Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks For QuarkXPress™

Part One

Tip No. 1
Setup the Measurements palette so lines are measured by "First Point". This choice gives you the X1, Y1 coordinates along with the line's angle and length. The default of "Endpoints" gives you the X1, Y1, X2, Y2 coordinates and is not as easy to work with.



Tip No. 2

For the height of all text boxes allow a minimum clearance of one x-height below the lowest descender of the font used in the text box (a font's x-height is the height of the letter "x"). There are minute differences between computer systems. If you establish a text box height that is too tight on your system, it is liable to be too small for the text to display or output on another's. The example below illustrates what can happen and just how deep your text boxes should be to avoid this.



Tip No. 3

When making text boxes with reversed type or with colored backgrounds, it is better to make separate objects for the background and text rather than make it as a single object. In the example below, the preferred method is the one on the right. See Tip No. 2 above for why. The output result of the one on the left below may be a plain red box with no type. more on this here



Tip No. 4
When making corners from intersecting lines, be aware that measurements and snapping occur from the midpoint of the line. In the example below there is a corner made from the intersection of two 8-point wide lines. Both the horizontal and vertical lines on the left have the same x and y coordinates. In the example on the right, the horizontal line was shifted to the left 4 points (half the line thickness) to make a mitered corner. Likewise, if 1-point wide lines are used the shift would have to be .5 point to compensate.

Tip No. 5

A simple ad splash can be made from a polygon. Create the polygon, give it a 1-point black frame and a white box color. Then drag and drop it into a library and save it with other library items. In the example below, the top item shows the polygon points, and the bottom one was made by making a copy of the polygon for a shadow. The shadow was given a black box color.



Tip No. 6

When you have applied a paragraph style and want to remove it without changing the appearance of the text, Click Style > Paragraph Style Sheet > No Style. This removes the style sheet link and effectively applies local formatting to the text.

Tip No. 7

Once you have setup local text formatting on a block of text and you need to use it repeatedly in your document but you don't want to create a style sheet, you can save a lot of time simply by copying only one or two characters and pasting them at the location where you want to repeat the style. This will save the repetitious mouse clicks required to set it up each time.

Tip No. 8

Numbered and bulleted lists often use a hanging indent. A hanging indent is where the text is indented to the right of the bullet or number. To make a bulleted list style like the example below, do one of the following.

In both examples The base style is 14 point AGaramond with 14 points of leading and a space after of 3 points. The Zapf Dingbat bullet is a 10 point character created from a keypress using the lowercase "u" (both Macintosh or Windows). There is one blank space of AGaramond after the bullet character and before the main body of text.

Fastest Way:
In the text, paste a bullet character (e.g. using the Zapf Dingbats font) in front of the each item in the list:

Position the insertion point where you want the text to wrap and click Cmd+Backslash (Macintosh®) or Ctrl+Backslash (Windows®):

Alternate Way:
Select the paragraph and click Style > Formats... In the dialog enter a positive number for a "Left Indent" amount and the same number as a negative number for a "First Line" amount. Then paste a Zapf Dingbat character for a bullet in front of the first line. Save the formatting as a style sheet and apply it to the remaining paragraphs without the bullets. Paste the bullets after applying the style sheet. In this case I used 12 points for a "Left Indent" and -12 points for the "First Line".





Tip No. 9

When making paragraph styles to separate paragraphs use either "Space Before" or "Space After" but not both...otherwise you may wind up with a confusing mess. I prefer "Space After" because most of my text is top aligned (Ascent) and all my text boxes have extra space at the bottom.

Tip No. 10

Set your leading to the same number of points as the point size of the font you use. Example, with a 14 point font, set the leading to 14 points. Quark's "auto" leading is a bit too loose for my taste. more on this here...and more here also.

Part Two

Tip No. 11

Now, pay attention to this next one...

One of the main purposes of a page layout program and what differentiates it from modern wordprocessors that allow compositions using text and graphics (like Microsoft® Word) is that a page layout program allows precise placement of text and graphics. Oftentimes, you may find yourself repositioning lines by themselves or groups of lines and other objects.

The following examples show the difference in the coordinates in the Measurements palette when a line is selected vs. when a line plus another object is selected. Knowing how Quark™ handles this and other such subtleties can make the difference between making a professional or an amateurish layout.

In the example below, a horizontal line having an 8-point thickness is selected. Notice the y-coordinate in the Measurements palette (78 pt).



Next, Shift-Click to select the text box with the line. Notice how the y-coordinate in the Measurements palette has changed from 78 points to 74 points. Why is this? When a line is selected by itself, the Measurements are made from the midpoint of the line (see Tip No. 4). However, when a line is selected as part of a group (or a multiple selection), the measurements are made from the outside edge of the line.



In this case, there is a difference of 4 points from outside edge of the line to the midpoint of the line because the line width is 8 points. This is a noticeable difference, but with lines having smaller widths (such as 1-point) you may or may not notice that something is not right with your layout. The principle extant here applies to vertical as well as horizontal lines, so x-coordinates can be affected as well.

Tip No. 12

By now, some of you may realize how to use the principle in the previous tip to create lines with mitered corners. Following is the step-by-step procedure:

1. Draw first line and snap to guide.

2. Draw text box and select it and line together then drag until edge of line snaps to guide.

3. Draw second line and snap to guide.

4. Select it and text box and drag until edge of line snaps to guide.

For a mitered corner only, you can quit at step 3 above. Step 4 is thrown in to show how to confine the edges of the lines to the page guides. The text box is a temporary object used to reposition the line and can be deleted when you have finished. Impress your friends with that one...and don't forget you saw it here at Mike's Sketchpad first!

Tip No. 13

For picture boxes containing grayscale or true color images (RGB or CMYK) and which do not use clipping paths, set them up with a white background. Do not set them up with a background color of "None". The reason is that Linotronic imagesetters and other high-end output devices cannot differentiate the edges of the image from the background. The background pixels need to be mapped like any other pixel in the image. Click here to setup the picture box creation tools so all picture boxes have a white background by default.

Output results of picture box with a white background...

Output results of picture box with a background of "None"...

Notes:
a.) The background color of a picture box containing a black and white (1-bit) image can be set to "None".
b.) If a clipping path is used, version 4.x of QuarkXPress will automatically set the background to "None".
c.) If you are using a clipping path with an earlier version of QuarkXPress, the image must be an EPS file saved with a clipping path and you have to manually set the background color of the picture box to "None".

Part Three

Tip No. 14

The default position for an odd-numbered page in a facing pages document is a right-hand page. When you create a new document and insert blank pages, page one always begins on the right (below left). You may want to break up a large document into multiple files. In order to preserve the appearance of page spreads while you work on them, use the page section feature to renumber the first page as an even number. This will force the first page into being a left-hand page. The page section dialog is accessed by clicking Page > Section. In the dialog, put a checkmark in the "Section Start" checkbox and assign a number to the page in the "Number" box (below right).

Next move a page into the empty slot so the document consists of spreads:

Start a new section beginning with page number 2 as above.		Drag any page except 3 into the empty slot to the right of page 2.		The document will now consist of spreads only.

The asterisk next to page 2 above signifies a section start.

Tip No. 15

Quark™ automatically renumbers and reflows pages and in the process will reapply master pages if page positions switch from left to right or right to left. In the above example, every page will have been renumbered and the masters will have changed. This can create undesirable effects in your document because Quark will apply new master pages underneath your page objects in the stacking order and the appearance of your pages can change drastically (more here). In order to prevent this when moving pages, you must make sure that it doesn't cause them to be reflowed in the process. Using the previous example in Tip No. 14, if you move page 3 into the empty slot, its master page will switch from left to right, but the remaining pages will remain untouched because the numbering sequence will not have changed:

Note: When setting up documents and moving pages around as in the above examples, it is best to do it with blank pages before laying out any pages in the document.
Tip No. 16

In facing page documents, to preserve spreads and prevent reflowing of pages along with consequent changes in master pages, insert or delete pages in spreads, contiguous blocks of spreads or pages at the end of the document:

Page spreads		Contiguous blocks of spreads		Pages at the end of the document

Part Four

Tip No. 17

You may find yourself in a situation where you or your company changes printers or service bureaus and they will only accept QuarkXPress files. Trouble is, you've been using Microsoft® Word® or Publisher or Adobe® PageMaker® or CorelDRAW®, Deneba Canvas™, Macromedia® FreeHand® or some other layout program. Worse yet, you've got to edit and reprint some old layouts and they don't exist in QuarkXPress format. What do you do?

As a temporary solution, you can quick-port the layout as a PDF from the other application, then load the layout into a picture box in QuarkXPress and you're all set. You collect for output and include the PDF with the QuarkXPress document file like you would any other image:

There are a few drawbacks to this, though. Let me explain. One, the quality of the output from Quark™ will only be as good as the quality of the PDF. With so many applications able to write PDF files, you have to be sure the PDF will output as expected. You can use Adobe Acrobat®Distiller® to create the PDF file. If you create the PDF using Distiller, it will be a clean file because Adobe is the source of PDF and Distiller makes reliable PDF files.

Another drawback with this technique is that the layout is uneditable. This technique is not intended as a cure-all. It is intended to use in a pinch. If you need to make changes then edit the layout in the source application and create new PDF files to place into QuarkXPress. You also can port bits and pieces of the layout as individual PDF files and make changes as new objects around them in Quark.

There are a number of ways to make a PDF from the source application. In Microsoft Publisher you can export the layout as a PostScript file. This uses the Windows® PostScript driver (PSCRIPT.DRV). This will create a .PS or .PRN file on your drive. You can drag and drop this file into Distiller and it will create a PDF file.

Some applications such as CorelDRAW, Deneba Canvas and Macromedia FreeHand allow the saving or exporting of PDF files directly. Try any or all of these methods to get the desired result. You may have to do a lot of hit-and-miss tests, but once you figure out a reliable work flow you can repeat the process over and over.

In any event, you should always print out laser proofs on a PostScript® laser printer from the QuarkXPress application. If the job is to be in color then printout color separations on the laser printer. Count the number of plates. If it is a four-color job then there must be four (and only four) plates printed. Also check to make sure all the fonts render properly and everything appears as it is supposed to. If you find that errors are occurring, there is a good chance that they stem from the output settings of the the source application. Test this by printing directly from the source files in the application that was used to create them. Once you've ironed that out, create new PDF files with the new settings then place these new ones into the Quark picture boxes. Proof these on the laser printer just to make sure.

In short, do everything you would normally do before press time. Get a match print or color key and check the color...whatever.

Ultimately you will need to create your layouts in Quark. If your old layouts are in PageMaker format, there is a file conversion utility available from MarkzWare called PM2Q which would probably work better.