The Quark XPress Book
David Blatner & Keith Stimely
ed. by Stephen F. Roth
Peachpit Press, Inc.
$24.95
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. To begin with, these guys have a sense of humor. (ÒWhile frequenting cocktail parties, we can blithely hint at the magnificent techniques weÕve come upon for using Quark XPress in a networked environment. Our friends and family are amazed as we stand tall, knowing which menu to pull down to create style sheets.Ó) That alone is a welcome change of pace from the remarkably dreary Mac books that line my shelf (the ones by Tony Bove and Cheryl Rhodes are especially deadly). But donÕt let the tongue-in-cheek humor fool you into thinking that this book is a puff job. At work we frequently drag this book out of my backpack before we look for the XPress manual itselfÑthe book is easier to read, itÕs better organized, and once in a while itÕs a bit more honest.
Quark XPress, for those of you whoÕve been living in a cave, has suddenly become the flavor of the month in the page-layout program wars. ItÕs been known all along for its extremely precise typographic control, which made it popular early on among type-heavy users like book and newspaper publishers (the Denver Post, for one, has used Quark XPress since 1987). For more varied uses, though, earlier versions of XPress were simply a pain in the bleep to use: objects could be grouped only through an unwieldy Òparent-child boxÓ arrangement, objects couldnÕt be moved from page to page or document to document unless an entire Òparent boxÓ with all of its contained Òchild boxesÓ was moved; and the program was utterly intolerant of any major design changes once a document was started. I once had to typeset a combination pica ruler and type gauge in XPress for a production shop I used to work for in Boston; halfway through the job, we decided to switch from a vertical to a horizontal orientation. Pretty simple, right? XPress wouldnÕt let me do it; it also wouldnÕt let me copy the elements I had drawn and paste them into a new document, because either way my Òparent boxÓ would fall outside of the page area. I ended up having to reset the whole thing from scratch. I also ended up avoiding XPress altogether for the next three years.
With the release of XPress 3.0, all that has changed. Those nasty parent/child boxes have been relegated to a menu option, and the entire program has a much more friendly and Mac-like interface (not unlike a souped-up DesignStudio, really). XPress now features a Pagemaker-like pasteboard, live scrolling, editable thumbnails, a very handy floating Measurements palette, libraries, object-specific preferences, full object rotation, automatic drop caps, first baseline positioning, anchored graphics, and, well, youÕve seen the ads. ThereÕs plenty more.
Added to XPressÕs type-handling and color-separating superiority over its competitors, it comes as no surprise that all these new features have made it such a hot item in the world of electronic publishing these days. On the other hand, it also comes as no surprise that all these features make XPress a fairly complicated thing to learn. The manual isnÕt too badÑbut this book is better.
The first handy thing about The Quark XPress Book is that it contains over 150 ÒTips,Ó little half-page nuggets of information on subjects ranging from ÒAdding Your Own KeystrokesÓ to ÒPrinting for Saddle-stitched Binding.Ó The second handy thing is that there is a separate Table of Contents for these tips. Instead of searching in vain through the Quark manualÕs index for advice on how to overcome XPressÕs built-in maximum limit on tracking, one simply looks through the XPress BookÕs table of tips and there it is (page 196).
Both tips and text are arranged thematically. After a quick introductory chapter praising version 3.0Õs many bells and whistles, Chapter 1 is a basic primer on the Mac interface, file management, and what all those little buttons and commands in Quark do. The authors point out early on that theyÕre assuming that their readers have just received a Mac and XPress for Christmas and have no idea what to do with either. They note that people who already know their Macs (like nearly everyone reading this newsletter) and those who have used earlier versions of XPress will find most of this chapter redundant; but, since XPress 3.0 does have a lot of new buttons and commands, they recommend skimming through the chapter anyway. So I did. It turns out to be good advice. The chapter reads fast, and itÕs packed with 35 of those ÒtipsÓ I mentioned earlier, several of which were completely new to me.
Chapter 2, ÒDocument Construction,Ó gets into the specifics of setting up pages in XPressÑand since this has changed quite a bit from previous versions of XPress (IÕve already mentioned the parent/child boxes), this chapter calls for a little closer reading. The main focus of the chapter is using and modifying master pages, but some of XPressÕs peculiarities are also noted. For one thing, XPress has not one, but two selection tools: an Òitem toolÓ that selects and moves text and picture boxes, and a Òcontent toolÓ that selects and modifies the contents of those boxes. This takes a little getting used to. A few weaknesses in XPress are highlighted here as well. Boxes and objects can only be moved all the way to the back or to the front, not incrementally; and since thereÕs no way to select a box thatÕs underneath something else, this can be a real nuisance. IÕve frequently found myself having to shuffle several boxes like a deck of cards in order to get at the one I want to modifyÑand then I have to do it all over again when IÕm through to get them back in the right order. The authors can only say to grin and bear it, but IÕve heard that the upcoming version 3.1 will have a Pagemaker-like modifier key that will allow users to click through overlapping layers of objects.
The next three chapters focus on word processing and typography. This is a pretty dry and dusty subject, but the authors do their best to make it interesting (to give credit where itÕs due, two of the chapters were ÒghostwrittenÓ by a third writer, Eric Taub). Right off the bat, the authors diverge from the XPress manual by including a section called ÒWhen Not to Use Quark XPressÓ: in short, the message is that if you have to do a lot of word processing, use a word processor. TheyÕre leaner and faster than XPress (or any other page layout program), and Quark has gone to a lot of trouble to include filters, tags, dictionary importers, style sheets, and other goodies (all carefully explained in the book) to ensure that your lovingly crafted text gets imported in at least as good a shape as it was when you typed it.
Speaking of typing, XPress 3.0 includes an incredible array of keyboard equivalents for menu and tool commands, rivaling even Microsoft Word for breadth and complexity. One of the authors is apparently quite fond of these keyboard commands, and several pages are devoted to list after list of them. As for me, IÕve never been allergic to using a mouseÑI would rather do a little mousing around than have to memorize a long list of command and option key functions, especially if IÕm going to have to memorize one list for XPress, another one for Word, another one for Illustrator, etc., etc. If thatÕs your cup of tea, however, the keyboard commands are there and the lists are in the book for you to study. Not mentioned in the book, though, is a very handy (and very free) desk accessory called ÒQuarkXPress KeysÓ by Bill Steinberg (heÕs got another one for DesignStudio). Why memorize all those key combinations? Just stick Õem in your DA menu.
A great deal of time is spent on typographic commands and controls. This may be boring to a lot of folks out there, but hey, I worked as a typesetter for a decade and this is right down my alley. I wonÕt bore you with the details, but take my word for it: XPress absolutely shuts down the competition in terms of control over type. Period. (Heck, even drop caps have been made effortless.) And the authors of The Quark XPress Book clearly know their type. Anyone who can start off a section by writing
To be honest with you, we use automatic leading when weÕre typing up grocery shopping lists. But when weÕre working on a project professionally, we define it for ourselves...
is someone who knows what theyÕre talking about. In fact, thatÕs a theme that reoccurs throughout the book, and should reoccur throughout every Macintosh software handbook: if itÕs automatic, donÕt trust it until youÕve tested it. You bought your Mac and your copy of XPress to get control over all this stuff, so for PeteÕs sake go ahead and control it.
After a chapter explaining the various Mac graphic formats and how XPress handles each, the XPress Book launches into a chapter titled ÒWhere Text Meets GraphicsÓ (sounds like a pretty good one-line definition of graphic design to me). Not surprisingly, the chapter is primarily devoted to text wraps and runarounds (with a section devoted to anchored graphics, a feature new to both XPress and Pagemaker). XPress has more or less the same text wrap capabilities as its competitors; but there is a major glitch that, in one of the few serious omissions in this book, the authors donÕt make note of. Graphic designers and typographers will tell you to avoid, as a general rule, putting a picture or graphic in the middle of a block of text and having the text run on both sides of it, since this tends to break up the readability of the type. But the same people will tell you that rules are made to be broken, and certainly that rule gets broken a lot. Pagemaker and DesignStudio can wrap text around both sides of a graphic; Quark XPress canÕt. ThatÕs a problem. I havenÕt heard yet whether version 3.1 will fix that or not.
ThereÕs another glitch that the authors fail to address, even though they picture it in one of their illustrations (p. 271). In general, XPress handles drop caps beautifully; no other Macintosh program of any kind does them as quickly or as easily. The problem arises when you place a letter or letters into a picture box, in an effort to make a sort of illustrated or ornate drop cap, and then anchor that to the text. XPress will do that for youÑunfortunately, it will ram the runaround type right smack up against the side of the picture box; and I havenÕt been able to figure out any way to keep that from happening. ItÕs a pretty minor problem (how often do you use illustrated drop caps?), but there it is.
And that leads the authors (and us) into the realm of the graphics themselves. Pay careful attention to the tips in these chapters, folks, because theyÕre a gold mine. ThereÕs all kinds of neat stuff in here that I never knew before. (Did you know that Command-Shift-M centers an image in its picture box? I didnÕt.) I should also point out that weÕve been running tests at Savannah Color Separations: starting with a scan of a color slide, we tried outputting it (both to a color printer and as separations to an imagesetter) in every imaginable combination of picture format and output software. We found that the combination that most accurately reproduced the colors of the original was XPress with the image in EPS format. (A word of warning: if you have your monitor set to Òmillions of colors,Ó imported Adobe Illustrator files will not appear on screen at all; youÕll have to set it to 8-bit color. This is not XPressÕs fault. Adobe has confessed that IllustratorÕs screen-preview code needs to be rewritten, but theyÕve been putting it off until Freehand 3.0 arrived. ItÕs arrived, so presumably the next version of Illustrator should work okay.)
Unfortunately, XPressÕs fairly considerable image-editing tools donÕt work with EPS images, but only with TIFFs and MacPaint images. Which is too bad, because theyÕre nicer image controls than are offered by the competition. (Did you know that Command-Option-A will make your image enhancements be instantly and continuously applied? ThereÕs another handy tip.) On the other hand, as nice as the controls are, they still donÕt hold a candle to a dedicated image-processor like Photoshop or ColorStudioÑif itÕs an important job youÕre working on, youÕre a lot better off doing your image manipulation work there and then importing it as an EPS.
The discussion of half-toning techniques in Chapter 8 is particularly useful, since this is a subject of some complexity that, if handled wrong, can cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The discussion is also pleasantly frank, as the authors donÕt hesitate to point out that half of the pre-set screen options provided in XPress are really pretty worthless. But, as they say, Òwe guess itÕs nice to have the option.Ó
One problem IÕve experienced a few times isnÕt mentioned in this book. I canÕt say for a certainty whether this is a problem with XPress in general or with the configuration of the particular Macs I happened to be working with. But on at least two occasions I constructed Quark files containing very large (2Ð4 meg) color TIFF images, downloaded everything onto floppies, and made my way to my service bureau. When loaded onto the Mac there, however, the Picture Usage command (normally a very handy feature) informed me that my image files had been ÒmodifiedÓ and asked me if I wanted to update them. When I said yes, XPress promptly blew the images back up to 100% size (which reminds me of another tip: do your resizing in Photoshop before you import the image into XPress or anything else; the output will look better). But when I called up the Picture Specifications window to put things back in order, it claimed that the images were still 74.5% or 108% or whatever they were originally supposed to be. No matter what I tried, the assigned percentage and the actual percentage remained out of whack. I ended up having to rebuild the file from scratch. That works fine; if you can build your file on the same Mac that itÕs going to be output from, youÕll have no trouble. But most of us donÕt own imagesetters. IÕve since been told that if the image is only ÒmodifiedÓ (as opposed to ÒmissingÓ) you can just go ahead and print it anyway without updating it. But, like I say, this has happened only with large color TIFF files and nothing else; and itÕs only happened those two or three times. IÕd be interested to hear if any other Mac Monitor readers have experienced this or not.
The final two chapters deal with color and with printing, and once again the tips fly fast and furious. The chapter on color focuses on the various separation techniques available. DonÕt worry about the separations; if you save images in the Ò5-file desktop publishingÓ EPS format, Quark will separate them beautifully. Trapping, the other major focus of this chapter, is a little more problematic. (Unlike other programs, which split the weight of a line across its axis, XPress does exactly what you tell it to: if you want a 2-point trap, just type 2 points in the specification box.) XPress has very intricate trapping controls, and it also has a pretty reliable automatic trapping command available as an XTension. Only problem is, XPress canÕt seem to discern between objects that completely overlap their background and objects that only partially overlap their background. The latter will get that 2-point stroke all around them whether you want that or not, and the only way around it is to construct your own trap stroke manually. ItÕs not a fatal flaw, but then again itÕs more than just a minor nuisance. The authors point out that the SpectreSeps QX XTension (if you can afford it) will handle that problem for youÑbut they also have the good sense to point out that desktop color separations are still far from perfect. If youÕve just landed a multi-million dollar contract to do AT&TÕs full-color annual report, youÕre probably going to want your printer to do your separating and trapping the old-fashioned way: by trained hand and experienced eye.
The chapter on printing contains a lot of material that will be familiar to an experienced Mac nerd (bitmapped vs. outline fonts, how to deal with service bureaus, and so on), but thereÕs more useful information on halftoning here and a nifty section on how to set up your Quark file to run best on different kinds of printers and binders. ThereÕs also a general troubleshooting section at the end of the chapter that will be useful to one and all. In a tip called ÒSave the RC TreesÓ (pretty funny guys, huh?), the authors single out another odd characteristic of XPress. Most programs are written to automatically rotate a page to horizontal format, if possible, in order to conserve the fairly expensive paper and film that imagesetters use. XPress doesnÕt. You or your service bureau operator, in order to conserve paper, will have to check the landscape mode in the Page Setup box and rotate the entire page 90¡ on screen in order to accomplish this. ItÕs another minor foible; but, heck, if all software was perfect thereÕd be no need for newsletters like this one, would there?
Toss in an appendix on postscript programming hints and tips, and another one listing hardware, software, and written resources, and what we have here is a very fine software manual. ItÕs certainly the most entertaining IÕve ever read, and among the most useful. I strongly recommend it.
by Craig Federhen
© 1991, The Savannah Macintosh Users' Group

EditorÕs Note: As an excercise, I laid out this article using QuarkXPress, instead of my trusty DesignStudio. A few comments: While QuarkÕs Master Pages were confusing for a beginner, I can see their benefit. The Picture Preview feature was most welcome, but it did not work on all of my images; TIFF and RIFF are not supported. Although I did not make extensive use of them in this article, QuarkÕs many image manipulation features were coveted. DesignStudio handles TIFF and RIFF manipulations very well, but it can't screen PICTs or paint files.
I missed DesignStudioÕs ÒApplyÓ buttons for many dialog boxes. Having to click on ÒOKÓ after minor changes just to observe the effect of the change seemed an unnecessary step. Quark has a few Apply buttons, but needs more.
Floating graphics (sometimes known as anchored graphics) was a minor joy, as was the ÒRule belowÓ feature. DesignStudioÕs Òsmart pasteÓ and Òsmart quotesÓ modes were missed on every page. (I thought all word processing and page layout programs had Òsmart quotesÓ by now.) Editors (as well as mortals) need to be able to add text to an almost-finished document once in a while.
QuarkÕs Òshow invisiblesÓ command is another feature I wish DesignStudio had.
QuarkÕs style sheets allow you to control all aspects of formatting: in addition to the expected font/style/size choices, you can choose whether to use all caps, small caps, whether to keep all of the lines of a paragraph together, and whether to have rules above or below paragraphs. All of this is good. However, QuarkÕs style sheets apply to paragraphs only; you cannot use a style sheet to, for instance, stress names within a paragraph, as you can in DesignStudio. I view this as an extreme limitation, and one that cripples PageMaker, too.
Probably the thing I missed most was the ability to double-click on an objectÑany objectÑin order to get at its specification dialog box, where Ican adjust all of its aspects. Despite all of the improvements in this latest version of XPress, there are still too many submenus and dialog boxes for my taste. QuarkÕs floating format palette goes a long way toward rectifying this.
Nevertheless, I am impressed with XPress 3.0 and the Quark XPress Book. Now if Ican just find time to really read it, instead of just skimmingÉ

Late note: Quark has announced that it will not support TrueType in its next release.