August 2015 Video Tutorial -- Typesetting With Xara

[Gare]

Well, Rik—

As I mentioned toward the end of the video, if you walked away knowing one more thing than you did 12 minutes ago, then I'm happy, you're happy, the girl down the block is happy, fighting has ceased in the Middle Easy, and crops are beginning to grow again in Kansas.

@Frances—



When using soft breaks, always make sure your copy is thoroughly edited correctly before using a soft break. Why? Because unlike MS Word (or other text-oriented programme), Xara will not show you as visible characters where paragraph ends are, nor spaces between characters. So if you do soft breaks and then find a spelling or grammar error, it is not fun backspacing in random areas you're guessing at to find and resolve hard and soft breaks, as well as spaces.

Speaking as someone who has gone through it and lived to tell the tale—

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the excellent Typesetting video tut. Gary, somethings I already knew but personalized bullets, soft break, had no idea. Also at the end of your video on fade out, I was surprised to see five of my drawings, Milano-Xmas Girl-Mighty Milk-Coffee Cup and Bad Girl, absolutely made my day

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Determination Poster.

Stygg

[csehz]

Nice tips are collected together in this tutorial, thanks for it

[Gare]

Determination Poster.

Stygg

Stygg, I love your ingenuity and original thinking in combining several of the sections in the video tutorial. All are obvious and all are well done!

[Gare]

Typesetting Etiquette

• Don’t use hyphenation for two consecutive lines. Use a Soft Break if necessary to kick a word or two down a line to get rid of second hyphenation.

• Depending on the column width and point size, when making a drop cap, try to have between 5 to 7 words on the line. Too many and the line looks crowded and invites “whiplash” as reader moves to next line. Too few words and the line doesn’t look like part of a sentence.

• Use paragraph spacing in a multi-paragraph document, or intent a paragraph, but don’t do both.


By the way, what you might have read in The Outsider today is true: due to budget limitations, Magix can't support my work in the future, they're bringing Xara Xone into the company internally to continue to run it, and I am going to earn my daily bread elsewhere.

None of which means I'm leaving TalkGraphics. I'm still a Mod, and will enjoin you folks in other areas of interest in Xara Designer.

TGIF everyone!

My Best,

Gary

[Rik]

[Ron Duke]

Great pointers and info Gare!
Thanks for ALL your hard work and generosity!

[sunhome]

Gary Priester & Gary David Bouton both of you have been excellent teachers, thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge by working on XaraXone!

[Gare]

You're very welcome, and I'm sure Gary P. will be along, and say the same.

My Best,

-g