This website also explains DVD formats, PAL vs. NTSC, descriptions of those cryptic file names on DVD videos, and how much video fits on each recordable DVD format.

They also test the reliability every brand of blank media and list the results in a table.

And what about Blu-ray? It’s all there, too…

Most of them are very specific to particular circumstances. Still, if those are YOUR circumstances, it kinda sucks…

Another person asked me whether it was “safe” to upgrade to the latest version. All I could say was that I think of these upgrades like visiting the beach — every person will have a different experience because of their activities, what they run into, what they expect, etc. (even the weather and the tides). And that’s always been true, for every program, as long as I can remember.

It was an intriguing proposition, and an impressive demonstration. I have to admit that my brain doesn’t seem to absorb certain kinds of structured thinking — CSS is still baffling to me, for example. So I wasn’t too surprised when “avenue.quark” seemed beyond my abilities. I assumed that other people with different skill sets would know what to do with it.

It turns out that some did, and some didn’t. And that created an opportunity for third parties to create XML solutions for QuarkXPress. Among the most successful is a company named In.vision Research Corporation, whose assets today Quark announced they have acquired.

In.vision has been quite successful with their Quark-to-XML solutions, which span a range of products from input to output. For example, they have an add-on for Microsoft Word (Xpress Author for Word) that lets Word users apply tags to content — much like style sheets — that are understood by Quark’s products. Quark has now renamed this product Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word.

“Quark’s products”? Yep. Many people think of Quark as a one-product company, but they actually have quite a number of products. Earlier this year, they released Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution (DPS), which uses Quark Transformation Engine to convert content from many different sources to XML, and then render it to multiple channels. Now, Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word will allow Word users to create tagged content for either QuarkXPress or Quark DPS — resulting in automated document production.

So that’s the “input” solution. The “output” options are equally intriguing. Here’s a quote from Quark’s press release:

“As part of this acquisition, Quark also gains products that support industry standards such as DITA (widely used for documentation) and SPL (Structured Product Labeling, an initiative of the U.S. FDA), which helps Quark access other markets and applications. In addition, In.vision will enhance Quark’s ability to connect to enterprise content management systems, especially Microsoft SharePoint.”

Okay… so now Quark DPS can automatically generate government-approved product labeling and documentation, and tap into other content management systems. What does this mean for QuarkXPress users?

What This Means For QuarkXPress Users 

I think there are two benefits for QuarkXPress users:

1. It’s possible that a QuarkXPress user may find herself in the new role of laying out documents from XML-tagged content. The content comes in pre-tagged for text styles and also tagged with information about which text belongs with which pictures.
2. A more robust Quark (the company). Similar to how Adobe’s bottom line is bolstered by its sales of Acrobat, PostScript, and PDF Print Engine technologies, Quark’s income may be improved by offering these new XML technologies. And the QuarkXPress development team will benefit from that income.

For More Information

I’m sure there will be other pundits punditing on the value and meaning of this acquisition. The first I’ve seen is this one by Ann Rockley, at CMS Watch. Quark also has an area of their website dedicated to the acquisition: www.quark.com/invision.

Well, with QuarkXPress 8, Quark has thrown that concept completely out the window. You can now drag almost any content, from just about anywhere on your computer, directly onto a QuarkXPress page. No existing boxes required. Quark also dramatically improved the way we interact with boxes as well — with smarter tools and smarter behaviors.

For a quick illustrated overview of what I mean, have a look at the story below, courtesy of X-Ray magazine. (This is an excerpt from “QuarkXPress 8: a Suite Response“.)

BOX RELIEF

QuarkXPress — pick any version — is a box-dependent application. Everything you want to add to a page resides in a box. From those tiny little icons in the tool palette, you had to choose the appropriate box that would come to contain your content. In QuarkXPress 6, you no longer had to delete the text box you just dragged out because what you needed was a picture box. You could convert one box type to another box type. In QuarkXPress 6.5, Quark added in the ability to have a box with [gasp!] no content. You could use a box to add a background color and not be bothered by the pesky X running through the empty picture box, or risk random type showing up because you inadvertently added text inside the text box that you used for the background.

As I remember it, the only real change that boxes have seen in the last two decades is the introduction of blue handles to indicate that a box contained shared content or was a composition zone, and in QuarkXPress 7, a bit of polish in the form of finer lines.

QuarkXPress 8 moves us forward decidedly. You no longer have to draw a box at all. Yes, you read correctly: you do not have to draw a box. QuarkXPress 8 will draw it for you (they’re not gone, it’s just that you are no longer required to draw them). While there are three separate tools (the text content tool, the picture content tool, and the box tool), they are interchangeable in that it does not matter what type of box you draw, you may put anything into it.

The process is, or can be, the same:

Choose a box tool from the tool palette (rectangle, oval, or starburst).

Click and hold down at the position where you want to establish the starting point.

Drag in any direction.

If using the box tool, press and hold down the T key for a text box or the R key for a picture box (these are known as modifier keys) and release the mouse button.

Release the modifier key.

Add the appropriate content (type, drag and drop content, RIGHT CLICK + IMPORT from the contextual menu, or choose FILE > IMPORT).

What if you don’t want to draw a box? Easy enough:

Choose FILE > IMPORT.

— or —

CONTROL + CLICK (Mac) > IMPORT (choose text or image content) or ALT + CLICK> IMPORT (Windows) (choose text or image content).

— or —

Drag and drop content onto the page (more about this later).

When you select a file to import from the file menu or contextual menu, you will be presented with the appropriate importing options within the dialogue box. While you’re limited to a single file (text or picture) to import at a time, you can import multiple files simultaneously using the new drag-and-drop feature.

EASY CHANGES

What if you have a picture on the page and decide that the box is actually better off with text? It couldn’t be easier:

Select the box.

Choose FILE > IMPORT.

— or —

CONTROL + CLICK (Mac) > IMPORT (choose text or image content) or ALT + CLICK> IMPORT (Windows) (choose text or image content).

— or —

Drag and drop content into the box (yes, yes, we’ll get to this soon).

Having said that, you will need to exercise a bit of caution when importing. If you have a text box selected and you import or drag and drop a picture, the text will be replaced by the picture — without warning. Of course, you’re a quick-and-easy undo from getting it back, but it’s momentarily shocking to see your layout undergo such a dramatic change when you’re not expecting it. (In fact, the reduction of scary warning dialogues to only those actions that cannot be reversed with undo was planned.)

That’s a simple enough concept, so let’s step off in a slightly different, but related, direction.

Draw a box with the box tool (by default this content is none).

Select the text content tool.

Double click the box.

Begin typing (or paste copied text).

You have just converted a box with none content to a box with text content, without manually converting the box type. The same is true of lines. Draw a line, double click it with the text content tool, and begin typing. This sort of intuitive behavior is partially how Quark was able to reduce the number of tools in the tool palette.

The box behavior described above is true of pictures as well. If you have a box of none content and you import, paste, or drag and drop a picture, the box becomes a picture box.

If the box already has picture or text content, double clicking the box will not change the content. If it’s a picture box with picture content and you double click it with the text content tool, QuarkXPress 8 makes a guess at your intent and assumes that since you have already defined content for the box that you must want to modify that content. Since the content in our example is a picture, you are automatically switched to the picture content tool — ready for picture positioning. Imagine the opposite if you start with a text box and double click it with the picture content tool.

Unlike typing, the import, paste, and drag-and-drop features impose a change on the box type and import the content you have chosen.

BOX DRESSING

Remember the part where I talked about easier access? Take a look at this new option of the measurements palette. Do this:

Draw a rectangular box (any content type, with any tool).

Go to the measurements palette.

Click to choose from the CORNER ICON drop-down menu

(shown in figure 28).

Optionally type a corner radius value.

The corner shape and radius have been added to the measurements palette.

[Sadly, I discovered there’s no ticker here. For me, the radius of my rounded corners is usually a visually chosen setting, so a ticker here would have been just as welcomed.]

BOXING IN YOUR INTENT

Another changed behavior, due to the change in the tool set, is what happens when you select the text content tool to draw a box. If you do this, when you release the mouse, you have a rectangular text box and you can (without changing tools) begin typing and text appears in the box.

To be clear, you are drawing a rectangular text box with the text content tool as opposed to the box tool (the box tool allows you to draw various-shaped boxes without predefined content).

Now, with the text box and the text content tool both selected (and text in that box), when you drag through the text, QuarkXPress does not expect that your intent is to draw another box (even though you drew the first box with this same tool), it expects that you want to select the text and edit it.

The key here is whether or not the text box is active. If it is active, QuarkXPress expects that your intent with the text content tool is to edit the text. If the box is not active, QuarkXPress expects that your intent is to draw another text box. …with me? Okay, maybe not, but give it a couple tries and you’ll start to see what I mean.

DUPLICATION SERVICES

It seems to me that with every new release, QuarkXPress morphs more and more into a one-stop application. First came the Bézier pen tool and QuarkXPress started behaving like a vector-drawing application, then came web layouts, and QuarkXPress became an HTML editor, then Quark Interactive Designer, and QuarkXPress became a multi-media and Flash-creation tool, so could they go from here? I’m glad you asked.

Taking cues from other applications, QuarkXPress 8 has adopted new item behaviors. My favorite? So simple — it’s drag to duplicate. Here’s how:

Select an item and keeping the mouse button down, begin dragging.

Before releasing the mouse, add OPTION (Mac) or ALT (Windows).

A duplicate item is created without affecting the position of the original.

The date automatically updates whenever the document is saved, and you can choose from several date formats.

Well, yeah. That’s what I want to know. Contrary to the way Preferences works in every other case, if you set that preference with no document open, QuarkXPress 7 will still create every new document with multiple layouts enabled. In other words, you have to do this dance for every new document.

Fortunately for We Who Have Upgraded, QuarkXPress 8 fixes that, and it also offers a “single layout mode” checkbox in the New Project dialog box when you’re creating a new project. (That checkbox is also available in QuarkXPress 7 if you’ve installed Quark’s free XPert PageSets XTension.)

By the way, here’s how to enable Single Layout mode:

Go to Preferences (on a Mac: QuarkXPress Preferences or on Windows: Edit  Preferences). In the Project area, click General and tick the Single Layout Mode checkbox. This will change that one project to Single Layout mode.

Itoya’s Art Profolio Evolution is a classy storage and presentation book so inexpensive you won’t mind giving it away. The durable black polypropylene cover is nice, but the stylish nylon stitching around the edge makes it special. It has acid-free, pH-neutral black mounting paper inside 24 crystal-clear PVC-free sleeves, for an effective 48 pages.

Now get the price: at www.artsuppliesonline.com,

• the 8×10 model currently costs $5.35
• the 9×12 costs $7.35, the 11×17 costs $13.27
• the 14×17 costs $16.55
• the 13×19 costs $17.83

Other sizes are available as well, and possibly from your local art supplies dealer.

FontIncluder 2/XT embeds TrueType, Type 1, and Type 3 fonts into EPS and PostScript files. Simply drag and drop EPS or DCS files (DCS 1.0 multiple file, and DCS 2.0 single and multiple file) onto the FontIncluder 2/XT icon.

FontIncluder 2/XT not only embeds TrueType and Type 3 fonts but will also embed Windows fonts into a file on the Macintosh. The Windows version will embed Mac fonts into a file on the Windows platform as well.

FontIncluder 2/XT checks any PostScript file (e.g., PostScript output printed to a file as well as EPS files of any nesting level) for needed fonts. If any fonts are not yet included (as is usually the case with standard EPS files), FontIncluder 2/XT scans folders (that are predefined) for the respective font files and includes these into the PostScript or EPS file. Whenever such a PostScript file is output afterward, there will be no missing font, and thus, no substitution with Courier will occur.

Versions are available for QuarkXPress 4, 5 or 6. Price: $319.

Stick to the grid
I have a friend who is the most nitpicky critic you’ll ever meet when it comes to layout. He couldn’t care less what the document is or the intended audience — he’ll critique it — often to the dismay of a designer who is preening like a mother cat over her new litter. A proper critiquing session always begins with the grid. Thankfully, with QuarkXPress 8’s new design grid feature, there will never be another document created without consideration for the grid. [My friend is at this moment rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. Professional help may be required.]

Design grids, like baseline grids before them, enable you to quickly layout items on the page that align neatly. Now with design grids, you can have different grid spacing at the master page level.

The design-grid feature is analogous to the baseline-grid feature in earlier versions of QuarkXPress, but the premise is the same. Page grids enable you to set up a series of grid lines running horizontally across the page at the specified distance (increment) to enable easy alignment between text and items, text and text, and consistent spacing within text boxes.

Quark has expanded upon the baseline grid feature, and now allows you to define different page grids for different master pages or apply a special grid to a text box (known as a text box grid). You can control the attributes for each of the four types of grid lines: topline, centerline, baseline, and bottomline (the distance from the topline to the bottomline is equal to a font’s em height). You can also position each based on font size and line spacing. When the page grid is displayed, you can align text visually, lock text to the grid, and even snap items to the grid — just as you could with the baseline grid.

Page grids in QuarkXPress 8 function at the master-page level. This means that every page in your document could adhere to a different grid, as long as that grid is defined on the master page on which you based that page. As for text box grids, every text box could adhere to its own grid as well.

To create a custom grid for a page, choose PAGE > MASTER GUIDES & GRID. Notice that the master guides dialogue box has undergone substantial changes. There are now many options for defining the attributes of a grid. There are two tabs here: text settings and display settings.

The master guides dialogue box has been expanded to include the options for page grids. Additionally there are now two options in the view menu for showing and hiding grids: page grids and text box grids.

In the text settings tab, you can choose to create a grid that is based upon a particular typeface, setting each option manually; or grids can inherit the attributes from any item in QuarkXPress that understands page grids. Do this by using the LOAD SETTINGS command. This could be master pages, other grids, or even style sheets.

When you link grid-style settings to a style sheet with the link option it can have far-reaching effects. If, for instance, you have created a grid style based on a style sheet that has 12-point leading and at some point in your production cycle, you modify the style sheet to 13.5 point leading, the grid styles based on this style sheet will also change. Caution: for text that is locked to this grid, the new spacing is applied and overflow may occur.

To create a grid and inherit settings from a predefined style sheet, do this:

Open the grid styles palette.

Click the fly-out menu and choose NEW.

In the edit grid style dialogue box, choose your settings for the grid or click LOAD SETTINGS if you wish to use attributes defined for a style sheet.

To link to a particular style sheet, click LINK TO PARAGRAPH STYLE SHEET [NAME OF STYLE SHEET].

Optionally click the DISPLAY SETTINGS tab and define colors for each of the four different grid line types.

Click OK.

In the display settings tab, there are four line types for which you may set the color, the style, and the width. Click the PREVIEW button to check your work as you go.

The display settings tab enables you to assign attributes to each of the four line styles.

To intelligently choose the display settings, you need to first understand the terminology. These lines are in reference to the true em height of a font size. Due to the glyphs of various typefaces, the actual top of the character may not sit at the top line. With a swash font such as Zapfino, the letters extend above this topline. The preview button will help you to accommodate anomalies. The centerline is the vertical center of the typeface, the baseline is the point where the text sits on the line, and the bottomline, again, for many typefaces, will indicate the point to where descenders will extend.

To create a grid, you may use any of the four options. Using the baseline only, you would be working in the same manner as previous versions of QuarkXPress when invoking the baseline grids feature. Use any of the four types that provide you the type of visual aids you need for item and text alignment.

There are four types of gridlines available for either page grids or text box grids and each can be assigned a unique color. In my example, the topline is green, the centerline is pink, the baseline is yellow, and the bottomline is burgundy.

At a more granular level, Quark has provided text box grids. This type of grid enables you to define grids that are attributes of particular text boxes. 

Once you have defined the settings for either the page grid or the text box grid, you are able to lock text to this grid through the paragraph attributes dialogue box, or if working with style sheets, through the paragraph attributes dialogue box embedded there.

Page grids, in the paragraph attributes dialogue box, is analogous to baseline grids of previous versions.

While you may have never used the baseline grids feature, you’ve probably bumped into it in the preferences dialogue, text format dialogue, or in the style sheets dialogue. In each of these places, baseline grid has been replaced with page grid and text box grid has been added.

When you format text to lock to gridlines that you have defined, you automatically ensure that you have consistently spaced leading across multiple columns and easily align other items placed in the layout with these same grids.

Even though your design calls for text box grids that differ from the grid settings of the page aground it, you may want the first line of the text box to align on one of the page grids. This is very easy. Click a grid line within the text box and drag to the page grid to which you want it to align and release.

Remember: Page grids are set up by going to the master page and choosing master guides and grid; Text box grids are set up by accessing the grid style, either through the edit menu or the grid styles palette. Text box grids can be applied to a text box in the same way as a color. Drag and drop onto a text box or select a text box and click on the grid style in the grid style palette.

Note: Grid styles can be appended through the standard append dialogue box and shared with other projects.

A trip to PREFERENCES > GUIDES & GRID, and you’ll find that you can also set a default visibility setting. That means that when the page is less than the percentage you type here, the guides and grids will not be visible.

You no longer set the baseline offset in the preferences dialogue box, but here you can set the visibility threshold.

Get in line
Character alignment is an easy process for aligning the characters within a text box. In my examples, I have turned on the text box grid for the centerline and the baseline so that you may more easily see the effect.

Character alignment is a new option in the style menu when you have text selected.

In this example, I have taken a headline from one of our recent stories along with the byline. Before QuarkXPress 8, in order to vertically align this text, I would have selected the byline and added baseline offset.

With a text box gridline applied, and my text locked to the baseline grid, you can easily see that the baselines of both groups of characters are aligned.

While this is a fairly simple example, think about the ease in which you could align several bodies of text. To use this feature, select all the text in the text box and go to STYLE > CHARACTER ALIGNMENT.

After I have aligned my characters to the center, the results are obvious.

Guiding control
The guides feature gives you precise and extensive control over the project’s guides (not to be confused with grids). You can use the guides palette (Window menu) to modify the color, placement, display, and orientation of each guide in a layout, or you can click and drag a guide and the spread number, page number, location, color, scale, visibility, locked status, page/spread designation, and orientation are added to or updated in the guides palette.

You may also select multiple guides (SHIFT + CLICK or COMMAND + CLICK) and delete multiple guides in one pass (click the TRASH icon or CONTROL + CLICK or RIGHT CLICK to access delete through the contextual menu).

Notice also that the palette is divided into columns, and like all good little tables, can be sorted by columns. This is a great way to be able to view all guides that are, for instance, related to specific items within your layout such as sidebars. Assign them a single color and then sort by that color.

The buttons across the top of the guides palette are: create a new guide, mirror guide, show horizontal guides, show vertical guides, and show only the current page/spread’s guides.

The guides palette enables you to precisely add or modify the position of a guide. In my example above, and referencing the figure before it, I have modified the imprecise placement of the first guide to a whole number. Modifying the value here in the palette will move the guide on the page.

The two most important features are the ability to type the placement of a guide into a field and the ability to copy guides and paste them to another page. No longer must you zoom in to 800% to affect precise control over the position of a guide.

When you click the plus icon at the top of the guides palette, you prompt the guide attributes dialogue box. Here you can precisely define the placement of your guide, and even provide a view scale so that the guide appears when you are viewing the page at a larger scale than that defined here or locked so that the guide cannot be moved.

Tip: An easy way to invoke the guide attributes dialogue box
is to double click on a guide.

Tip: If you have set up guides that you need in another document, you may import and export them using the guide palette. (They are not available through the append feature.)

To copy guides from one page to another, open the guides palette and multiple select the guides to copy, OPTION + CLICK or RIGHT CLICK to copy the guides, then scroll to another page or spread within the palette and PASTE.

The guides feature is so robust and has so many possible applications, that I could publish an entire story on the myriad of ways that I have seen these used. Suffice it to say that the feature set is extensive. Two features, for me, stand out: the ability to divide my page into a grid (within the page area or within the margin area), and the ability to place guides at the edges of items.

Easily divide a page into columns and row (or grids) using the guides feature.

To create guides at the edge(s) of a selected item, select the item and choose
CREATE GUIDES FROM BOX from the guides palette fly-out menu.

Note: The guides palette is not sensitive to the zero point of your ruler. Guides placement is recorded as though the top-left corner
of your page is zero.

My favorite highlight about the new interface is:

“The process isn’t just more efficient, the creative freedom it enables will lead to more exciting use of images and better designs.”

And my about Flash integration:

“Put it all together and QuarkXPress 8 provides a very useful design-rich alternative to Adobe Flash CS3 Professional for SWF authoring. …With its recent launch of Acrobat 9, Adobe is merging the previously separate worlds of SWF and PDF. QuarkXPress 8’s Flash authoring capabilities mean that it should be especially well placed to take advantage of this new offline delivery route for interactive publications.”

I couldn’t agree more.