Re: Flexible Page Numbering
On page numbering, I am holding out for Section, Chapter and Page. After all, Magix/Xara claims:
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Page & Layout Designer combines all the text and page layout features of typical word processor & DTP packages with the image editing power of Xara's award winning illustration & photo editing tools, to produce a fully integrated, flexible & powerful 'Document Processor'.
Acorn
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Well yeah. How long have we been begging for master pages like other page layout/publishing applications.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
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Originally Posted by
gwpriester
Well yeah. How long have we been begging for master pages like other page layout/publishing applications.
Xara products are not page/layout applications...That said, CD has master pages and people painstakingly create books with it, too. No idea why anyone would, but hey, no one asked me.
I would much rather have things fixed, add, etc., for print design than have further forays into something it cannot really be.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Well Mike for what it's worth. I am laying out Mary's new book (I am estimating 300 pages), and the process with the new page numbering is making the job a whole lot easier. I edited a 60 page section yesterday, and it went really fast and I am very pleased with the typography.
By small adjustments to the tracking settings, it is possible to eliminate widows or extend a widow into a few words that is not at all noticeable to the reader. Some lines where the word spacing is too apparent decreasing the tracking a tick or two brings up a word and tightens up the line. I find this easy to do in Xara. So yes, there are better programs out there for what I am doing, but nobody looking at the final book is going to know or care what program I used. The only thing that matters is the typesetting looks professional. And in my opinion it does.
We are aiming at releasing the book in January so when it is available I will post a link and you can tell me if it looks convincing or not. :)
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Gary, I'm not saying it cannot be done. And I'm not saying the results cannot be pleasing.
What I am saying is there are simply many options out there that are more efficient and that Xara products will never be that. As well, I am saying that within the scope of what Xara products are, there are long standing issues that need fixed, that there are things that need fleshed out and yet more things that, again within the present scope of what Xara products are, should be added.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
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Originally Posted by
mwenz
Xara products are not page/layout applications...
I beg to differ with you. I have totally enjoyed Xara as a substitute for QuarkXPress. It has most of the typographical possibilities of Quark, and much more when compared with the classic Quark version 3.32 for Win 3.1/95, which I still occasionally use in a virtual W2K session under VirtualBox.
As to the left and right pages problem, there are imposition solutions that can be used to alleviate/circumvent it. You can export the Xara file as a PDF and impose the pages with a PDF imposition program, e.g. Montax Imposer (http://www.montax-imposer.com/download), or if you are using the services of a commercial printer, they can impose the pages for you setting gutters and margins, etc.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Lex - The problem is we self publish through CreateSpace and from a submitted PDF file. CreateSpace will reject the PDF if the text is not within the acceptable margins. And I am not sure how these publish on demand digital presses work, but the output is what you input to them.
The fix I am suggesting (placement control over left and right hand pages) should not be rocket science to implement.
I was going to publish this next book with Ingram Spark who offer more options including hard cover with dust jacket but I have not heard much good about their support or timing. CreateSpace has been very responsive and easy to work with.
Mike - To quote one of my least favorite Secretaries of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, "You go to war with the Army you have." ;)
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gwpriester
The problem is we self publish through CreateSpace and from a submitted PDF file.
Dear Gary,
I am not sure why you should not be able to use Montax for this. It supports 1UP-imposition (most other impo programs do not!) and you can reprocess the Xara PDF with different margins for left and right. The result is a normal PDF (with normal pages, crop marks and other additions are not required). I suggest you try their demo.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
OK. Though to be honest, selecting each left page text block, changing the location in the X Co-ordinate, then checking off Just this Selection has a kind of Zen meditation-like quality to it. :)
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lex
Dear Gary,
I am not sure why you should not be able to use Montax for this. It supports 1UP-imposition (most other impo programs do not!) and you can reprocess the Xara PDF with different margins for left and right. The result is a normal PDF (with normal pages, crop marks and other additions are not required). I suggest you try their demo.
I use Montax Pro. Great application and I highly recommend it for people needing to do imposition. And it would work for setting different margins, I suppose. But I've never tried it.
It doesn't in any way resolve other issues that master pages or layout applications do by nature.
Ya know, QXP has moved on a bit since 1992, Lex. XDP isn't in any way as capable as Q or ID or PagePlus (which I believe Gary has) nor even Viva Designer. And it never will be that. XDP now has a (very) little bit of OT Feature support, it needs more love in this department, but even what is has needs fixed/fleshed out. I design fonts. I cannot test anything but the most simple OT Features in XDP and even those (like ligatures) can only have bog standard ways implemented in the OT Lookups.
Further, there seems to be an issue with the encoding of fonts in XDP. Now, I think this is one of the issues that have been fixed but as of yet not released.
I do books, technical manuals, catalogs, etc as a job. If I had to use XDP for these layout tasks, I think I would go insane and I know my bottom line would shrivel up.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mwenz
I do books, technical manuals, catalogs, etc as a job. If I had to use XDP for these layout tasks, I think I would go insane and I know my bottom line would shrivel up.
I know what you mean. Xara is not for intricate books. I have been in publishing for over 30 years now, and back in the days when I did print publications I used Ventura for that. I rely very much on virtualization nowdays, and I still have a working installation of Ventura 4.2 on my W2K virtual machine. Xara is a good substitute for the things I did with Quark in the 1990's like shorter pieces of a few pages.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Well, I would argue it is inefficient for novels as well...
I started this madness with Xerox's Ventura Publisher (and other modules) that ran under the GEM interface in the late 1980s. Did several manuals until Xerox divested it. And I have Corel Ventura 10 installed here on a Windows 10 computer. Every once in a while I need to convert an older publication to newer software, both those I did and (often) US government publications. There is nothing today that can match some of its long-document handling features. I still dislike Corel's decision to kill it off rather than go through the work of making it compliant as regards OTF fonts, etc.
Once in a blue moon, the good ol' days were just that...
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Re: Flexible Page Numbering
OK We have gone far off topic here (as usual).
My point is I appreciate the ability to control the start of the page numbering.
The book I am working on is a novel. I am very happy with the results and I am doing this in a program I am familiar with.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gwpriester
I am very happy with the results and I am doing this in a program I am familiar with.
Gary,
That looks fine. My point, if any, is that since Xara is apt at doing basic page content layout, one could leave it at that, and augment this layout by postprocessing the resulting PDF by other programs, adding page numbers, changing the margins and gutters, splitting a two-column spread into individual pages, etc.
Re: Flexible Page Numbering
I'm with Gary on this one. Thanks Gary for pointing the improvement. It will be of benefit.
If post processing can be avoided it is much the best.
