Xara as a Page Layout tool?

[TDolce]

Hi,

I know that for serious page layout work many swear by Quark or InDesign for such tasks, but has anyone here used Xara Xtreme for this? I was just wondering as I was saddled with the task of creating a 6 page newsletter for my team at the office and really did not get overly excited about the prospect of trying to learn yet another app for this. I played around with a default A4 double page spread template in XaraXtreme and although it seemed neat, it did some strange things when I tried to export it out as a pdf file. When I select "show print guide lines" it really gets strange and the guides do not supercede the images on the page that bleed, making it harder to follow them as well. The final format indeed will need to be pdf and after messing with another tool called pdf995 and Primo Pdf, they both did some strange things with the resulting file.

I guess I can just create a blank 8.5 x 11 page template and then save each one as a different page and then compile it in an aftermarket pdf file organizer, but honestly, I do wish to have the option to have an image spread between two pages (a splash if you will).

if you haven't gathered that I'm pretty clueless with page layout, then let me assure you that I am.

[remi]

I would recommend Adobe Indesign, Corel Draw or Scribus for this task.

[Availor]

I stick with remi, though I am familiar only with Indesign and Quark. Xara is not the most appropriate tool for page layout.

If you have much text, Xara is not the tool to handle it although I know people did succeed in it (only a matter of how hard you want something I guess).

[Odat]

I'd also recommend Scribus for this task (it's free), but that sort of precludes your not wanting to learn a whole new application.

You could use multiple layers in your Xara document to represent the pages and use PrimoPdf/pdf995 to merge each page into a single document, as you already mentioned.

I've never had any problems with either of them (though I prefer PrimoPDF for being less "naggy") as far as output goes, so I can't comment on that. Possibly it has something to do with the spread you where using, since Xara also had a problem with it as well?

[TDolce]

Thanks Guys, yeah,...I shouldn't have said that I didn't want to learn a new app, as that would lead one to believe that I'm close minded to new things and I'm surely not. The "Free" price tag plays a big factor in that too, so I think I can force myself to learn something new especially if it's free!!

I imagine it would be quicker in the long run, to learn a new app over trying to spend time trying to make one work that really isn't up to the task.

TD

[Soquili]

I imagine it would be quicker in the long run, to learn a new app over trying to spend time trying to make one work that really isn't up to the task.

It usually is quicker, at least from my experience. I'm not familiar with print layouts, so I would have to learn a lot about that before I could try and do any type of work around.

[masque]

I use Xara for page layout work quite a lot. For a multi page document running into many pages I use Serif PagePlus as its the easiest and least irritating to use while being afordable, but for three or four pages or simple double sided I always go with Xara. Text is typed in Word for spell checking and copied and pasted into Xara in managable chunks.
Menus like the attached with columns of text, numbered and a seperate column for the price etc is easy enough to do and the ease of moving stuff around for adjusting the layout and accomodating graphics is for me worth the inconvienience that the shortage of some features causes.
Derek

[Daniel]

I did a 32-page A5 catalogue using only Xara - it came out great.

I used 33 layers: one for the common page elements (background, design around the edges, header/footer) and one for each page. I did it as a double page spread, naming each layer after the page it represented.

For proofing on paper I exported the whole drawing a PNG file and selected the option to put layers into individual files. It did mean proofing pages without the background images in place (because they themselves were in a file of their own of course), but it worked very well.

The printer wanted the artwork supplying with pages laid out as they'd print, so to do that I just made the layers for page 1 and 32 visible at the same time and exported, then 2 and 31, then 3 and 30, then 4 and 29 etc: a left page is always a left page and a right page is always a right page so it doesn't matter.

Sure, for large amounts of text Xara isn't ideal, but for my project I think it was fairly close to ideal. The freedom and ease of designing far outweighed the lack of page thumbnail previews and other nice things you'd get in a DTP program, but I had a lot of cut-out photos and didn't have a lot of text so it was a breeze in Xara.

My client wanted a downloadable PDF version of the catalogue too, so I exported each page as a PDF from Xara and then imported all 32 PDFs into Serif PagePlus 11 and exported as one file, winding down the bitmap resolution from 300dpi to 96dpi. Knowing now how easily and near-perfectly the Serif PagePlus program can import PDFs from Xara though, I might be tempted to rely on PDF importing for designy bits next time, and stick to PagePlus for the straight DTP.

I've always seen Serif's software about, and to be honest usually think that it's a bit crap, but PP11 is actually suprisingly good! I've used it a couple of times to send items to printers like letterheads and business cards after first creating them in Xara. The downside to buying anything from Serif is that they phone me every month trying to be my friend, thinking that I'd buy more software from them by accident after a nice jolly conversation. They'll do anything for a sale though, so knock half off the PP11 list price and ask if you can have it at that price because your colleague only paid that price.

[masque]

TDOLCE
Further to my previous post, whilst I recommed Xara for doing what I need, or Serif if you really want an affordable DTP program; if you are in the UK, in a house, Computer Shopper magazine is giving away a full version of Quark Express 5 on a cover disk.
I wouldn't touch it with a stick after previous encounters but if its up your street then it won't get cheaper than free.
Derek

[jclements]

As the folks indicated above if you were to use Xara:

Make sure to use layers (ie., I would always have a separate layer for text (perhaps even a layers for each type of Heading) and other layers for various graphic elements, transparent overlays, etc.

Take advantage of guidelines and make sure to lock the guides layer after you have set your template up.

John