August 2015 Video Tutorial -- Typesetting With Xara

[Barbara B]

August 2015 Video Tutorial -- Typesetting With Xara



Gary’s tutorial has nothing to do with typography, and everything to do with the art of making words look terrific on the printed and electronic pages! Come explore some little-known features on the Text Tool’s Infobar, learn how to tap into the power of Text Styles (say that quickly and it sounds like “textiles”!), and use Xara like the desktop publishing program it always could be! Read more…

Then come on back here and show us some outstanding typesetting!

[iamtheblues]

That's a neat trick with the customized bullet points, Gare. Definitely one to use in the future.
Bob.

[Gare]

I'm glad that's of some use to you, Bob!



I might have missed it, but I felt I gave Xara Designer 11’s help file a decent shake-down, and there was nothing to be said about saving Text Styles in a template.

For those of you who have downloaded and opened the resource files this month, I have a XAR file in there that explains what I’m about to redundantly explain. And did I say ‘redundant’?

1.In a new document, set up your styles using any font you like, any font size, colour, paragraph settings, indents, and so on.

2. Delete all the text after you’re done defining Text Styles.

3. Choose File> Save Template.

4. Save the document as a template to the folder with all the other templates.

5. The next time you need to format a document so the text is a specific way, use a copy of the temple, under File> (all the template names).

6. Close this document without saving.

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

Thanks for the video, Gary.

Mike

[angelize]

I enjoyed the video Gary, I use all of the features you covered a lot but I liked the pizza slice bullets! The soft return is handy for doing bulleted lists where you might want two separate lines but under the same bullet point.

[Rik]

What an excellent tutorial, Gary.
I'm going to have to make notes, and practice!

OK. I tend to draw, more than anything else, but, what your tutorial does show is what can be done, and with ease.

...soft break
...personalised bullets
...baseline shift
...tracking I know about, but, there were some thoughts to keep in mind

...EXCELLENT

[Gare]

Well, Rik—

As I mentioned toward the end of the video, if you walked away knowing one more thing than you did 12 minutes ago, then I'm happy, you're happy, the girl down the block is happy, fighting has ceased in the Middle Easy, and crops are beginning to grow again in Kansas.

@Frances—



When using soft breaks, always make sure your copy is thoroughly edited correctly before using a soft break. Why? Because unlike MS Word (or other text-oriented programme), Xara will not show you as visible characters where paragraph ends are, nor spaces between characters. So if you do soft breaks and then find a spelling or grammar error, it is not fun backspacing in random areas you're guessing at to find and resolve hard and soft breaks, as well as spaces.

Speaking as someone who has gone through it and lived to tell the tale—

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the excellent Typesetting video tut. Gary, somethings I already knew but personalized bullets, soft break, had no idea. Also at the end of your video on fade out, I was surprised to see five of my drawings, Milano-Xmas Girl-Mighty Milk-Coffee Cup and Bad Girl, absolutely made my day

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Determination Poster.

Stygg

[csehz]

Nice tips are collected together in this tutorial, thanks for it