Pasted Text into MS Word is Fuzzy

[georgerai]

Hi

Im using Xara Extreme Pro V 3.02.781

I do a lot of technical drawings that includes diagrams and electrical circuits.

I've found that text created in XARA pro comes across as quite fuzzy when its printed out on paper in Word. It seems as if no matter what I do the text is presented in a raster or bitmapped form rather than as vector mapped ?

Ive changed over from Smartdraw V5.52 which I normally use to do the technical illustrations. The text from this comes across as very clean and sharp.


I've setup Xara options to use anti-aliasing - but that hasn't fixed the problem.

I also tried exporting the XARA image and text as a windows metafile (vector based graphic) and then tried importing that into Word but I still get slightly fuzzy text The text actually looks like its an image rather than editable text font.

Is there a way of pasting text from Xara to MS word (2003 or 2007)
as text rather than an image ?

Has V4 of Xara corrected this problem ?


many thanks

G.

Keywords Text exporting paste metafile fuzzy printing problem

[steve.ledger]

Welcome to TG

This has been addressed from version 3.2 onwards of Xtreme.
Text now pastes into Word and is editable provided it is not copied to the clipboard along with any graphic objects..

[georgerai]

Many Thanks Sledger


I upgraded to 4.01.5601

Yes - Text now prints very sharp. Many thanks.

I also noticed that cross hatching now prints sharp as well.

I was surprised that all my old text in diagrams also now print correctly.
I thought I might have to go back and put in new text but not the case.


Great improvement, thanks again


G.

[georgerai]

Sledger

I'd like to make a clarification

Circuit diagram with text prints sharp text and diagram lines from Xara Pro

Diagram prints sharp lines and text when:
exported as EMF Enhanced Windows Metafile and then imported into
Word 2007 and then printed.

Diagram prints sharp lines and text when:
exported and then imported as WMF file into Word 2007.
BUG: mixed Fonts, Symbols and Time New Roman text gets interpreted as all Symbols font
by MS Word 2007

HOWEVER (!) MS picture manager interprets the mixed font text correctly !
(therefore this points to a MS Word 2007 WMF importing text/fonts bug.)

I tried to attach the WMF and EMF file samples but talkgraphics pulls upload errors ....



Diagram prints fuzzy text and lines if simply pasted from Xara pro to word 2007.

Yes if I copy and paste only text - that prints out in word very sharply.

I tried putting text in one layer and diagram in a second layer.
That didnt seem to help - everything still prints out fuzzy in Word - likes its bitmapped rather than vector mapped (WMF / EMF)

Question
When I try to paste a Xara diagram into word 2007 my paste mouse function doesnt allow me any choice as to what type of paste I can do (bitmapped Vs WMF/EMF). It seems to force a bitmap paste on you. Is there any way to set the option of pasting as a vector mapped image (WMF or especially EMF since WMF is causing text font translation errors).

Copy and Pasting is significantly simpler than having to copy a portion of a diagram into a fresh Xara page - then exporting as EMF file then having to import this EMF file into Word 2007.

Is there a simpler way or am I trying to force Xara pro into doing vector mapped graphics it is not normally used for (E.G., technical Illustrations) ?


I have uploaded the diagram as a XAR file. Why doesnt talkgraphics allow me to upload the same file in WMF and EMF format (without having to Zip them) ?



Thanks
G.

[Soquili]

G there isn't any way to tell Word 2007 how to paste a copied graphic. When you copy from Xara, or any vector graphics application Word will paste as a jpeg image with OLE information so you can double click the image to open the program that created the image.

Microsoft created the EMF (Enhanced Meta File) format to correct some of the problems with their older WMF (Windows Meta File) format. The font issue was one of those problems.

Xara Xtreme can be used to create technical drawings but that is not it's main purpose. Xara Ltd promotes Xtreme for designing web graphics and now has included photo editing, and web page design.

[Xcellent]

Just adding some (maybe) useful information for the perfectionist

When exporting to .emf or .wmf from xara, scale your drawing up to 400% (or higher!) and then export it. When importing it then into Word, scale it back down again. The reason to do this is to keep more detail in your vector drawings.

[Xhris]

Hi Georgerai,
The answer to your question is as follows: When pasting just a text object from Xara to Word (2007) then just the rich text will be pasted. Any other object however is pasted as a Xara OLE object by default. This in theory is the best kind of object to paste as it essentially embeds the xar file object into Word whereby a double-click loads the content into Xara for easy editing. The pasted file increases the word doc file size by about the same amount as the png image of the object copied from Xara would. However, where Xara haven't quite got it right for complete usefulness of this feature is that the OLE object that is pasted into Word always has a display resolution of 96 ppi (screen resolution). Resizing the object in Word will cause the image to be resampled again (vector-like) at 96 ppi. When printing—something often done with Word docs, this object is thus always 96 ppi (too low for print) and is noticeably fuzzy. I'm not sure whether Xara plan to implement a resolution option to the pasted OLE object, but it would make this particularly good feature of Xara fully useful.
You can use Word’s “Paste Special…” command on the Home tab > Clipboard group > on the Paste button dropdown menu, to manually select what kind of object should be pasted in—but if not just text, there is not necessarily an advantage to selecting W/EMF as they are also pasted in at 96 ppi. They do not however resample when reduced in physical size (i.e. are bitmap-like), and thus pasting in a larger copy and shrinking it will increase its effective resolution, as Xcellent says.