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Hi Everyone,
Yesterday my copy XXP pro arrived (Netherlands). Today I looked at the manual an noticed that there are some duplate chapters in the Xara Extreme manual (not the supplement) . In chapter 11 after page 128 chapter 9 and 10 are repeated.
Do I have a unique manual or do you have the same?
Regards,
Frits
Not in mine. I'd keep quiet if I were you - they may charge you extra.Quote:
Originally Posted by frits
*shivers* That's strange. Anyone else care to comment on theirs?
The manual is done in Word, and it wears off a year of my life every time I compile it. Word is erm.. 'unhelpful'.. at times. So this is potentially frightening for me! Maybe it's a glitch at the printing end. I'd be very interested to hear if more people have issues, so we can see if it's just an odd occurence or a bit worse.
At least they're not falling apart due to the wrong glue this time. :)
Anthony, you need to find a copy of Ventura. Allison Moore will give you all the helpful advise/instruction you need. :)
Is that a software package? I think we'll be moving to a system that MAGIX uses, so there will probably be changes in this area anyway in terms of documentation management.
I don`t have that, so you must have a misprint which is ofcourseQuote:
Originally Posted by frits
a collectors item if you wait long enough. ;)
I think this just can be mistake in composition mashine.
Two chapters taked instead of one, its not possible to have many mistakes like this.
From other side, no way to read carefull page by page every one manual to find one or two wrong copies like this.
Anthony, yes, Ventura publish is software. Book publisher's still use it.
Corel bought and squashed all development for the last 4 years (they still sell I believe), but amazingly it is still pretty good and can handle large amount of text as well a graphics.
No duplicate chapters in the manual I received.
Phew. I don't mind the odd glitch caused at printing, but at least I didn't do a PDF where they're all like that!
Frits, would you like a replacement manual? Do you just have duplicates, or are pages missing?
Hi Antony,
Thanks for the offer, but I don't need a another manual. I checked it again and nothing is missing, there are just some extra pages.
It supprises me that no one else has the same " bug".
Greetings,
Frits
Oh good @(*&#!*$^. That's one of the poorer choices you could make for doing this manual. And there's no reason whatsoever for you to be shortening your life.Quote:
Originally Posted by AntonyF
As jclements says, Corel Ventura is the way to go for these things. You could have done the manual in perhaps a third of the time it took you in Word and with many fewer headaches. (On several comparisons I've run, it was more like one seventh of the time it took to do it in Word.)
You don't want to be using Quark or InDesign for the manual either. They both have their strengths, but they are not built for this sort of document. Once you have the idea of how Ventura works (and that isn't hard), it's a joy to use in the way that Xara is. Even if you pay full list price (about $600 US), Ventura will pay for itself in time saved (not to mention headaches not endured :)).
BTW, I'm currently assisting in the publication of third-party manuals for MS Office using Ventura. The person who's doing the bulk of the work last saw Ventura over 10 years ago. Since then, he's been working with InDesign, Word, and I think Quark. 2 weeks ago, I gave him a crash course in Ventura that lasted less than two hours. Since then, he and the author have updated between 400 and 500 pages, including text revisions, replacement of all screen grabs (of which there are many), captions and callouts with arrow placements, and index entries. Current expectation is that the pdf for this first book will go to the printer on Friday.
Of all the desktop publishing apps, Ventura is the most flexible and the most efficient.
You know what this means, don't you?Quote:
Originally Posted by frits
It means someone else is out there who's missing a chapter in his Xara manual
Dun DUN DUUUUNNN!!! ;)
It wasn't my choice, as Word isn't designed for such things and doesn't even support CMYK (which has led to Miro having to do lots of repair work on the PDFs). But the issues of stitching the chapters together aside, I've found it quite good actually. It was just the end process that was a nightmare.Quote:
Originally Posted by amoore
And it is better than Quark. :) But then most stuff is. Notepad is probably preferable. :D
I will keep Ventura in mind though if I want to do anything like that myself in the future. Not that I would though. :D
High time to port the good old !Impression to the Windows platform...
No duplicates here either.
How did you stitch them together? Have you used a master document? I'm just curious, as I've created a book with over 17 chapters in Word, and I've had no problems with the basics, and it includes a table of contents and an index using a master document to stitch everything together.Quote:
Originally Posted by AntonyF
I also thought that Word respected the color space of any imported graphics, so if you only inserted CMYK art, everything should work, but you make this sound like an incorrect assumption. I only used greyscale, so don't have any experience with that.
The 'stitching them together' part?Quote:
It was just the end process that was a nightmare.
David
Working in Word...I just finished my dissertation this past year, finally got my PhD (took nearly 10 years...sigh...) but did the whole thing in MS Word. Before my final edit it was over 1,200 pages, finally trimmed down to 857 plus index, bibliography, etc.
All my graphics were done with Xtreme, by the way. (Most done before Pro was available.)
Had no trouble with Word at all, but then I've been using it so long that its quirks probably seem so familiar I think of them as features...LOL)
Anyway, to get back on topic, I checked my basic Xtreme manual and the Pro supplement. No extra pages, missing pages, etc. Very well done.
And Antony, whatever headaches the software may have given you, your final product is absolutely superb. I've read a LOT of software manuals, and this one stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest.
Congratulations. This superb software deserves nothing less than a superb manual, and you delivered!
Thanks...
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Will
I totally agree ... writing a manual is one of the hardest jobs I've ever had to do. It's tough to stay interested and to pitch it at the right level for the reader.Quote:
Originally Posted by WolfMoonHP
This is almost certainly the best I've ever read. Well done
I agree, the manual is superb and an easy read. I have no extra or missing pages though I did get two Pro Supplements. Is anybody short of one?
derek
Probably so. :) That seems to be a common assumption. Besides, I expect that you're also fairly disciplined in your approach, and that goes a long way toward making Word behave.Quote:
Originally Posted by WolfMoonHP
When it's behaving, Word can do some nice things. When it's not, it can be a nightmare. And even when Word is working well, it still takes many more keystrokes and mouse drags to accomplish most things than it does in Ventura.
As for reliability, I often remind myself of Packard Bell computers. That was an American brand that had a very poor reliability record. I recall once seeing a survey in which the Packard Bell repair rate was something like 50%. That is, 50% of the survey respondents who had Packard Bell computers indicated that their machines had been repaired during the reporting period. It was the worst repair record by far, but it was still only 50%. For the other 50% of the users, the Packard Bells were presumably working just fine.
My brother-in-law bought several Packard Bells for his family. He truly does not understand why people complained about them. But then he also assumed that needing repair was "just the way it is with computers". :)
I just checked my manual and I don't have any of the extras noted above. No collector's edition here ;)
Allison...I'm a Virgo...discipline goes with the territory :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by amoore
---
Will
Another praise for Xara's manual. At first I was reluctant about getting the manual since most software manuals are poorly made...but to my surprise this one is really good.
That makes two of us. :rolleyes::rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by WolfMoonHP