Category: Print Publishing/Desktop Publishing

• Lay out the documents on the Vista system with the 24" monitor
• Back up to a portable drive
• Move the files to my XP system with a 15" monitor
• Print each chapter (there were 50+) individually to .ps files (because any other technique would cause a crash)
• Distill the PS files manually into PDFs
• Use "Merge files into a Single PDF" command in Acrobat to put them back together in the right order, which required making my husband read the author names out loud (actually entertaining because they were mostly Cuban authors and he couldn't pronounce them)

1. Select a range of text that you would like to emphasize within a paragraph
2. Open Character Designer (you can press [Ctrl] [D]
3. Click the Commands drop-down menu from the bottom left of the dialog box and select Set Window to As Is
4. Type in a descriptive name (i.e., name the format Bold).
5. Select the properties you like to use (i.e., Bold)
6. Click the Apply button and then click Create

1. Character Formatting. Highlight a range of text and press the F8 function key. The left side of the status bar lights up with a blue background and offers you a list of Character tags. You can use the arrow keys  to navigate to the desired format, or tap the first letter of the format to jump right to it. After you highlight the one you want and just press Enter to accept. To remove Character formats, press  F8 and then press Enter.
2. Paragraph Formatting. Works like Character formatting, but F9 displays a list of Paragraph Tags. Here's a tip for long lists with multiple tags that start with the same character: press a lower case letter to work through the list from the top down, and an uppercase letter to start at the bottom and work up!
3. Transpose characters. Those of us who try to type far too fast for our own good will love this one. Just place your cursor between two letters and press Control F9. They reverse position instantly!
4. Shift the focus back to the document window. When you are in a Designer, and want to shift the focus back to the document window, just press Shift F7.
5. Set dialog box to As Is. The best way to make Character Formats is to begin by setting everything in the Character Designer to As Is. What a pain in the neck. Not anymore:  Shift F8 is the way to go. (What? Still struggling with Character Formats? Tune in next week for a quick review.)

by Kevin A. Siegel

1. Format some text using a large font size and a thick font (Arial Black works great)
2. Using the Text Content Tool, select the text and then choose Item > Convert Text To Boxes > Convert Entire Box

   It may not seem like you have done anything to the text. However, the letters are now one large picture content box–you could import a single picture into the entire word. However, it may be even cooler to split the letter shapes into individual letters and then import pictures into each shape

3. Choose Item > Split > Outside Paths to split the letters into individual letter shapes
4. Now you can import pictures into the letter shapes by choosing File > Import

   

   Once the text has been converted to an image box, you can use the Select Point Tool to reshape the item.

   

   

by Kevin A. Siegel

If you are a veteran QuarkXPress user like myself, you have probably lamented Quark's stubborn refusal to update the QuarkXPress interface over the years.

Hold onto your hats… the new QuarkXPress 8 is here, complete with an interface that has been totally overhauled! Over the next few weeks, I'll be discussing some of my favorite improvements in QuarkXPress 8–the best version of the this top-notch print publishing application in, well, forever!

Let's begin with the most basic of QuarkXPress features… the Tools palette. It won't take you long to notice that the Tools palette has been streamlined from the palette available in QuarkXPress 7 and older.

With the older version of QuarkXPress you had to draw an item (for instance, a text box using the Text Box tool). After drawing the text box, you then had to switch to a different tool, the Content tool, to type or edit text in the text box. While this approach worked, and worked well, for years, the process of switching tools always seems like an extra step to me. In fact, as a long-time QuarkXpress instructor, I found the concept a difficult one to hammer home to my students.

Those problems are distant memories with QuarkXPress 8. Now you draw a text box using the Text Content Tool.

After drawing a text box, you simply double-click inside of the box to begin typing or editing text–even if you've selected the Item tool (the first tool on the Tools palette).

Similarly, you can create boxes for pictures using the Picture Content Tool. Of course, you can, at any time, switch a text content box to a picture box, and vice versa.

If you are a veteran QuarkXPress user, you are probably wondering what happened to the Linking and Unlinking tools, which occupied a prominent place on the old Tools palette. No worries, those tools are still available… they've just been grouped with the Text Content Tool (which is really where they belonged all along).

by Kevin A. Siegel

1. Windows users, choose Edit > Preferences;
   Mac users, choose QuarkXPress > Preferences

   The Preferences dialog box appears. There are many categories.

2. Select the Print Layout, General category

3. From the Display area in the upper right of the dialog box, select Greek Text Below (put a check in the box)

   

4. Click OK
5. To view the "greeked" text, choose View > 50%

   At this reduced view, you should notice that the letter shapes disappear and instead you see gray bars-greeking. If you can still see letter shapes instead of gray bars, try zooming out a bit more by changing your View Percentage to something like 30%.
    

1. Copy "pressTOC.fm" and "pressIX.fm" into the Acrobat 8 project folder
2. Note that the Acrobat book is named "acrobat9.book"
3. Just rename the prefix on the copied files to match the book name: pressTOC.fm becomes acrobat9TOC.fm and the index becomes acrobat9IX.fm. (The key to this working is that the generated files prefix must match the book name, and the generated file's suffix must match the expected suffix (TOC = table of contents, IX = index, LOF = list of figures, LOT = list of tables, etc.)
4. Go ahead and add the generated files to your current book with the Add menu as you would normally (but don't mess with the expected suffix).
5. When the files are generated for the first time, they will be fully formatted. You can just proof them and move on!