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

[Ben Wiens]

Offer up a 'page' from your website that we can dissect to see how well we can do.

1. I've created a sample file in xra format, which I extracted from my website, for anyone to play with, I get 122.1 K for a full 2 page document with a complex vector header, this xra file likely has 3.9 K page setup section, 2.0 K of text, 10 K vector header, and 106.2 K preview jpeg. It would be great to eliminate the preview jpeg and this would bring the file size down to about 15.9 K (unless the vector embedding adds overhead).

2. I created a template which had the create preview image unchecked and this did not reduce the filesize of 1 page of text, the preview image was still there and visible in Windows Explorer.

3. Acorn, I am getting a new Windows 11 computer, really, and have been waiting for the right parts to become available for a year already. Along with it some upgraded programs, the reason for this trial. But was still hoping to install some newer programs on a Windows 7 machine and the reason for those questions.

4. Acorn, I was an early adopter of Windows 10, installed it on my main computer soon after it came out on the recommendation of Microsoft and shortly after bought a Nokia Windows smartphone, which was a great smartphone, drank in the Microsoft Windows 10 on all devices cool aid and looked forward to a bright future with Windows 10 forever. My computer was only about 3 years old then and had shipped with Windows 7. This was a horrible mistake to upgrade it and after tearing my hair out for 2 years, Microsoft technical experts told me it had been a mistake to suggest the upgrade because my 3 year old Intel i7 Quad processor was not compatible. It also seemed like due to me being an early adopter of Windows 10, Microsoft more than likely used my laptop as one of many remote servers to disseminate Windows 10 to the world. The router I was using reported a huge spike in Internet traffic during this period. Poor laptop, it wasn't made for this kind of punishment. I went back to Windows 7 then and realize I liked it so much better.

5. The expert I used to look inside the xar file format would like to know if an updated xar format specification is available. See http://site.xara.com/support/docs/webformat/spec/ for the only one we can find which was lasted updated on 2007Sep14. Key questions, does xra file format now use the UCS-2, UTF-16, or UTF-16 text encoding.

6. Acorn, regarding Obsidian. I have looked into about 100 of these note taking programs in the last months and couldn't find anything I liked, always something major missing. According to Wikipedia, "Obsidian operates on a folder of text documents; each new note in Obsidian generates a new text document". I understand that add-ons such as ExcaliDraw are available, but doesn't this just result in a mixture of Obsidian main notes being pure text and ExcaliDraw creating entirely doodles in a separate image file, rather than a mix of vector, raster, and text in a note like could be done in Xara Designer Pro? My idea of a perfect modern Zellelkasten note taking system is to have longer notes of sometimes a few pages (even you suggested that) similar to how students take multi page notes in class. I might have one note for a project that I'm working on and add to it for months or even years which would become pages long. But I want the drawings to be higher quality than doodles by using Bezier curves, and located between section of typed text and have proper tables and equations. This is the concept of "visual note taking" which is more desirable than text only note taking but the ideal is to have graphics and typed text all together with the graphics mostly anchored to the text. Besides Xara Designer Pro, I have yet to find a program that does such a thing as for example Corel Designer does not anchor objects with text, Microsoft OneNote, Samsung Notes do not have editable Bezier vector drawings, Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer do not have multiple page capability, and Adobe Indesign is way too clumsy to use for note taking and has huge file sizes.

2024Feb26 Make the Boeing 737 MAX safe again.xar

[Acorn]

@Ben, thank you for the sample file. It clocks in at 119.3kB

I have to assume that the untick of the Preview in the Save Template dialog is where you ought to be able to remove the Preview image.
It appears not to work in XPro+ so I believe it has to be a Bug.
I will leave you to tackle Xara with this as you have more skin in the game. There may be other associated issues that you should raise at the same time.

Your original numbered bullets (1} to (4), I think, are now answered, if not fully addressed:

(1) File Size.
To 'remove' the Preview image, my current fix is to create a very short first page that is blank. I estimate the Preview file is ~4kB.
You may wish to experiment with making the first page 0.5in x 0.5in to reduce this to near nothing. I'll leave the analysis to you and your expert. I find my poodle's eyes cross when he has to do sums.
You should lose the Scale to fit width setting else your HTML render will scale the view setting to fit your browser.

As a design approach, I have placed a Title & Revision section into the MouseOver layer so that the Preview image is monochromatic (here, white). You could colour code your Notes if you wanted.
The first page filename is a mix of abbreviated Title and Revision Date.
I set up an altered Template (US Letter 1-column - no Preview.xar) for this. It is 7.33kB. You need to accept this as your overhead.
Should you export this as PDF (enabled with Web Properties > Export > Viewer options > PDF download then the output file size is 5.42kB - US_Letter_1-column_-_no_Preview.pdf
I took your XAR file and added it into my new Template and got this: 2024Feb26 Make the Boeing 737 MAX safe again (Acorned).xar, it is now 38kB with PDF 25.9kB - 2024Feb26_Make_the_Boeing_737_MAX_safe_again__Acorned_.pdf

The greater reduction is where I applied your (2) ask.

(2) Externally linked images.
I took your header group and exported it as an SVG - BWTG.svg.
I immediately linked to it in its external location, saving 77.8kB of internal file storage.
I also make it Repeat on all note pages as well as make it Repel text under.
This replaces it: <img class="xr_ap" src="revision-yyyymondd_html_files/BWTG.svg" alt="" title="" style="left:0px;top:17px;width:816px;height:76px;" >; just over 128B per reference.

The benefit is you can preserve all your 300+dpi images in their own repository and reference to them for any of your Notes.

For your book, where the images are pure vector, they will be stored in Xara's compressed FLARETEXT format. I would not outload such items.
In passing, there has been no public update of the XAR Format Document that I have seen.
I would also assume UTF-8: <meta charset="utf-8">, probably around the time the applications went 64-bit. It is also probably USC-2.

(3) Equation editor.
Is possible with the right product.

(4) Book size.
I would simply append your collated Notes into one long XAR (100+ pages) and export as PDF.
If your images are externally-linked and in-line diagrams are vector, there will be no quality issues and no in-depth editing needed.


(*) Obsidian.
The MarkDown equivalent file is 8.16kB with links to the above SVG: Make the Boeing 737 MAX safe again.txt - replace .txt with .md (a TG restriction).
I would use Xara exclusively for diagrams and export each as SVG into the same folder as the Notes so linkage is just ![[BWTG.svg]] and is "anchored".
they could be in their own location and externally-link as well but keeping one Obsidian Vault for Notes and diagrams does all the heavy lifting.

Add a few hundred Notes and images and then you see the power of Obsidian's Graph view:



Not to mention Search:



Acorn