OK. As long as Xara is going down the road of "long document" handling, it really, really needs some work.

  1. Long documents really need to start on a right-hand page. I kludged together a work-around, but it shouldn't have to be a work-around.
  2. Style Management really needs to be in a dialog, not ad-hoc, willy-nilly make "live" changes and update the style. This dialog needs to include the ability to delete styles with the choice of changing instances to another paragraph style, character style, or leave as a local override.
  3. Repeating Objects. Choice to repeat on left, right or both L/R pages. Having a "smart" repeat when adding to both L/R (offsets towards/away from spine maintained) would be a bonus.
  4. Find & Replace. With long documents, this really needs to get into the 21st century. It isn't enough just to search for a word or word string. How about removing double returns? Finding one style, change to another? Pattern searches, etc.
  5. Hyphenation. Needs to be configurable for successive hyphens, exceptions (no hyphenating capitalized words for instance), language based hyphenation rules, etc.
  6. Widow/Orphan control. Looks crappy to have a single line at the top/bottom of a page.
  7. Keep with Next. Can be less configurable than say ID/QXp/PP. But it would be nice in a text flow not to have to review for separated headings from the following body copy.
  8. As Gary has mentioned, page numbering needs to be configurable. Needs to be section based: start numbering anew and or a different style at the start of a new section. And the ability to suppress page numbering (chapter starts for instance).
  9. Speed. The text updating needs to happen quicker. Take a 12 page, threaded document and change the leading, then update the style. Cannot think of what an actual long document would be like.
  10. Drop caps. Would be nice...



These are the few thoughts that came to me in making a simple 12 page document that begins on a single right-hand page, goes to a two-page spread and ends with a single page. After my little 12-page test, my conclusion is that with how XDP is currently, I think I would rather gouge my eyes out and stab myself in the heart than do an actual long document in XDP.

I mean, one can pick up PagePlus X6 for $20. It has OpenType feature support (not on my list above, but should be). Just what is Xara really aiming at with half-baked long document features in XDP? Either go all in and vastly improve these things or leave it half-baked and improve drawing stuff. More people would benefit from drawing improvements.