Unusually large Nisus Writer file size

[DavidK]

I created a flyer with two graphics and a couple paragraphs of text. One graphic was 1.3 MB and the other was 360 KB. Both were .jpg. I pasted the graphics in the file and resized them (smaller).

My question is this: the size of the Nisus Writer (pro) file is a whopping 16.9 MB!

Any idea why the file is so large and how I might shrink it?

David

[martin]

Unfortunately the way images are stored inline inside an RTF file isn't very efficient*. If you're not concerned with sending the file to anyone else, try saving it as RTFD. That format allows each image to be saved as an external file.

* RTF does actually have provisions for saving images inline using a smaller binary method, which Nisus Writer previously made use of. Unfortunately our tests revealed that InDesign could not handle this kind of image.

[DavidK]

Thanks, Martin. Unfortunately, the very reason that I want it to be smaller is that I need to email it to others.

Could you mark this as a request for a future version - to find some way of allowing Nisus to internally reduce the size of images in a way that still makes the file compatible with other programs?

[martin]

David, unfortunately to be most compatible we have to save our RTF files in a way that accommodates the lowest common denominator. Word doesn't have any trouble with the smaller inline images. The choice of using the larger inline images was made expressly to keep our RTF compatible with InDesign.

So sadly, you can't have both smaller files and best compatibility. However, I'll file a feature request that we add a preference to control how images are saved, that way the end user can decide what's more important.

[Dirk_Barends]

why is it so important to have an RTF-file with inline images compatible with InDesign?
It is my experience that people working with InDesign want to have the text and images in separate (original) files anyway?

Dirk Barends