QuarkXPress For Dummies. Nelson Jay J.

Print previews

      ❯❯ The capability to export to ePub, iPad, Kindle, Android

      ❯❯ The capability to export items and pages as images

      ❯❯ Advanced east Asian typography

      ❯❯ Global language support built in (35+ languages)

      ❯❯ Spotlight and QuickLook support (Mac only)

      ❯❯ Cross-platform dual-licensing (Mac and Windows)

      

In the bad old days, you couldn’t edit a document created in a different language edition of QuarkXPress. Now, a project created in any language edition of QuarkXPress can be edited, printed, and saved in any other language edition of QuarkXPress – no more language-specific projects!

      Managing Your Files

      If you haven’t used a page layout program before, you soon discover that managing files for QuarkXPress projects is a bit different from how you may have managed them with other kinds of programs. For example, QuarkXPress changes its file format with every version, so older versions can’t open projects saved by newer versions. Also, a QuarkXPress project usually has several parts and pieces that are best stored together in a folder. You learn about these important topics next.

Futzing with file formats

      QuarkXPress 2016 can directly open documents that were last saved by QuarkXPress 7 and higher; documents earlier than version 7 require conversion first, as explained in the next paragraph. You can also copy entire pages from Adobe InDesign or Illustrator as well as import pages from PDF files, and convert them to native QuarkXPress items. See Chapter 3 for more on importing and converting those files.

      

Every version of QuarkXPress has allowed you to “downsave” a copy of your document to the format understood by the previous version. That way, you can hand off your QuarkXPress 2016 document to someone using QuarkXPress 2015. To downsave to the previous version, open your document and choose File ⇒ Export ⇒ Layouts as Project. In the resulting dialog box, choose 2015 from the Version pop-up menu. Unless you want to replace your existing project, give the new one a different name – perhaps add “qxp2015” to the end. QuarkXPress 2015 then happily opens the exported document just as if it had created it. However, any page items that use features not in that version will be either translated to something that version can understand or removed entirely. (For example, multicolor blends are converted to two-color blends, cross references are lost, and variables with line wraps are lost.) Use with caution!

      

If you use a Mac, you can use its QuickLook feature to preview QuarkXPress documents that were last saved by version 9 or higher. To do that, click once on the file in the Finder and then press the spacebar on your keyboard. The first page of the document appears in a preview window.

Opening projects

Opening an existing project in QuarkXPress is no different from opening a file in any other application: From within QuarkXPress, choose File ⇒ Open and navigate to the file. But QuarkXPress also has a handy Welcome screen (see Figure 1-1) that appears when no project is open, or when you choose Window ⇒ Welcome Screen.

       FIGURE 1-1: The Welcome screen.

      The Welcome screen has three sections:

      ❯❯ Open a Recent Project: Lists your most recently opened projects. Click one to open it. To open a different project, click the Other Projects folder icon. This opens your computer's standard Open File dialog box.

      ❯❯ Create…: Lets you create a new project or a new library. (Libraries are explained in Chapter 4.)

      ❯❯ Resources: These Quark-related online resources are updated whenever Quark feels the need to change them. Click a resource to be taken to its web page. Below the Resources section is a list of ways to buy QuarkXPress. You also find a handy Documentation folder icon that opens the folder on your hard drive containing the QuarkXPress Getting Started reference PDF (in many languages) along with comprehensive documentation for creating AppleScript scripts (if you’re on a Mac). See Chapter 18 for more on AppleScripts.

Opening older QuarkXPress projects

      QuarkXPress 2016 can open documents last saved by QuarkXPress 7 and higher. (Version 7 is when Quark dramatically modernized the document format.) To open QuarkXPress documents last saved by versions 3.1–6, first convert them with the free QuarkXPress Document Converter, available at Quark’s website. (The easiest way to find it is to type QuarkXPress Document Converter in your web browser’s search field.)

      

On a Mac, the File menu in QuarkXPress has a handy Open Recent item that lists recently saved QuarkXPress projects. To make a similar feature available in Windows, QuarkXPress includes the DejaVu XTension, which is installed automatically. To adjust the number of items it shows, choose Edit ⇒ Preferences and click the File List pane. If you find yourself repeatedly opening projects, saving projects, and retrieving text and pictures from the same folder, you can also use DejaVu to designate default folders for those actions. That way, whenever you choose the File ⇒ Open, File ⇒ Save, File ⇒ Import, or File ⇒ Export commands, the resulting dialog will already be directed to your chosen default folder for that action. To assign default folders, choose Edit ⇒ Preferences and click the Default Path pane.

Understanding and creating a project

      In contrast to most other programs, QuarkXPress documents often rely on external files that have been imported and linked. For example, when you import a picture, QuarkXPress inserts a preview of the picture on your page and remembers where the original picture file is. It then grabs that picture file whenever you export or print the QuarkXPress document. This feature can be tremendously handy for at least two reasons. First, picture files can be enormous, so by not including them inside your QuarkXPress document, your document doesn’t balloon to an unworkable file size. Equally important, if you edit the picture file after importing it into a QuarkXPress page, the updated version of the picture is used when printing or exporting the document.

      Therefore, before you create a new QuarkXPress project, it’s smart to create a new project folder to hold it. A handy naming convention for the folder might be as follows: client name-project name-year-month, which would look like this:

      petstumes-2017 catalog-16-11

      You can then create a folder inside that folder for linked pictures, which keeps them handy for your project. You may also want to create a folder for files related to the project, such as the original word processing files given to you, notes about the project, and other files related to your project but that aren’t necessary for printing it.

       Understanding Projects versus Layouts

      Back in QuarkXPress 7, Quark changed the way files are structured. Previously, QuarkXPress documents were similar to those by other applications: Each document had one page size and orientation. But in QuarkXPress 7 and beyond, you no longer have “documents.” Instead, QuarkXPress creates what it calls a project that can include multiple layouts. (You can think of a layout as what was previously a document.)

      Each layout can be a different size and orientation (portrait or landscape), so you can keep different parts of a project or campaign together. For example, a client’s business card, letterhead, and envelope can each be a layout within the same project. Or, for another example, a restaurant’s menu, table tents, happy-hour specials, and signage can each be a layout within one project.

      A QuarkXPress project can contain two types of layouts: print and digital.