Limits of a .xar documents

Can please anyone give me answers to the following questions:

1. where is the physical memory limit of a .xar document?

2. is there a page limit in the .xar document?

3. is it possible to realize an A4 project (print) with 400, 800 or even 1000 pages with Xara?

4. if yes, what about the performance?

5. in my project there will be about 1500 pictures with 300 ppi resolution. I once read somewhere Xara can only use 1.6 GB RAM for the output, then Xara stops. Is that true? If yes then Xara will be excluded from this project.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any answers neither in the forum nor on the web. I don't have the time and desire to test it and start it over in another program. If someone reads from Xara here, it would be great if you could show the limits of the software and the .xar document files.

Thank you in advance
Ernie

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ernie-f

Can please anyone give me answers to the following questions:

1. where is the physical memory limit of a .xar document?
2. is there a page limit in the .xar document?
3. is it possible to realize an A4 project (print) with 400, 800 or even 1000 pages with Xara?
4. if yes, what about the performance?
5. in my project there will be about 1500 pictures with 300 ppi resolution. I once read somewhere Xara can only use 1.6 GB RAM for the output, then Xara stops. Is that true? If yes then Xara will be excluded from this project.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any answers neither in the forum nor on the web. I don't have the time and desire to test it and start it over in another program. If someone reads from Xara here, it would be great if you could show the limits of the software and the .xar document files.
Thank you in advance
Ernie

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Ernie, my opinion:

1. None I have found so assume whatever your device can supply.
2. None I have found.
3. Yes.
4. Performance might require you adjusting the OS Virtual memory. I have found inserts, deletes and moves of text or pages to be adequate.
5. Never come across such a limit. For these images, I would not embed them directly into the Xara document, I would use a Placeholder.

Acorn

Hi Acorn,
thanks for the quick answer.
The idea with the placeholder is good, but then I loose the flexibility of editing inside Xara.

regarding 5 - that might have been a 32bit limit...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

regarding 5 - that might have been a 32bit limit...

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I thought so too. I'll just try.

@Acorn: the placeholder thing is not practical. If you generate a preview it will take forever until Xara has rendered it. Without it you quickly lose the overview.

Here is a screenshot of how my manuscript looks like.

Attachment 122500

This is my first test in Xara to give them a clear direction. And this on approx. 1000 pages!:-O

Attachment 122501 Attachment 122502

ernie, then make sure your images are on an image layer that is normally hidden. This will improve rendering speed and when you are working or a specific page you can unhide that page.

The nice thing is you do not need to unhide the images when exporting to PDF. I assume this is for print as you specify 300dpi. You can ensure hidden layers are published.

If you are printing, you can always split your document into small sets of 50 pages each. You can then assemble the final output into one large PDF with one of the many PDF utilities available.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

ernie, then make sure your images are on an image layer that is normally hidden. This will improve rendering speed and when you are working or a specific page you can unhide that page.

The nice thing is you do not need to unhide the images when exporting to PDF. I assume this is for print as you specify 300dpi. You can ensure hidden layers are published.

If you are printing, you can always split your document into small sets of 50 pages each. You can then assemble the final output into one large PDF with one of the many PDF utilities available.

Acorn

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Again thx for You affort to help me.

The splitting think I'd thought about too.

The problem is, I need a continous textflow with ankered images. Because the autor will make, after the book is set, some changes in text and or some more annotations.

I know, I better do this in one of my Laoutprograms but I will try to do this in Xara.

To merge the outputed PDF-pieces is no problem, I must still load the PDF into Acrobat Pro to correct the color profile to gray. Xara can't handle grayscales. All outputed grayscale images will be handled like RGB.

An other reason to do this in Xara is that I can edit the brightnes and/or contrast of each image inside. In Indesign I have a transfer to PS. Angry that I haven't upgraded my subscription for Adobe CC. And I'm not willing to do it again.

Affinity Publisher is still in beta and has not the posibility to anker or embed graphics/images.

A simillar project I realized with TangoSolo, a German Publishing Software. Faulty is the PDF-Output via Destiller and the printing house makes trouble with this generated PDF's. They say no more! And I must work with them.

If I can't handle tis in Xara so I try it in PagePlus or CorelDraw. Another option is Scribus, but not my favorit.

When I get the corrected texts I'll try to set 100 or more Pages with Xara. The expirience I'll share here on TG.

Keep your fingers crossed
Ernie

Attachment 122506
Acorn

Thx Acorn.
And if not then we are in Bavaria so we have alternatives:
Attachment 122508

Xara doesn't perform super well on documents with a very large number of pages (content dependant, 1000 pages of text is easier to handle than say 500 pages of images). It's a known performance issue on the list to improve but there's no hard limit on the number of pages you can have in a document. Doesn't come up very often though as the majority of documents I see are less than 100 pages.

As far as memory limits go it's all system dependant. If your on a 32bit system it's 3.5Gb, on 64bit I think it's something huge like 192gb. You can go to File > Document information to see roughly the memory usage of the document.

Thanks
Rob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rob-Xar

Xara doesn't perform super well on documents with a very large number of pages (content dependant, 1000 pages of text is easier to handle than say 500 pages of images). It's a known performance issue on the list to improve but there's no hard limit on the number of pages you can have in a document. Doesn't come up very often though as the majority of documents I see are less than 100 pages.

As far as memory limits go it's all system dependant. If your on a 32bit system it's 3.5Gb, on 64bit I think it's something huge like 192gb. You can go to File > Document information to see roughly the memory usage of the document.

Thanks
Rob

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Thank You very much Rob.

Is there a problem when I import the Images in native dimension? Or is it better after import all imges to optimize to 300 ppi. The images I get are all in non one resolution, so I think this will eat memory.

I work on a 64bit workstation with 32 GB Ram. So this think is off the table – or not?

How Acorn and I say it is possible to split the book in chapters. The output and conversation in to a greyscale printable PDF is not the problem.

The thing is, I've to many options to do this book. My favorite program I'd give a kick. So my requirement is to do this in Xara, I will see the limits Xara give us.

On the other side I know that Xara goes in the knees when I do that f....k „Datenshutzverordnug” for my Webclients. It's only text, but Xara's reaction time is under the perfomace You will work with.

At the end, the best is I'll try it out. And how I wrote I give a feedback how it's work or no. And remember – We Bavarians have alltimes a alternative or say plan-B.

Servus Ernie

Edit:
I've forgot to tell you the memory of all images, this is about ‪1141,1‬ GB.

Attachment 122513

How I promissed here is my Xara-Desaster. My Xara disaster with continuous text.

It is not possible to add a 509,7 KB text to Xara without waiting about 5 minutes until Xara reacts again.

Once you have the text in Xara, the disaster continues. Each adaptation to the style sheets or pages takes just as long as the next 5 minutes. Or Xara crashes.
It's just not editable. My book project which I wanted to realize with Xara is not realizable in this way.

Xara: Why does the program behave like this? Exactly 70.779 words were inserted from Word via the editor (to delete all formatting). When I try to open the Word file is the same. The Word file has 240 Pages A4.

Xara as graphics program - O. K. Xara as DTP - no go.

Servus Ernie

Can you send me your sample files and I can take a look into this?

Yep, if Xara will open it again You got a .xar-file and the original Word-file.

Oh Xara opens it again. So here are the files.
Attachment 122522
Attachment 122523

Ernie,

I don't know if this helps with your first question ("Can please anyone give me answers to the following questions:

1. where is the physical memory limit of a .xar document?"), but in the drawings I do of city/street scenes including buildings and their detail, people, transportation, etc. I find that the Xara program starts complaining when I hit 26,000 kb and above.

Complaining: meaning the redraws slow waayyy down and I might start getting "out of memory" errors.

At that point, I start looking as to where I can simplify my drawing, using fewer shapes, etc., and I will block the view of all layers except for the one layer I'm working on. Then, when I want to look at the entire drawing, of course, I'll open the view of all layers, which, of course, will take a while.

That's my experience.

I have an HP 2in1 desk top
4 Gigs RAM
512 Gig Memory
Windows 10 Home Edition

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ron Duke

Ernie,

I don't know if this helps with your first question ("Can please anyone give me answers to the following questions:

1. where is the physical memory limit of a .xar document?"), but in the drawings I do of city/street scenes including buildings and their detail, people, transportation, etc. I find that the Xara program starts complaining when I hit 26,000 kb and above.

Complaining: meaning the redraws slow waayyy down and I might start getting "out of memory" errors.

At that point, I start looking as to where I can simplify my drawing, using fewer shapes, etc., and I will block the view of all layers except for the one layer I'm working on. Then, when I want to look at the entire drawing, of course, I'll open the view of all layers, which, of course, will take a while.

That's my experience.

I have an HP 2in1 desk top
4 Gigs RAM
512 Gig Memory
Windows 10 Home Edition

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Thanks Ron for Your expirience. I have done complex drawings with Xara with tons of objects, blends and transparancies. No problem.
But now I'll try to set a book with floating text over mor e then 200 pages. The other project include ca. 1.500 images, 1.000 Ppages and requiert floating text.

Thats my problem: Xara has a gap in handling large texts.
You can try it out open my word document which is in the zip because the forum dont knows docx.

Servus Ernie

ernie, sad to say copying from MS Word document and pasting as RTF into Xara took close to your 5 minutes.
Copying from MS Word document and pasting as HTML into Xara crashed the application without any warning.

Once loaded, typing in anything was taking seconds to update and visibly appear.
Adding images would only compound the problem.

In loading and typing into Xara, with 32Gb memory, the loaded document was almost 500MB (c.f., MS Word file size of 506kB taking up 70MB memory).

I am not quite sure what you mean by "floating text", so I just loaded into an A4 1-column document.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

ernie, sad to say copying from MS Word document and pasting as RTF into Xara took close to your 5 minutes.
Copying from MS Word document and pasting as HTML into Xara crashed the application without any warning.

Once loaded, typing in anything was taking seconds to update and visibly appear.
Adding images would only compound the problem.

In loading and typing into Xara, with 32Gb memory, the loaded document was almost 500MB (c.f., MS Word file size of 506kB taking up 70MB memory).

I am not quite sure what you mean by "floating text", so I just loaded into an A4 1-column document.

Acorn

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Hi Acorn,

floating is maybe the wrong word in english but I find no better. What I mean is I need ONE textstream over all pages.

Thx again for looking into it and yes it is frustrating to work with long texts in Xara.

Servus Ernie

@Rob-Xar
Hi Rob, did you have time to look at my files? If yes, is there a solution to my problem?
Thanks for your support.

Servus Ernie

Sorry been super busy past couple of days, looking at it now, will let you know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rob-Xar

Sorry been super busy past couple of days, looking at it now, will let you know.

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O.K. Rob.
Thanks in advanced.

I have been following this thread from the beginning
and remembered that years ago, while creating a
document with more than 100 pages and many images
I just designed all pages as a double spread.

In this way, a 120 page document required only 60 files
that worked well, even with many embedded high resolution
images.

Al

Quote:

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Originally Posted by capellan

I have been following this thread from the beginning
and remembered that years ago, while creating a
document with more than 100 pages and many images
I just designed all pages as a double spread.

In this way, a 120 page document required only 60 files
that worked well, even with many embedded high resolution
images.

Al

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Sounds good, But my problem is, i need a comtinous text flow from Page 1 – until Endpage. That all is, in this moment, only text.
In my documents I give all who are interrested the origanal file. See before. So everyone can try this out.

I don't want to do mad or go grazy, but I want to have a solution for my problem.
And if you can't do it in Xara, please Rob-Xara tell me.
If not I need to find an alternative. My deadline for the submission is very short and I need a solution yet.

Thanks in advavced Ernie