Will Xara Ever Create a DTP Program (like PagePlus)?

[pauland]

I'm quite saddened by this discussion - not because it's happening, or that everyone doesn't make worthwhile points, but the fundamental issue about document publishing is entirely missing and we are left with the technical minutae that facilitates DTP.

If I want to make an illustration, I want everything I do to be about that task.
If I want to make a web page/site, I want everything I do to be about that task.
If I wanted to make a book, I want everything I do to be about making that book.

What makes creating a book pleasurable and easy is entirely missing from this discussion, instead we seem focused on the possibility rather than ease of execution. It is ease of execution that makes a great product rather than a merely functional one.

Personally, I could care less for functional products. I buy products that make tasks easy, or easier, or pleasurable. Preferably easy and pleasurable.

You could make a book using MS paint by creating bitmap images of every page.

While Xara software can do lots of things, including making books, in many ways it's a bit like me hitting a couple of nails the other day with a spanner because my hammer was missing. It worked but it was a kludge.

I'm no expert. The last time I created a book-like document I wanted master pages, left and right facing, automatic chapter numbering, content-page and index-creation, automated flows as content changed, easy change gutters and columns. Those kind of things that are important for a book but not of consequence for any other document.

Charles, I'm frankly shocked that you don't see what's missing or why Xara software isn't great for producing books.

When Xara Studio 1.0 came out I was gobsmacked. It did something I couldn't do with other software at an affordable price-point. Now there's plenty of choice and the all-in-one solution idea looks increasingly wobbly as the ease of use is compromised by the jack-of-all-trades compromise.

Unlike most users of Xara software I see website creation and book creation as assembly activities. I don't suddenly start creating graphics as I'm building a web page or creating a book. Xara software doesn't support the basic workflow of book-building, even if it facilitates it.

[mwenz]

I'm quite saddened by this discussion - not because it's happening, or that everyone doesn't make worthwhile points, but the fundamental issue about document publishing is entirely missing and we are left with the technical minutae that facilitates DTP.[/I]

I'm saddened about world hunger, what's happening in repressive regimes. Not so much about forum posts.

What makes creating a book pleasurable and easy is entirely missing from this discussion, instead we seem focused on the possibility rather than ease of execution. It is ease of execution that makes a great product rather than a merely functional one.

I agree with what I think you are stating in the sentiment. But it is the inclusion of that minutiae that makes the possibility a reality.

Personally, I could care less for functional products. I buy products that make tasks easy, or easier, or pleasurable. Preferably easy and pleasurable...

That gets to the heart of the how the minutiae is presented to the end user. But the minutiae has to be there in order for the UI to make those functions able to be presented to the end user. The ease of use part is how the UI presents those functions to the user.

Charles, I'm frankly shocked that you don't see what's missing or why Xara software isn't great for producing books.

I think Charles is fully aware. I think there is a certain amount of marketing spin as to what is currently possible and what will yet be added in Charles' statements in my opinion. Which is fine--I have to separate reality from spin with every software I purchase. What is true to me is that while those functions exist that Charles stated, they are not user friendly and not as functional as they could be for the end user.

Unlike most users of Xara software I see website creation and book creation as assembly activities. I don't suddenly start creating graphics as I'm building a web page or creating a book. Xara software doesn't support the basic workflow of book-building, even if it facilitates it.

Yep, agree. One of the problems a lot of users have when they begin layout work is attempting to write the book (leaflet, brochure, etc) inside the layout application. But layout is a presentational form, just like a web site is. The design of a book (leaflet, brochure, etc), the writing and layout are all separate activities best left to using what is better for those tasks.

Anyway, I'm now fairly bored with the conversation. I don't feel that an honest conversation is happening between the users and Xara and so it is unlikely to have a beneficial impact on the future of Xara products. I hope I am dead wrong about this. But until I see Xara getting real about the what and how these things are done in real life, XDP is going to continue the development according to the current vision for the product.

BTW, the previous paragraph doesn't only apply to Xara. It also applies to other companies' software I use. Seems that product managers and those higher up the food chain from them--you know, people who don't make a living from using their products--always seem to have a better idea of what we, the users, need to make our work more efficient or even capable.

Mike

[Gare]

...the fundamental issue about document publishing is entirely missing and we are left with the technical minutae that facilitates DTP.

Hi Paul—

I read your post several times and it still leaves me scratching my head. The gist of this thread is about how Xara currently lacks high-end DTP features, which is a legitimate gripe even though I encourage members no to hold their breath for too long. These requests are hardly "technical minutiae", I beg to disagree. Cumulatively, they represent for many a decision-making process forced upon them...a one or a zero if you will...whether to begin a long document in Xara, or to choose a different program (that has all the features needed).

I'm not sure, even with the examples you've provided, I understand what the fundamental issue about document publishing is, nor why we all have missed (that I do not understand). My own workflow is to accept the gig after seeing how much work is involved, grunt and groan and resent having ever taken a "not fun" assignment (when I'd prefer to be drawing!), and my salve during the process, that which makes a professional PITA enjoyable, is the feature set of the application in which I work. It can make the task at hand fun, or a chore.

Features do indeed count, Paul, as they do with the task of drawing. Frankly, I'd prefer this roll the developers are on to put drawing in the front seat of the Xara automobile after being ignored for three versions. The Art Brushes are a very admirable first step; I'd like to see dynamic polygons, stroke width controls on a control point, and a few other "catch up" features from CorelDRAW and Illustrator.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

If you're going to talk the talk, be prepared to walk the walk. That is: don't add a few bitmap features and then advertise a product as the next Photoshop killer. That's hubris. Show me the Features of Doom for Adobe Systems..

My Best,

Gary

[pauland]

Hi Gary,

A lot of programs can cover very technical bullet-point minutia very well. It doesn't mean they are good at the task they do. For a car, it's a given that there are wheel, a steering wheel, brakes, etc. When you drive a car some designs can make the journey pleasurable or a real pain. Some cars can carry half your house contents, others you can barely fit into.

I had a car you could barely fit into. It was great. Every journey a pleasure. Two seats - useless for a family or carrying anything. I did my longest journey ever in it - 950 miles. Now I have a car that carries four or five people and I've moved a washing machine and bed using it. It merely does the job (functional family transport). It doesn't make me smile like that two seater (fun and pleasure). They are both cars with different purposes.

My point is, technical points are great, but they miss the broad flow.

How does Xara manage chapters, content pages, indexes, paragraph-related drop-caps, etc. ?

All of the book related software I have seen understands content pages (able to assign automatically changing page numbers to the content list), can create indexes, provide word-counts, automatically generate page numbers, odd and even pages, double-page spreads, all with minimal effort from the page setter.

When you have that task-specific capability, creating a book is a pleasure, not a chore. Doing that stuff with Xara software is a chore.

[Gare]

Hi Gary,

When you have that task-specific capability, creating a book is a pleasure, not a chore. Doing that stuff with Xara software is a chore.

FWIW, Paul, DTP is a chore in just about any program! I use InDesign for long, text-based books (perhaps 1 illustration per page, up to 20 chapters, a 450 to 600 page book), while I use Xara for flyers and highly customized page layouts that can't fit to a specific template.

I'm not certain, but don't vector drawing programmes need to read font outlines into memory? That might explain why programs that enable Greeking below a certain point size run faster.

I think the right way to approach a...let's say...creating a book workflow, is to understand the assignment and then choose the appropriate software, which is what I think you're saying in your first sentence above, that just because a programme has Full Bells and Whistles doesn't make it ideal for a specific project.

On the other hand, every since WordPerfect was a serious product, the CEO had remarked at a conference that users only take advantage of about 5 to 10% of a "full featured" programme's capabilities. Now, why would I choose InDesign over, let's say Xara Designer, to create a 600 page book? Um, I have Master Pages to set each chapter any way I will, I'm placing linked images instead of importing them, my output is time-proven to be nearly goof-proof... I could go on (and often do!).

My point, which doesn't really contradict yours, Paul, is based on the saying, "It is better to have and not need, than it is too need and not have." It is a royal PITA to have to move a composition between programmes, more so if the composition is nearly complete and there's this one...ostensibly minute feature Software Y has that Software X does not.

Understanding also that nothing gets built by committee, this thread is an interesting pie-in-the-sky Wish List, but I can predict with confidence what version 12 will not have. By design, Xara is a robust drawing programme, with useful bits of this and that. It is not the be-all and end-all to graphics solutions any more than that little saw on a Swiss Army Knife is good for Forestry work.

Happily, we get to live in an age of competition, an age of pick and choose, and everyone's toolbox is unique.

My Best,

Gary

[Charles Moir]

Charles, I'm frankly shocked that you don't see what's missing or why Xara software isn't great for producing books.

Where did that come from? I never said, and none of our marketing material ever claimed Designer is suitable for creating books (although people have created books in our software). I mean we don't even have e-book export, so this not something we aim for. In fact I specifically said 600 page documents were beyond what Designer is aimed at.

Regarding the point about whether it's better to have separate programs for creative document production, or one like Designer Pro, I think some people are brainwashed by the Adobe approach which is simply an accident of history. When you know how it came about it has little merit. On the contrary, a suite of separate, large, complex, memory hogging programs has a world of pain associated with it.

Do people imagine the Adobe Creative Suite was deliberately designed and planned this way? It was not. It's a suite of totally different products, most of which started life in separate companies, acquired by Adobe. They are totally different code bases, and even Adobe would not consider attempting to merge them into one. So they did the only sensible things they could. They tried to make their UI consistent as they could, and bundled them as a suite of applications. It's an accident of history - they had little choice.

Each application is more powerful Designer Pro for sure. But the price you pay is considerable. Say your creative job (like most) combines vector, photos, text layout, probably output to PDF and probably deployed, in one way or another on the Web. In the modern world PDF and Web are the mainstay methods of distributing creative artwork and documents of all types.

- So that's four or more separate apps you have to use to produce the one creative document.
- There is some consistency between these apps, but fundamentally they are different apps, with separate leaning curves.
- The compute resources are considerable - like 4 times greater and Xara's single app. It's not just memory, but CPU and now GPU requirements. If you update your computer every year - you're in luck you've probably got the horsepower.
- Consider the workflow. Remember I'm producing one creative document that happens to combine vector, photos, text layout. Do I really have to switch apps to do tweak my vector artwork, or my photos?
- And the final cost, don't forget, is the actual monetary cost of this.

And Adobe are aware of the fundamental inefficiencies of this work-flow. They keep adding more overlap in functionality to the suite. So InDeisgn can now do basic vector editing (as can Photoshop). Why did they add this - when Illustrator is their prime vector tool? Because of the absurdity of having to switch apps to do basic vector work.

Take something as simple and common as soft shadows - every Adobe product has re-implemented a way of adding soft shadows. But they are all slightly different, most (actually I think all of them) raster based not vector, with slightly different UIs and radically different engines to produce the same effect. And for all of them the UI sucks (IMO).

We just thought, from the very beginning, that it was absurd to insist, to force users to buy separate apps for what is one creative process, with the aim of producing one final document. And when you look at the spectrum of graphic design work, everything from posters to web design, to brochures, flyers, magazines (online or offline), blogs, or artwork on the sides of lorries and buses, it all, almost always, combines photography, vector and page / text layout.

So why, when I'm producing my artwork for the side of the bus, or for my website come to think of it, do I have to use separate programs? It's not right. Adobe just happened to evolve that way. If you'd planned it from the beginning you'd never have done it this way.

So Designer (Camelot) is not and never was intended to be the supreme vector design tool (or photo tool, or DTP tool, or web tool). It was and is meant to be the supreme tool for producing ALL these document types in one place, covering the creative document universe (at least 90% of the time) with a fraction of the learning curve, computer resources, time and budget.

So if you're a hard core, professional photo manipulator, use Photoshop. But for most people, most of the time, Xara's photo editing is more than fine - in fact it's great in most ways. And if I want to go remove a blemish in a photo I'm placing on the page (web page, print page, poster, whatever) I do not have to go start an (expensive) monster of a separate app, switch to it, do my one-click blemish removal, save, switch back load again blar, blar. So I still maintain our approach IS far, far more productive and cost effective than anything else, for almost all creative work.

Similarly if you want to do bleeding edge web design go use Dreamweaver (but be prepared to become a programmer, not just a designer). But for most people web design is a design process not a programming one, that involves pretty simple layout of photos, text and vector artwork. And I'd rather like the ability to edit that vector artwork in-situ, in my web designer, than do it in some external dedicated app.

Sorry, got a bit off topic there.

[digitalphaser]

Thank you Charles for Adobe's story. But Adobe is still the standard for graphic- and typographic design.
I believe that any software, wich calls itself a "professional software", required to strive to common standards.

The most important Xara's drawbacks are
1. no color management
2. the weak export function.

For example. You make the package layout. The client requires a file for further processing. What can Xara offer? PSD? No. Xara can not export CMYK PSD files.
AI, EPS? Very limitedly.
If you using raster elements, all the lower layers are converted to raster, too. Yes, you can clipp the bitmap elements. If you open your AI file in Illustrator, you will see that your bitmap is RGB and 96dpi. ???
Thank you Charles for Adobe's story. But Adobe is still the standard for graphic- and typographic design.
I believe that any software, wich calls himself a "professional software", required to strive to common standards.

The most important Xara's drawbacks are
1. no color management
2. the weak export function.

For example. You make the package layout. The client requires a file for further processing. What can Xara offer? PSD? No. Xara can not export CMYK PSD files.
AI, EPS? Very limitedly.
If you using raster elements, all the lower layers are converted to raster, too. Yes, you can clipp the bitmap elements. If you open your AI file in Illustrator, you will see that your bitmap is RGB and 96dpi. ???
The list is long but I do not want to argue. The fact is that serious Xara's limitations make impossible work in a designer team or creating full editable files.
You say PDF? Yes, very limited too. I do not know a software that can natively edit created in another program PDF files.

By the way. Web-rogrammers who make inline SVG animations prefer Inkscape. Xara generate a complex and difficult-to-read SVG code.

Is Xara professional software?

[pauland]

Where did that come from? I never said, and none of our marketing material ever claimed Designer is suitable for creating books (although people have created books in our software). I mean we don't even have e-book export, so this not something we aim for. In fact I specifically said 600 page documents were beyond what Designer is aimed at.

I think this phrase struck a chord from post #18: I'm interested to know what features you regard are missing, specifically the showstopper features that makes Xara Designer not a good DTP solution?

It rather made me think that you were confident about Xara as DTP solution for books/documents, even for modest sizes.

Regarding the point about whether it's better to have separate programs for creative document production, or one like Designer Pro, I think some people are brainwashed by the Adobe approach which is simply an accident of history.

When I made my post, I didn't even have Adobe in mind, nor did I necessarily think that the Adobe approach (however it came about) was somehow invincible, but it has merit.

When you know how it came about it has little merit.

Adobe has a history of acquisition. They don't have a great history of innovation on their own merit and their flagship software comes from others, often rivals whom their own products couldn't compete with, so they bought their rivals.

I have often talked about Adobe's unassailable professional position, but I think it's in danger - there are plenty of new rivals challenging sections of the Adobe suite at low price-points. I don't see Adobe as your competitor, but Adobe's rivals are in that Arena.

... Sorry, got a bit off topic there.

Why not? Bloated apps? Some might say that now of some all-in-one apps..

Forget Adobe.

My point, in a nutshell is that Xara's software misses basic concepts that are present in the DTP programs and while you may not agree with the idea of separate apps, it has really good merits for focused tasks.

That's my point - Xara as a one-stop shop has no focus now for it's three principle tasks.

When I've been involved with document production, I'm interested in page numbers paragraphs, columns, page templates, content pages, index pages and all that stuff. I don't want an interface cluttered by drawing controls, menu options for web links, etc.

Even if you have it all in one program, there could be three distinct modes and really focus on the separate tasks. You could even have three separate programs that do what Adobe and everyone else does as separate executables. Xara already does this by having so many variants of it's software.

It's my opinion of course. I know it swims against the tide of most Xara users who love the software for it's versatility.

Charles I have the utmost respect for your achievements over the years. What has been achieved with Xara is amazing, but it's versatility is now at the expense of focus. I see an interface that now is not the model of clarity that it used to be and that some rivals are.

[ss-kalm]

"I'm interested to know what features you regard are missing, specifically the showstopper features that makes Xara Designer not a good DTP solution?"
....It rather made me think that you were confident about Xara as DTP solution for books/documents, even for modest sizes......

Sorry Charles, but I thought just the same when I read it. It did seem that you were implying that Xara was a perfect Desktop Publishing programme, and why on earth would anyone think that it wasn't. Although reading it again, I do acknowledge that you admitted to knowing a few weaknesses.

[Albacore]

So far in these proceedings everyone has not been very kind to the programme that I like using and yes I still use it even for DTP. My last real job before I retired was for the NHS producing all sorts of pamphlets, brochures, posters and newsletters (loads of newsletters). I used Xara for most, but not all, as Illustrator and Indesign were used for certain jobs, "the right tool for the right job".

Let's get the colour management thing sorted here and now! if it's going to the printers then their must be CMYK colour management on screen. It's down to guess work at the moment and/or experience to get the colours that you planned. The must have programme in my computer is not ID or AI, it's Adobe Acro Pro to check all my PDF's even the files that come from Illustrator. Now I am back on the positives for Xara Pro 11 again as the import of PDF's are far superior to the programme that were're referring to on this topic Page Plus. I have PP X7/8 just recently purchased and its PDF import is not half as good as Pro 11 as if you don't have the font for the doc. on your system then the import of the text is appalling.
Then we come to the export in PP X8 of PDF's, I have more control over the output in Pro 11, not much but more. That takes me maybe to answer one of Digitalphaser question in post #38 when he complains about the dpi of the raster from the RGB effects. You do the same as you do in Illustrator you create a "Bitmap Copy", OK Illy does it showing the area in a very small panel and asking what dpi you want to render the effect but it is still the same.

The topic asks "Will Xara ever Create a DTP Programme (Like PagePlus)?" well it does and at the moment, it costs £44.99, which is nearly half the price of PP and it's OK. Have a look here and tell me its not worth the price: http://www.xara.com/uk/page-layout-designer/features/
For quick and dirty docs I think the programme does the business and for £45 you wouldn't think of using that for a large print run but you can. Yes it needs to improve, --> yes the way Styles are used suck in some ways --->Yes loads of things like page templates, content pages, index pages are missing. People here are comparing a vector drawing programme to a DTP programme which I think is poor. OK the man in charge was putting a marketing ploy on how good its product is and you can expect that but I still think that we got a good programme here that does most things well for printing from home or at you local printshop from the slant of DTP.