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

[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