How to create a "text with photos" book in Elements 8?

Question

Hello all!
I am new to APE and this forum; I've been reading about it (APE 7, for the most part - right now I'm reading "The Missing Manual" for version 7), and have pre-ordered version 8.
I have published many books in the past on lulu.com, but none of them contained photographs; my current book will also include many photographs (it's about half text and half photos); I'm wondering if there's a better way to create it -- using APE 8 -- than my normal method, which is to use Open Office Writer to create the document (inserting pictures from files where appropriate, I guess), and then, as a final step, converting the document to a .PDF and uploading that.
I am thinking that what I should be able to do is have an underlying base layer that is an image with low opacity, and on top of that a layer that is my text. I could rotate the "landscape" images prior to adding them to fit the document's layout. Is this the [best] way to do this? A concern I have about that method is that then every page is a photograph -- which could make the download size enormous (instead of simply semi-enormous).
Thoughts?

Answer 1

You can simulate it, although it might not be what you look for...
Example (buggy but that's just a proof of concept):
class MulticolorText extends CustomNode
  var text: String;
  var colors: Color[];
  var font: Font;
  override public function create(): Node
    HBox
      var l = text.length() / sizeof colors;
      content: for (i in [ 0 ..< sizeof colors])
        Text { content: text.substring(i * l, (i + 1) * l), fill: colors, font: font }
// Used as:
MulticolorText
text: "Multicolor"
font: Font { size: 36 }
translateX: 20
translateY: 20
colors: [ Color.rgb(200, 0, 25), Color.rgb(0, 200, 75), Color.rgb(200, 200, 125), Color.rgb(0, 0, 175), Color.rgb(0, 0, 225)  ]