RAM so minus 1 gb RAM for OS it has some RAM left to use, however it reports error and wents out of memory.

oh the e-book has 125 pages by the way.

My next step was to simplify this e-book and I made pages to be pictures, simple JPG fills, it failed to export even via the presets of high resolution commercial printing.

SO my recomendation would be to check again the export features and RAM handling while exporting because XARA extreme is extremely cool tool that can handle big files, unfortunately can't export them, and because of this issue it may be lacking the deserved sympathies. As i told I found XARA to be really cool, there fore I think XARA should be capable of handling heavy exporting processes.

Best regards,

Danas

[Xcellent]

Hi Danas_Anis,

If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional there is a solution:
Export from Xara lets say 2 pages at a time as a PDF/X. If Xara still crashes, export only 1 page as a time. You can try to export as many pages as possible before it crashes Xara. Usually for really heavy graphics I can export up to 6 pages as PDF/X at a time.

In Adobe Acrobat open the first PDF file you exported. Make sure the Page Panel in Acrobat on the left hand side is opened. Now open the other PDF files in Adobe Acrobat. Simply select a page range from one document and drag it into the other until you have completed all pages of your document and rebuild the page order. Save the final file as PDF again and you're done.

I submitted various 50 page documents I created in Xara a while ago for exactly the same memory issue that you describe. The above solution is a workaround that works for me.

The big trouble are 1 page banners that Xara can't export as PDF/X for some memory issues. That's where Illustrator comes in handy.

[Ike Busser]

Hi Danas_Anis,

If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional there is a solution:
Export from Xara lets say 2 pages at a time as a PDF/X. If Xara still crashes, export only 1 page as a time. You can try to export as many pages as possible before it crashes Xara. Usually for really heavy graphics I can export up to 6 pages as PDF/X at a time......

That is a pricy solution.

Why noy use CutePDF Writer and print to it? It is free, take a look at www.cutepdf.com
If more flexibility is needed you can use the Pro-version at less than $ 50

Cheers

Ike

[Xcellent]

Most people have Adobe Acrobat or CS4, that's why I suggested the solution. It doesn't mean it's the only solution. Whatever works for you best.

Why noy use CutePDF Writer and print to it?

Because CutePDF will convert your RGB elements into CMYK instead of Xara doing it. Pantone and Spot colors would also be ignored (If i'm not mistaken). Print Marks, Bleed and Paper Margins would need to be set up in CutePDF ontop of that when 'printing' a document.

Does CutePDF have the ability to reorder pages and simply drag and drop other PDF pages from one into another?

[amoore]

Most people have Adobe Acrobat or CS4, that's why I suggested the solution.

I would say "many", not "most".

Because CutePDF will convert your RGB elements into CMYK instead of Xara doing it. Pantone and Spot colors would also be ignored (If i'm not mistaken). Print Marks, Bleed and Paper Margins would need to be set up in CutePDF ontop of that when 'printing' a document.

I haven't tested color conversion/spot colors in CutePDF, so I can't comment on that point. However, Cute does have imposition, bleed and crop mark tools. Not bad for a $50 app.

Does CutePDF have the ability to reorder pages and simply drag and drop other PDF pages from one into another?

It can reorder pages, but that feature isn't WYSIWYG or drag&drop. There are a number of other non-Adobe pdf editors that do have drag&drop reordering, including my old Jaws editor. That's not a feature exclusive to Adobe.

[ss-kalm]

Most people have Adobe Acrobat or CS4

Apart from members on this forum, I don't know one single person who has either of those products ....

[steve.ledger]

I don't either.
I don't have that sort of spare cash

[jeb]

Export from Xara lets say 2 pages at a time as a PDF/X..

OK - what is PDF/X and now is it different? I do not find it in either XX4 or XX5, just .pdf in export.

Is it in the pro version and would that help solve my B&W printing problems? - jb

[steve.ledger]

PDF/x is only available in the Pro versions yes.

Here's an overview

Basically it's a pre-press format designed for preservation of best practices for the print industry.

More

[Noel Williams]

I have the latest Pro version, and I would very much like to export posters in PDF/X format. However I find that even single pages often cannot be exported in this format. They fail with an 'out of memory' message (I have 2Gb of RAM). Is this a known problem and is there any likelihood of an eventual solution?