Quote Originally Posted by Acorn View Post
Both Affinity and Xara use proprietary file structures so if the product breaks or disappears so does your archive or book. On the other hand, MarkDown is plain ASCII that is parity with plain text. It is human-readble and there are many applications that will handle .md files. External image linking is trivial and goes where you put it. Your only loss is in-line vector creation.
Thanks
Thanks Acorn for all the work in the analysis of my note taking and book publishing issues. I have only now come back to the Xara Forum after having to focus on trying the Affinity Suite for 7 days before the trial period ran out plus additional days in researching note taking issues.

Decided on Microsoft Access database plus links
It was actually only today that I made up my mind to go with a variation of what you recommended, Acorn. I plan on continuing to use my Microsoft Access database which will have basically an abstract text version of what the note is about, then each record will have several hyperlink fields to link to either external Internet or internal data on my computer. So this way I can link to pretty much anything, CAD files, pdf, docx, png, svg, indd, afpub created by a variety of programs. The plan is to purchase a licence for Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo as my new program for creating most of the more complex documents that have a mixture of text, illustrations, images including my book.

Zara Designer Pro+ vs Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo
Both Zara Designer Pro+ and Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo are very interesting programs, interestingly both from the UK, both with very small file sizes, both Swiss Army knife type programs. I'm sick of the expensive American bloatware, so my prediction is more good things are going to come from Europe in the next years. The Xara files are even more highly compressed than Affinity. It appears however that Sarif has put a lot more time and money into their Affinity suite than Xara has with Xara Designer Pro+ in the last years. In my case I want the book writing features of Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo.

Microsoft Access database
I actually have been using an electronic Zettelkasten type note taking system for about 32 years already, I developed it myself using the Microsoft Access database when that first came out and presently holds about 50,000 individual notes. It's plain text but of course buried in a binary file. I back these up to a different filenames periodically in case of database corruption. The advantage of the Microsoft Access database is that I can add features as I like. I also developed my corporate accounting system using it and is more flexible than commercial accounting programs. My Microsoft Access note taking system is actually several different files each focusing on a different theme, book notes, general notes, Internet links, diary because they are arranged in different ways. I can search for keywords in about 1/10 of a second and this creates a list all the records line by line that have a certain keyword in them. That's great and I would hate to give up on that. While graphics could be linked into the database, it's not easily editable graphics and not multiple graphics in a document format I'm looking for. Having no inline graphics is a real disadvantage in my work and really limits the usefulness of the notes. As I said in an earlier message, I've been wrestling with documents that support graphics properly now for 34 years. I looked into Obsidian and also the other 100 note taking programs and also Schrivener for book writing. It's the same old problem, no good quality editable inline graphics. I hear you, Acorn, that text will be around for a longer time than specialty file formats. But I simply don't want to create an all text document with linked external graphics, they need to be part of the same document, in the same way that I would hand write the notes and drawings in pencil. So the solution is to link to an actual proper document like Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo document which has a mixture of text, illustration, and images.

Windows 7 and XP Mode
Using Windows 7 is key to accessing archived information which often means running programs that will not run in the newer operating system. Windows 7 in this regard is a joy to use with it's highly integrated XP Mode. I keep using it because what is the alternative for running older software and accessing older files that might have important information. This has to do with archival which you mentioned earlier. Windows 10 or 11 doesn't come with an integrated XP Mode, it does have the Hyper V virtual machine, but will Microsoft sell me Windows XP and Windows 7 operating systems along with the activation keys to go with that? No. And a lot of older programs won't work in compatibility mode. If Microsoft was truly interested in keeping computers safe they would be selling a version of Windows 11 that had XP and Windows 7 Mode also built in with Internet access disabled. I never connect XP Mode to the Internet so there is little chance of a virus or hacker creeping in through that operating system. Because of this dilemma, I completely rebuilt my Toshiba Qosmio X500, which has 2 HDD and an 18.6 inch true high definition screen, just months ago with an identical replacement motherboard from the US and a graphics card from China and so would like to continue using it. And so it would also be great if Xara and Serif allowed us to also download the previous versions that ran under Windows 7 along with the newer Windows 11 versions with a purchase so we can straddle the new and old hardware.

File size comparison for different programs
Below are the results of tests on minimum file sizes for different documents. Smallest Microsoft Word docx files are 12 K, Adobe Indesign 144 K, Affinity Publisher 10 K, and Xara Publisher Pro+ 4 K with the preview stripped out (simulating if unchecking preview image worked). So Adobe Indesign documents are not typically going to be used in any corporate or home office for small items because of their large file sizes. The advantage of both Xara and Affinity programs is that the file sizes are small enough they can be used in place of Microsoft Word which we all know handles complex graphics so poorly. Affinity Publisher is a pretty good program because in my opinion it could be used for any kind of written documents, notes, research documents, letters, booklets, brochures, and books.

Microsoft Word 2016, 12 K

Xara Designer Pro+, 4 K with jpeg thumbnail/preview stripped out of file
Xara Designer Pro+, 11 K with jpeg thumbnail/preview

Affinity Publisher, 10 K, no thumbnail on save
Affinity Designer, 9K, no thumbnail on save
Affinity Photo, 8K no thumbnail on save, 22x20 mm image

Adobe Indesign, 144 K, compression, no ICC, no pdf editing
Adobe Illustrator, 273 K, compression, no ICC, no pdf editing
Adobe Photoshop, 685 K, 22x20 mm image, CMYK, 8 bit

Searching for text in documents
There is no point in making notes unless you can find them. One of the main reasons for going with Microsoft Access database as an index for my documents is that it is difficult to search inside multiple documents on the hard drive. In Windows you can use the findstr command to search inside documents that contain text without opening them. But Microsoft Word 2016, Xara Publisher Pro+, and Affinity Publisher files are all compressed file formats and so here is no text to search. Another method is to use the Windows Explorer preview to see what is inside the files, but while Microsoft Word, Wordpad, and Notepad all have proper multiple page previewers, both Xara Publisher Pro+ and Affinity Publisher only show a thumbnail preview which can't really be read. Ideally the Microsoft Access database would have an afpub previewer built into the note boxes instead of plain text, then I could have what I really want. Microsoft Word fully supports Windows Explorer tags but so far this doesn't seem to be the case for Xara Publisher Pro+ and Affinity Publisher. It appears that note taking programs are mostly designed around having all the notes in a single file just like I have in the Microsoft Access database, this way a search can be done quickly on the entire collection of notes which is pretty great.

Paper based Zettelkasten vs Digital notes
The original Zettelkasten system used a unique file name for each card, and there were index cards dividing major sections of the notes. So my Microsoft Access database you could say is those index cards. My plan is for the documents to be on average a lot longer than the traditional Zettelkasten type notes, might be up to 500 pages long in the case of pdf books, so searching will be two steps, search database, search document. My database does use linked subForms so I can list multiple excerpts from long documents in separate records. A search on the Internet reveals that many people are starting to combine their notes into long documents, this is in a way not the way of the original Zettelkasten system of one file card for one thought but it is much easier to work on and find fewer longer documents. In my work, writing out one single sentence quotation or thought per note is not ideal as I want the complete document to provide background for that thought. So my database with subForms I think is the best of both worlds. Longer notes means less database index entries and this saves time.

File naming system
So the ideal file naming system for notes would be to have a unique filename for each note entry so that they could be moved to a temporary directory for writing a book and them moved back later. I plan on using the Camel Mode file naming system in the future with no spaces, for example 2024Mar20XaraAffinityForum.txt.

Conclusion
Zara Designer Pro+ and Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo both are in an ideal spot to take major market share from Microsoft Word, Adobe Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and CorelDraw and become dominant. At this point Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo is the leader. Time to say goodbye to Microsoft Word with it's poor illustration support. Time to say goodbye to Adobe because of huge file sizes and expensive subscriptions. Time to say goodbye to CorelDraw because they have no desktop publishing program, Ventura Publisher was dropped years ago. Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo could be used for any kind of written documents, notes, research documents, letters, booklets, brochures, and books. What could make it even better is a proper Windows Explorer preview and tagging.