Xara as Word Processor of Choice

[vman]

In recent months I have begun using Xara Photo & Graphic MX as a word processor. I find I have much more control and flexability over the page layouts in Xara. However, I know Xara was not developed as a Word Processor. I do believe that with a few tweaks and additions, Photo & Graphic Designer could be a quite capable word processor and can dispace Xara users need for MS Word.

The Word processisg Capbilities that I'd like see added are:

- "Insert a form field" for page numbering. Perhaps one could insert a list of standard form fields like dates, page numbers, save locations etc. but with Xara this functionality could be extended to include Live Copies and perhaps Named objects. This would be usefull in Wed Designer as well as it could be a substitute for an iFrame for short text and other frequently updated information (dates, news items, sales etc).

- Document and/or page breaks so you could have diffrent sized / formatted / templated pages within the same document. This would be useful if you added the "Insert a Form Field" detailed above. When inserting page numbers in a document, you don't always want "all" the pages numbered. This is the case for chapter title pages, tables of Contents graphic pages such as covers (which can be done in Xara and not MS Word).

- Another great tool could be a function to include a Table of Contents. This can be somewhat presently achieved using Live Copy and having document section titles live copied to a table of contents; however, presently with no form fields, the page number needs to be text based and won't update when pages are added to a document. If you added a form field and an ability to link an object or text to the data in the form field on that page then you could have the functionality of a Word Processors ability to create a live, self updating Table of Contents.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer MX is almost a fully functional Word Processor, with the additions above, I would finally be able to discard the shackles of MS Word and replace it with Xara. I could then do Word Processing and illustrations/ book covers in one software.

Now if only Xara could figure out how to cook my breakfast......

Keep up the awsome work.

V.Martin

[pauland]

Interesting suggestions Martin, but I'd like to point out that nobody actually needs M$Word in any event, since there's a very capable and free alternative: Open Office (openoffice.org).

[zaphodeist]

Just a word [sorry] for Libre Office - same thing as OO but being developed by ex-OO developers, whereas OO isn't anymore afaik. Check situation out on Wikipedia.