Table

[Peteroz1]

Thanks

With the PDF thing - I would simply say if one program can figure out that all the texts in a paragraph, belongs as a paragraph then so should another be able to do the same.
Currently the text that comes in is a mess - it even stops being one text item and starts the next half way through a word.

I think my point with tables, is that while Xara was a graphic program only it was OK to not have these tools, now that it is entering the world of Page Layout/DTP (which I think is great - the more tool and flexibility the better) it needs to cover off tools that you expect to have like tables. and indexing, for this kind of work.

Xara - if you are going to do it do it exceptionally - like you have always done with what you do.

[Big Frank]

Xara - if you are going to do it do it exceptionally - like you have always done with what you do.

what a very good way to put it

[pauland]

With the PDF thing - I would simply say if one program can figure out that all the texts in a paragraph, belongs as a paragraph then so should another be able to do the same.
Currently the text that comes in is a mess - it even stops being one text item and starts the next half way through a word.

I think you'd better email Adobe as well because when manipulating assets imported from PDFs, I find all kind of breakups in the text and odd groupings.

If Adobe can't get it right, I think Xara needs some slack.

If I am unlucky enough to only be given a PDF to work from, I often re-create text fields by copying the text from the PDF in acrobat and pasting it into a text field, rather than go with a load of separate text fields, which I would otherwise have - and this is using Adobe software.

I've just tried importing a PDF into illustrator. All the lines in the paragraphs are separate. I've seen far worse.

On my ancient Xtreme 5, all the text is separate characters.

[tonylondon]

I think you'd better email Adobe as well because when manipulating assets imported from PDFs, I find all kind of breakups in the text and odd groupings.

If Adobe can't get it right, I think Xara needs some slack.

You mistake the purpose of a PDF.

[pauland]

You mistake the purpose of a PDF.

I don't think so.

[tonylondon]

PDF is now an open standard, controlled by ISO.
It was developed to enable documents to be displayed, read and printed on any platform, using a suitable viewer.

[pauland]

That's good to know.

I don't see how that has any bearing on how well software imports from a PDF file.

[tonylondon]

That's good to know.

I don't see how that has any bearing on how well software imports from a PDF file.

It has no bearing on how well software imports into a proprietary program such as XDPro but as it is outside the purpose of a PDF file to be so imported, it becomes the responsibility of the importer.
The standard is open source so all information is publicly available. You cannot blame Adobe for not getting it right if it is not the purpose of the format.

[pauland]

You cannot blame Adobe for not getting it right if it is not the purpose of the format.

I think you can. If they can write acrobat to allow text to be accessed contiguously, there's no reason that the importer used in AI can't do the same.

It's irritating that the AI importer doesn't handle things in the best way, but that wasn't my point. I was just saying that f any company should be able to do the import right, Adobe should, so we can have a little sympathy when Xara doesn't manage the trick either.

[tonylondon]

I usually find that documents I have produced in Illustrator and saved as editable PDFs do re-import into Illustrator with the text boxes in tact. Not that I do it very often.