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

[Acorn]

Ben, welcome to TalkGraphics. I like a challenge.

1. There is no large preview image in any Xara design file. There is a 32kB Bitmap in the Bitmap Gallery. This is not used in any design unless you explicitly copy it in. It is in the program, not the design, or on any rendered output. XPro+ rendered page backgrounds use CSS with <span> Tags or SVG fills so anything like this is tens of bytes..
I used the A-4 1-column template with Opens Sans 10pt. I created 6 pages of text (22,000 chars) and the design file was 60kB. Each rendered HTML page was 10kB. I would use multiple paged design files and treat each page as one file equivalent. I'll cover how many pages per design file later on. The overheads of rendering obviously share the other required assets (JS, CSS, WOFF). So if you have 100k files your design files would be 1GB. If you rendered all out to HTML or PDF then another 1GB.

2. It is relative easy to link to external images. You create a Placeholder and make it Repel text under. Then you include an HTML <img> Tag with src to the external file. If you want to see the actual image in the design, you would Re-generate the Placeholder.; an image smaller in size (probably) to the original would appear and become part of the design file size. Unticked, there is no overhead. It depends if you need to see the image in the design or only as rendered. Potentially, you could just drag your image in, apply its Image Filename and , crucially, Optimise Photo. The original is preserved but the design and render are kept at 192/96dpi. External linking to achieve 300dpi is clearly going to be the best for you.

3. I would search out a web widget such as MathJax. You add its code to your design website head and put your editable equation into another Placeholder.

4. PDF/X 300dpi is more than adequate.

For books 50 - 800 pages, I would split into sections/chapters of up to 100 pages. Export as PDF/X and use a utility to merge the sections/chapters into your book. I have handled 500-page designs without images and Xara barely copes. Its newest version may, I have not checked.

If you choose to isolate each file then you loose the power of linkage.
I would chuck/gather themed content into a multi-page design file, where, for little overhead, you can hyperlink easily across pages. With a little effort, your links can cross into other rendered chunks, making a cohesive whole.

An alternative is to change your text files into MarkDown files. You get the benefit of using a plain text editor but display as HTML and print to PDF.
I would use something like GitHub where you can have your own private repository. I use similar but self-hosted with Datenstrom Yellow but your project is probably too big for that.

Acorn

[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

[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...

[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.

You also said you were "an early adopter of Windows 10" and getting W11 but here you are now asking about W7.

Xara Pro+ will do what you want with a first page preview image overhead that I have reduced dramatically for you. Xara could probably eliminate this totally if you advised them of the issue.
Xara comes with the joy of in-line graphic and vector manipulation alongside text.
The trade-off is around 10kB per page of text that is a factor of three above raw ASCII.

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.
If I did not have XPro+, I would exclusively use Boxy SVG as I can deliver SVG animations and retain the same SVG for re-editing.
The SVG code will paste directly although is is better to use an image link; Obsidian allows drag and drop into any document file as will any other good MarkDown editor.

I will not trivialise the task you have set yourself but you are juggling with system and archive instability without addressing your computers first and then how to handle all the metadata around achieving a fully integrated and searchable archive.

For almost in-line LaTeX in an .md file you could use add a <script> line: <script src="https://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML"> </script>and thereafter surround LaTeX with $$: $$V_{sphere} = \frac{4}{3}\pi r^3$$. This also works in XPro+ but the text needs to be turned into a Named htmlblocktext area.

Obsidian + Boxy SVG >> Xara Designer Pro >> Affinity Suite.
I think you would be better with a purchase (https://www.xara.com/webdesigner/v20/) rather than a subscription.

Acorn

P.S. I would have liked some sort of acknowledgement for the effort put into Post#17.