Search for text in XAR files?

[Contours]

Countless times I've added little notes and comments alongside my graphics when developing in Xara.

Now, I'd like to be able to enter a keyword and see which XAR files contain that word anywhere in a text block. I've tried a couple of 3rd-party generic file search programs with no luck.

Does anyone know of a program or a method for doing this?

As an alternative, it there a Xara feature to export all the text elements from a file?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Acorn]

If you had version 10, you could create a SuperSite and export that.
All the text on all pages and all layers are then accessible.

I use REBOL and a simple script to remove all the HTML tags leaving text:

data: load/markup http://www.rebol.com/rebolintro.html
remove-each item data [tag? item]
write %rebintro.txt data

You can use a text editor to strip out with a few global search and replaces or REGEX values.

Acorn

[Contours]

Thanks for your response.

... a simple script to remove all the HTML tags leaving text

It's interesting that you mention exporting and then using a script. I have found that you can Export Website and then select RTF instead of the default HTML. All the text is there, albeit with some strange foreground and background colors. But if you Select All in a rich text editor, you can assign No Background and a uniform font color. Text sizes are a little trickier unless you don't care to have headings apparent, for example.

I'll look at what might be involved to post-process these files with a script.

The downside of this approach, I suppose, is having to remember to "publish" each XAR in order to update the searchable view of the text content.

I think I'll try it for my Top 20 or so.

[gwpriester]

I moved this thread to Dear Xara as it is more of a feature request.

[Contours]

I moved this thread to Dear Xara as it is more of a feature request.

That's fine, I suppose. I had thought of just doing a request, but I felt my question to the community was a valid one:

Does anyone know of a program or a method for doing this?

I would have liked for it to stand for a week or so to see if anyone has other ideas. Xara features take time ... and sometimes never materialize.

[Acorn]

Thanks for your response.



It's interesting that you mention exporting and then using a script. I have found that you can Export Website and then select RTF instead of the default HTML. All the text is there, albeit with some strange foreground and background colors. But if you Select All in a rich text editor, you can assign No Background and a uniform font color. Text sizes are a little trickier unless you don't care to have headings apparent, for example.

I'll look at what might be involved to post-process these files with a script.

The downside of this approach, I suppose, is having to remember to "publish" each XAR in order to update the searchable view of the text content.

I think I'll try it for my Top 20 or so.

When I use RTF for the export, I also get the images; that's why i didn't recommend it.
You could equally export as PDF then use save As... Text.
You still have issues with these methods for hidden layers.

Acorn

[Contours]

When I use RTF for the export, I also get the images;

I'll investigate that further. On my first two tests, the Xara-built graphics did not come into the RTF ... so I'll assume you're referring to JPGs, PNGs and the like that have been imported into the XAR.

If that's the case, I won't have many to delete in order to get a words-only result. And there may even be a way to script them out of the RTF.

Thanks for your responses.

[mwenz]

Countless times I've added little notes and comments alongside my graphics when developing in Xara.

Now, I'd like to be able to enter a keyword and see which XAR files contain that word anywhere in a text block. I've tried a couple of 3rd-party generic file search programs with no luck.

Does anyone know of a program or a method for doing this?

As an alternative, it there a Xara feature to export all the text elements from a file?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Oops. Disregard. I didn't see that it had found the text in the filename. Doesn't find the text in a XAR file.

Mike

[Acorn]

I created a small jQuery script that if put in a Placeholder head can output the page text to the screen:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
var notes;
$(document).ready(function() {
    notes = $('.Heading_2, .Normal_text').text();
    //alert(notes);
    $('body').html(notes).css('background-color','white');
});
</script>

You need to remove it from the page to restore normal presentation of your page.

A quick demo, where only Normal text and Heading 2 text are shown: jQuery - Notes.xar

Acorn

[Contours]

Indeed, that does build an "index" of all the notes. Capturing the result to a parallel file would give a basis for searching for words and phrases ... which was my original intention. Xara should do something similar—as an option for individual XAR files. It could serve as a substitute for making XAR text directly searchable ... which I'll suppose is difficult, since they haven't done it in the 8 years since it was first requested.

In the mean time, I wrote a script to open each of my main XAR files and click through the sequence to write an RTF version. After some minor cleanup with a text editor, the files are a good basis for searching/finding ... and basic text formatting is preserved. I just have to remember to keep them updated after significant changes.

Thanks for your response.

(BTW, how do we know that Xara acknowledges these requests? Do they ever post a response?)