Over the years as new Text Tool features have been added, the Text Tool Infobar at the top of the page has expanded. For many this meant scrolling the page to see the Text Tool features that had gone off the screen. A few versions back an option was added to hide or display the advanced text options that expanded only if you had a large screen and wanted to see the advanced options. In version 365 these options have moved to a second line as shown above. At the end of the Text Tool Infobar there is now 3 dot icon  that shows or hides the advanced text features including: Baseline Shift, Tracking and Kerning, Aspect Ratio, Hyphenation Options, and a new feature Paragraph Options. New Paragraph Options: Keep with Next Paragraph, and Keep Lines Together If you are working with Paragraph Text, in a single column set to automatically continue onto the next page, or with several columns of text on the same page, you do not want a headline or sub-headline to appear at the bottom of the page or column with the accompanying text starting on the next page or column. Keep with Next Paragraph moves the headline or sub-headline to the next page or next text column. Likewise, you do not want to split a two line headline or sub-headline with the first line at the bottom of the page or column and the second line at the top of the next page or column. Keep Lines Together automatically as the feature suggests, keeps the two lines together. Rectangular Text Repelling Xara is very good at repelling text around an irregular shape such as our engineer friend here. But sometimes, the edge of the repelling text becomes distracting. In this case you can opt for Rectangular Repelling.

Change Case of Selected Text This new feature gives you several options when you right click on selected text. Lower case changes all selected text to lower case, so the text “Now is the Time” becomes now is the time. UPPER CASE changes this to NOW IS THE TIME. And if I select Sentence case, NOW IS THE TIME becomes, Now is the time. A time saver? You bet!

The Symbol Library (Insert > Symbol) has been expanded with the addition of Google’s Material Designs symbols and now includes over 1,500 high quality vector symbols. And to make sorting through the Symbol Library easier, you can now search for a symbol such as my search for Circle. New symbols will be added as they become available. It is now easy to insert a symbol into a bullet list. Highlight just the bullets, right click and select Replace Bullet List Symbol and select from the library. Dogs Cats Birds Fish If you have used a symbol in your text and want to change the symbol, highlight the symbol, right click and select Replace Symbol. Again the Symbol Library will open and you can select any of the 1,500 symbols.

OpenType Font Kerning Kerning increases or decreases the space between two characters such as Ty and Aj, Wi, etc. (WA TER is a good example of kerned text), so words have an optically even space between the characters. In the past Xara automatically managed the kerning of TrueType fonts, but not OpenType fonts. Now kerning is automatically applied to OpenType fonts as well. The more recent browsers support kerned text adding more elegance to the text that you use for your websites as well as your printed documents. Bullets in Bullet Lists can not be selected and the size and color changed independent of the list text. There have been changes to the position of Superscript  and Subscript  text. And this just in, the starting number for Numbered Lists can now be set to a specific number. This is helpful if you have a number list, some text, and then another numbered list. Separate lists can also be Linked. Right click on the selected list and select Numbered List Properties. 1. Left 2. Right 3. Center Some additional text 4. Top 5. Middle 6. Bottom