Xara Designer Pro+ questions about desktop publishing and note taking features

[handrawn]

...I like a challenge...

rather though you would

[gwpriester]

Ben - Welcome to TalkGraphics

I have been using Xara since 1995. I have also produced over a dozen paperback books, all fiction, using Xara. And I have cursed a blue streak with every book because of simple features that should be part of the app but are not there. But I use Xara because I know it so well and even though there are many key features for DTP missing, I am able to work around the missing features.

Last year, I tried Affinity Publisher to recreate a book I had already produced just to see what the process and experience was. And I have to say, I wish I had used Affinity Publisher a long time ago.

It is created specifically for desk top publishing with sophisticated formatting options, and such simple but essential functions such as Master Pages. It took me a while to get up to speed and I relied heavily on Affinity's support page/community, who were knowledgeable, helpful, and quick to respond. I am pretty sure that most of the advanced features you are asking about are included and arranged in logical groups of related features in Affinity Publisher.

Xara is great for many things, and I use it daily to create and assemble my 3D stereograms. I cannot think how I could ever live without it.

But if you are going to the trouble of learning a new program, investigating Affinity Publisher would be well worth the time invested.

[handrawn]

added advantage of affinity is that, although vector/bitmap/publishing are three seperate programs, they all open each others file types [bit like adobe] so many operations are effectively seamless

I don't really do books, but affinity publisher is what it says on the tin; xara tries to be a bit of everything, and sadly often fails to be

[gwpriester]

+1

[bwood]

+1

Another +1 for Affinity publisher. Xara is Swiss army, but Affinity is the tool for this job.

[Acorn]

So then Ben, I wish you well with Affinity.
You originally specified "File size is important then" with "all the graphic files need to be externally linked".

Your 737 MAX file with only text is 132kB and its PDF is 415.42kB for all of two and a half pages.
Affinity offers little in the way of embedding external content.
The switching back and forth with Affinity is on a page-by-page basis.
...

Another +1 for Affinity publisher. Xara is Swiss army, but Affinity is the tool for this job.

Bill, going back to the OP's initial ask, I would have to disagree.
It would be fine for a book's production but not for the preceding note taking. It doesn't readily handle external images either.

How can you easily manage 100,000 notes without some retrieval system? Remember too that both Affinity and Xara are using proprietary file structures.

Anyhow the OP seems to have set his path to Affinity.

Acorn

[mwenz]

... It (Affinity Publisher) doesn't readily handle external images either. ...

Images can be linked versus embedded. It's kinda the default when placing images, at least once the Prefer Linked policy is set. Unless you mean something else.

[bwood]

Bill, going back to the OP's initial ask, I would have to disagree.
It would be fine for a book's production but not for the preceding note taking. It doesn't readily handle external images either.

How can you easily manage 100,000 notes without some retrieval system? Remember too that both Affinity and Xara are using proprietary file structures.

Anyhow the OP seems to have set his path to Affinity.

Acorn

Point taken Acorn. I joined the party late. Many thanks for the heads up on obsidian. Love it. Beats sticky notes and notepad.

[Ben Wiens]

Last year, I tried Affinity Publisher to recreate a book I had already produced just to see what the process and experience was. And I have to say, I wish I had used Affinity Publisher a long time ago.

Thanks for the suggestion. Affinity was on my list of programs to look into but somehow I had not researched it very well because Affinity Designer doesn't have multiple page capability and hasn't been in the market for a long time and might not be very popular and lasting. My ideal program would be a program that can do note taking as well as books.

Then handrawn mentioned that each of the Affinity programs open each other's files types and this seemed interesting. In the last few days I've researched the Serif company and the Affinity Publisher, Designer, and Photo and it opened up my eyes. These programs have become very popular with 3,000,000 users of at least one of the modules. And version 2 has added some more features and now it has all the book features I would need.

The fact that Designer and Photo can work in Publisher could save a lot of time in writing an illustrated book and the fact that Designer doesn't have multiple page capability might not be an issue at all if I do the notes in Publisher rather. So for books, Affinity Publisher is a winner in my mind, for the note taking it depends on the minimum file size of the documents. Adobe Indesign minimum file size is 144 K with as many things turned off as possible which is too big for note taking.

So I plan on downloading the Affinity Suite tomorrow. Not only is Affinity Suite way cheaper than Adobe Creative Cloud but it might be way faster to work with. Crossing my fingers that Affinity Suite is the Swiss Army knife program that I've been looking for. Version 2 likely doesn't run on Windows 7 and guess there is no way of buying Version 2 and also getting Version 1 which I think can run on Window 7?

[handrawn]

Version 1 is no longer available; also it is not so easy to transfer an affinity licence unless the seller is willing to give over the email address as well, because to quote affinity 'one is encoded in the other' [and you would also likely need their permission so to transfer]

but if you could get it, it should run on windows 7 service pack 1 or later

you only pay once for affinity per version - ie: once for ver1 and then for upgrade to ver2; will be same for version 3; meanwhile all the updates one bug fixes are free; no subscription

xara users should be so lucky, though of course, affinity does not do web-design...