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NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
I know many of you were surprised when we launched Photo & Graphic Designer 9 without Pro X9. Well, we have another surprise for you – we’ve just announced a completely new product in the Xara range, Xara Page & Layout Designer. As the name implies it draws together the text and page layout features from existing Designer products, combines them with some new DTP type features and templates, adds in some of the drawing and photo tools to create a Designer product optimized for any type of print document creation. We’re planning to launch this next week, but you can already find out all about the new product on the Xara site @ http://www.xara.com/page-layout-designer/
It remains the case that Designer Pro is our top of the range, so v9 it will get all the features of Page & Layout Designer. So if you are a Designer Pro owner you might want to hurry along to Gary Priester’s ‘Quick Look at Page & Layout Designer’ on the Xara Xone @ http://xaraxone.magix.net/PLD/index.htm where you’ll be able to deduce some more of the new features you can expect in Pro X9, which will be arriving very soon!
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
I guess this means pro is probably another few weeks away at least. I'm mostly interested in the new web stuff from web designer but the new dtp and print document features will be nice to have too. Will pro have any exclusive new features up it's sleve?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
You will find out the answer to that fairly soon - it's less than a few weeks, but more than a cup of tea away!
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
I'm incredibly excited for XDP9. If checking the features on this will give a good idea of what to expect from DTP features in Pro, then great.
-- Ben
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Thanks Kate. Now it makes sense. Good job. Look out indesign=D>
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Is the new product 64Bit compatible? or still 32Bit?
Jim
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Page & Layout Designer will be available as a 32 bit program, which of course will install on a 64 bit operating system as well as a 32 bit operating system.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Hi,
But will it recognize a 64Bit system full memory...or just the 4Gb that a 32Bit system recognizes
Jim
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
As with all 32 bit programs it cannot access the full address space of a 64 bit system and will be limited to the ~3GB a 32 bit program is limited to.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
katemoir
I know many of you were surprised when we launched Photo & Graphic Designer 9 without Pro X9. Well, we have another surprise for you – we’ve just announced a completely new product in the Xara range, Xara Page & Layout Designer. As the name implies it draws together the text and page layout features from existing Designer products, combines them with some new DTP type features and templates, adds in some of the drawing and photo tools to create a Designer product optimized for any type of print document creation. We’re planning to launch this next week, but you can already find out all about the new product on the Xara site @
http://www.xara.com/page-layout-designer/
It remains the case that Designer Pro is our top of the range, so v9 it will get all the features of Page & Layout Designer. So if you are a Designer Pro owner you might want to hurry along to Gary Priester’s ‘Quick Look at Page & Layout Designer’ on the Xara Xone @
http://xaraxone.magix.net/PLD/index.htm where you’ll be able to deduce some more of the new features you can expect in Pro X9, which will be arriving very soon!
This sounds great!
However, I would like to know if this is a useful product for me as I am working on a book with over 550 pages including photos, sketches, folded pages and more.
I am not a "friend" of InDesign 5, so if this could be useful for me I'd wait for XDP 9 or buy Xara Page & Layout Designer.
/Olle in Sweden
User of Xara since 1997
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
You can download the trial for Page & Layout Designer and give it a go yourself to see whether it would be suitable for you, once it has been released :)
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
The columns feature looks very promising, but from looking at Gary's First look and the information available on the Xara site it's missing an auto hypenation feature. I will have a look at the trial later and will the new P&LD features be included in DP?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Yes
Quote:
Originally Posted by
katemoir
It remains the case that Designer Pro is our top of the range, so v9 it will get all the features of Page & Layout Designer. So if you are a Designer Pro owner you might want to hurry along to Gary Priester’s ‘Quick Look at Page & Layout Designer’ on the Xara Xone @
http://xaraxone.magix.net/PLD/index.htm where you’ll be able to deduce some more of the new features you can expect in Pro X9, which will be arriving very soon!
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Does it handle tables natively? Not in a widget.
Acorn
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Will there be a DTP Forum set up?
Acorn
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PeteS
You can download the trial for Page & Layout Designer and give it a go yourself to see whether it would be suitable for you, once it has been released :)
When I go to the page to download the trial, I do not see a link to download it. What am I missing?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dcahall
What am I missing?
"...once it has been released..."
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
You can download the trial for Page & Layout Designer and give it a go yourself to see whether it would be suitable for you, once it has been released
Hans
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Can somebody explain to me the differences between:
1. Page and Layout Designer vs Photo and Graphic Designer, and
2. Page and Layout Designer vs Designer Pro X.
I mean if PLD is PGD + page and layout features or there are some big differences, and
What is and what is not inside PLD from DPX.
Can you give us a comparison table between all these three programs.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Having in mind the price of PLD, how serious it can be comparing its features to InDesign and QuarkXPress?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Page and Layout Designer is not on the same level at InDesign and QuarkXPress. These are very high end (and very expensive) applications, But P&LD9 does offer a very excellent set of tools for intuitively working with text and page layout design. I think you will be impressed when you try it out.
The best thing to do is download the trial as soon as it is available and try it out. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
@Acorn - No native support for tables but you can set the tabs to create the table text then create the rest of the table design.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Thank you Gary for the answer. Can you, please, comment my previous post about comparing all three Xaras' products?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
http://www.xara.com/us/ here it will show all features.
Hans
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Thank you Haako, I've already seen that page, but the differences between these programs were not so evident for me. I am asking, because I would like to buy P&LD and, eventually, P&GD. But, if P&LD has all the features included in P&GD, then why should I buy P&GD? And it is the same question with DPX.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Basically this is the difference. Photo & Graphic Designer 9 has the best photo editing tools. Page & Layout Designer 9 is what we used to call a Desktop Publishing program and is best for page layout and projects intended for printing. Web Designer 9 is the best product for creating websites and comes in an entry level product Web Designer 9 Classic, and a high end full featured product, Web Designer 9 Premium.
Xara Designer Pro X (the next version will be called Designer Pro X9) has all of these features and is the top of the line product. And, as you would expect, it costs the most.
If you can afford it, Designer Pro X is the way to go because you get all of the tools and features.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Then buy DPX because it will have all features and perhaps even some more
(See Gary beat me to the punch with the same conclusion =D> :D ;) )
Hans
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
A pensionado has all the time to be quick
Hans
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Thank you guys. You helped me a lot.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Will Page and Layout Designer be suitable for writing software user manuals, considering that they can be a couple of hundred pages or more with lots of screenshots?
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
haakoo
"when it is released"
Hans
Can everyone see the glow on my face. I did not read close enough.
I would suggest they remove the "TRY NOW" button until it is available.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
OK, It looks interesting and certainly columns, styles and page numbers are valuable things to have. However, there are a couple of other things that I cannot see mentioned. (This may be because I am lacking my morning coffee).
Footnotes and endnotes.
For long documents, especially those that are technical and academic in nature it is almost essential to have a footnotes and endnotes facility. These should automatically renumber when further notes are added or removed.
Table of contents. etc.
Serious contenders for preparing long documents have the ability to produce a Table of Contents with updated page numbers, as well as related tables such as Table of Maps, Photos etc. The Table of Contents in particular is very valuable in later stages of preparing a book when structuring chapter content is being done. It is not the ability to produce the table that is important - that can be done manually, but the ability to make changes in a book of say 500 pages and see almost instantly how this has affected the overall structure.
Captions and headings with floating images.
One of the great bugbears of using Word with images was that when you floated the image the caption would stay behind. There were really serious problems with keeping floating images themselves in place in Word. As a result many people went (go) out of their way to use inline images and this inhibits creativity. Xara uses text repel which means images can float but when I used it last (Xara 6) it was still messy to keep a caption in place with the image. Grouping does work but it would be very good to have the caption automatically coupled to the image say as part of the style.
Any comments on these issues?
regards, Erik
What is the situation here?
Erik
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Text can be anchored to images since version 7 of WDP, PGD and DP.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
@EJ - These advanced publishing features are not automatic. You can create a style, i.e. Footnote, but you will have to manually increase the numerical value.
Table of Contents and the top of my wish list, support for glyphs will have to come at another time.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
For corporate work, you'd better be able to copy-paste in PowerPoint graphics, with their transparency and shading. Saw that it had support for .docx, so maybe Xara's caught up with Microsoft... hope so, on the graphics side.
Or, maybe almost. P&GD9 lets you copy-paste PPT shapes as a bitmap OK, but when you copy-paste as vector art, the transparencies, like on shadows, don't come across too well. You'd have to remake with a Xara shadow if you had to replicate the original corporate art as a vector piece. But maybe P&LD9 will have that figured out.
P&GD9 and PowerPoint --
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Nice surprise! Looking forward to these features -- but in the guise of DPX. I also skipped to the end of the features list and was pleased to see import/export of "docx" format documents; yes -- it's noted as "beta", but that pretty much has to be assumed when you're attempting compatibility with a Microsoft product like that. I'll be very interested to see how I might fit the new Xara DTP features into a workflow that includes MS Word, i.e., where does each start and leave off. Also - as others mentioned -- I'll be interested in learning about the length, size and complexity of documents it can handle. Finally - features like a live, auto-updating TOC and auto-updating Footnotes will be invaluable in allowing this to become a full featured stand alone product. Exciting to see this -- looking forward to it. As per Kate's admonition, I'll plan on pouring at least two cups of tea before looking really hard for the upcoming version of DPX.
One thought: it came up in the thread that DPX will remain at 32-bit program. Yet WDP9 is optionally available as a 64-bit install (which I opted to install). Does this suggest that WDP9 (64-bit) might actually be able to handle larger and more memory-intensive websites than DPX9 will be able to handle, since it will be limited to 32-bit memory addressing? If that's the case, I can actually see a reason to own both, potentially...
All in all -- nice announcement. Looks like we actually *will* have Christmas in July this year... :)
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
I suspect that XDP will be like XWD - you can download and install both a 32bit and a 64 bit version with the same unlock key
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Assumingly if someone creates the Table of contents in Word and paste to the Xara document, that should work without any additional modification in this new product?
However sure so if any modification is needed in that, again needs to go back to Word
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Of course you can wait until the final document is complete before creating the TOC in Word. But you are correct that changes would need to be made in Word again. Then again, not everyone has Word and I'm not sure how the alternatives to Word are at opening the .docx format.
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Re: NEW: Xara Page & Layout Designer
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Petar_MK
Can you give us a comparison table between all these three programs.
Here it is: http://www.xara.com/us/products/designer/compare/
Web Designer 9
vs
Page & Layout Designer 9
vs
Photo & Graphic Designer 9
vs
Designer Pro X
I assume it will eventually be updated for DP9