My expieriences to set a book with XDP v16

Dear Xara, I would like to share here my experiences with the set of a nearly 400 pages, A4 book with 1.600 black and white photos.

In another thread I asked about the limitation of the .xar format and if there are any restrictions on memory management for this project.

Rob from Xara replied and asked for sample files that I provided him with. The files are also available to other forum members.
Rob hasn't spoken since. Only Acorn looked at the files and confirmed the slowness of Xara's long text processing.

But from the begining:
I had a request to set a book with about 1.000 pages and over 6.000 black and white photos and to deliver print-ready PDF's.

With my publishing house we decided now instead of publishing one book to divide the whole into three books.
It's looked better now. Book 1 approx. 400 pages and 1. 600 pictures.

Since I canceled my Adobe subscription, only Xara or Quark Xpress 8 was suitable as a layout program.
Since many images needed correction and adaptation to format and resolution, my goal was to set this book with XDP V16 and take advantage of the built-in image editing features. With Quark I would have had to use an external photo editor again and loosing endless time to got the right from the images.

First I created my pages and layout grid.

Attachment 122714

Books always start with an odd page (page 1). I have created the pages so: Page 1 = single page, subsequent pages = double pages.
I put the layout grid on an extra layer, so I can fade it in and out. Depending on use.

The page numbering sets Xara as Repeating Group and it is easy to hide it where it is not needed.

Attachment 122715

Everything's gone well so far. Just the way I imagined it would be. The problems are coming now.

1. problem text
I inserted the whole text into Xara, it took about 10 minutes. Each change therefore lasted exactly as long until everything was rendered again. So impossible to work like that. Setting the book in one text stream does not work in Xara.

I analyzed the text again and decided to set the book chapter by chapter. Since every chapter starts on a new page anyway, it could go like this.
If contents are still to be inserted, however, new problems arise again. With a single text stream, the pages move on. In my case, I'm gonna have to fix everything manually. I pray that no new content will follow.

The longest chapter has 65 pages. Waiting times of up to three minutes were not uncommon until the text was re-rendered.
Since I have always worked with style sheets, the style sheets were quickly created in Xara and could be applied to the text. Here I would wish to provide each style sheet with a keyboard shortcut. The ways with the mouse were long and tiring.

2. problem photos
Xara cannot link photos but only embed them. Acorn's suggestion to link the images with a placeholder works theoretically, but is not practicable because the rendering takes several minutes.
I embedded all the photos. Strangely enough, this does not affect the performance of Xara. But I always took care to optimize them to a resolution of 300 ppi when more than 10 photos were inserted. Xara offers the function Optimise all images. . . You only have to choose the right settings. Xara does not remember the last used setting in this dialog.

So far I've managed to set the book. From 400 pages to 372 pages by clever choice of font and design. The images are all embedded and the . xar file has a size of 201.4 MB with 600 optimized photos. So far everything's fine.

3. problem saving and opening performance
The more pages you save or open with Xara, the longer Xara takes. In my case it took Xara almost 2 minutes to open the document for 360 pages. Xara opens other documents with several 1000 objects quickly. Even image-heavy documents are opened quickly. I think the text engine is also the reason for the slowness here.

Attachment 122719

4. problem PDF output for offset printing ECI grayscales
Xara doesn't know color management. So no matter if I insert a CMYK or grayscale image into Xara, it will be converted to RGB. For PDF output means that you can't get a printable grayscale PDF because all images remain in RGB or are converted to CMYK when using PDF X-1. There is an ISOcoated_v2_grey1c_bas. icc color-profile which is based on the ECI V2 but cannot be used in Xara. You can't get around here without a foreign program.

Attachment 122717

I have been working in the graphic arts industry for over 33 years and have been doing final artwork for offset printing companies since 1989. Main programs for flawless print data are Acrobat Pro, PitStop but my favorite is Callas PDF.

Attachment 122718 converting in callas-PDF

Since I own this software it is easy to convert the PDF generated by Xara into the correct color format.

Attachment 122720

So much for my DTP experience typesetting a book with Xara.

Attachment 122721 Attachment 122722 Attachment 122723

My wishes to Xara are to really talk about DTP:
1. performance of the text engine
2. colour management
3. real grayscale and CMYK for images (colour management)
4. Mastersites
5. real left-right side
6. linking images
7. more options when creating a table of contents – i.e. glyph fill for tabs, no links for print
8. layout grid management
9. more functions for text styles – keyboard shortcuts, paragraph settings, better Widow And Orphan settings
10. List properties – more flexibility for user glyphs not only the clipboard thing
11. tables – real tables with the option to split them and have on the new site the same heading (on/off), import from exel, opnenoffice, cvs
12. Text repelling – not only on h + v side, better individual on each side t+b+h+v

There are certainly many things I can think of, but these are the ones I missed the most in my work.

For Xara to become a fully-fledged DTP program, a lot of development work is still needed.

Despite everything, it is possible with Xara to set a book in high quality. You have to get involved and work out some workflows. Then You win.

Thanks for reading!

Servus Ernie

edit: What I forgot:
– Xara has a very good anchor technology I've never see in other Layot-Software, easy and effektive. The page-management is so simplier. And it is no Problem to embed i.e. a initial from an object.
– my monitor was calibrated to ECI-RGB V2 (Eizo). Xara can't handle this and the b+w fotos looks strange. So I recalibrate my monitor to sRGB and the RGB-view in Xara is perfect and matches the result after icc-conversation in callas-PDF.

Thanks for the reporting, Ernie. A true labor of love...

I think I'll stick to using an actual layout application. Aside from being a more assured work-flow, and the fact it is far faster to use a layout application, most/all of the issues you raise are non-existent.

Thanks again. Mike

ernie, kudos for persisting with this.

A particular thanks for the detail highlighting all the difficulties you have encountered, endured and mainly overcome.

It would be useful for Xara to incorporate your original documents as part of its testing strategy to demonstrate the application's limitation to its developers.

Acorn

I suggested to Xara creating a variation of Designer Pro specifically for book publishing. It is a huge market. They listened. Nothing came of it.

The books I have designed are not as big or demanding as what you described. But what works best for me is to divide the book into sections of chapters and save each section or chapter as a separate Xara file. I export each section or chapter as a PDF file then use Acrobat to stitch all the PDFs into one. It make working easier than trying to manage 300 pages in a single document.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mwenz

Thanks for the reporting, Ernie. A true labor of love...

I think I'll stick to using an actual layout application. Aside from being a more assured work-flow, and the fact it is far faster to use a layout application, most/all of the issues you raise are non-existent.

Thanks again. Mike

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Hi Mike, I tried the hole think to do with PagePlus X9. I got a license for PagePlus so I tried it too. No chance to handle the many linked pictures in PP. It crashed all the way when I got more than 350 images linked.

And Quark XP 8 crashes too. There is no time saver in my software repertoire. Only one I can thing is InDesign. Maybe the new Quark can handle it but 829,- €, 399,- € if I'm able to update because the QXP 8 Version is an education thing, is more money I'm willing to pay. Xara XDP v16 has cost money too, sot it must now make money for me.

I think I was pretty fast with my work in Xara. It has been faster if there wheren't the things I mentioned. In InDesign I wasn't faster with a project like this and I feel well in Indi in the use of the last 10 years.
But I said „Goodbey” to Adobe's Creative Cloud.

Servus Ernie

Hi Acorn,

there are no problems to got the original files from me.

All I'd have to do is sign a declaration of weighing. As well as giving the guarantee that the data will not appear anywhere but will remain with Xara for research purposes only.

Servus Ernie

Gary thanks for Your sugestion to split the file. I thought about too but tried it to do in one file.

It works for me, only the slowness if there are long text passages made the work sluggerish. But I haven't one crash in all the days I created the book. This was me first fear that Xara crashes after say, 50 pages. But nothing all went good. Only the thinks I mentoined ristrict Xara to a prof. DTP-Software. I hope the Affinity Publisher will be in the state to use it for the second book. I'll see. And I wish Xara is here and do the right thinks to improve Xara. The Drawing things we wait X-Years, so maybe the DTP things will be faster.

Servus Ernie

So now all three books are printed and distributed.

Attachment 123650 Attachment 123651 Attachment 123652

I realized all three books with Xara Designer Pro.

Affinity Publisher is still in, let's say, a self-discovery phase. The really important DTP functions are still missing.

Thanks to everyone who mentally supported me with my book project in Xara.

Well done, Ernie.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

Well done, Ernie.

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Tanks Gary.

Well done ernie,
Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Well done ernie,
Acorn

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Thanks Acorn. It was a hard jod to do it.
The next time I'll got so a job to do at least I'm practiced.

Excellent work, Ernie. :-bd

Congratulations and thanks for the 'how to'.

Question: How did you allow for inside margins or did the printer's software take care of that?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boy

Congratulations and thanks for the 'how to'.

Question: How did you allow for inside margins or did the printer's software take care of that?

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This and the imposition is done in the RIP (Raster Image Processor)-Software.

That's what I thought. So, a follow-up question: Then why did you use a single page for the first page and double pages for the rest?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boy

That's what I thought. So, a follow-up question: Then why did you use a single page for the first page and double pages for the rest?

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I set up my document as a double side page. Then I delete one of the first double pages. So You got a fake view of odd and even pages in xara.
But this is not absolutely necessary.

The RIP software processes single pages. This is what You outputed as PDF too.
The double pages are only necessary for designing.

Normally I also design continuous pages in single page mode. With this project it was important to have both sides in view to see and/or correct the page span of facing pages.

Got it, very clear and useful.

Thanks You umderstand my german tasted english.
Cheers!

Great job, great suggestions and very interesting thread. Hope that Xara will follow up your prompts. Kudos.

Your English is just fine, Ernie.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boy

Your English is just fine, Ernie.

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Thank yuo Boy. But I do not think so.

But yes it is! :)

This whole thread is so useful.

Thank you all.

Ali

I just finished a new novel for my wife. About 224 pages, 8.5" square with a few dozen photos and did it all in one file. It actually worked out pretty OK.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/05...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

What a beautiful book, Gary. I love the drop caps.

I have no idea how you do ornate simplicity so easily. My stuff would either be ornate OR simple. I learn so much from you!

Thank you Artyboots.