FindPalette is a utility for use with QuarkXPressｨ 3.31 or later for Macintosh or Power Macintosh. It allows you to find and replace attributes for text boxes, picture boxes, lines and page guides. The main window resembles the one presented by the Find/Change command in Quark:
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Attributes that can be searched and changed for each item are:
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Installation
FindPalette is not an Xtension, but an application (created in HyperCard) that communicates with QuarkXPress by sending Apple Events. AppleScript must be installed in your system in order for FindPalette to work. To use it, just double click its icon and place the main window somewhere near an open Quark document. FindPalette can be opened without having to quit Quark first, and you can quit it at any time. It requires 1.5 Mb of RAM to run.
Using FindPalette
First, select the item whose attributes you want to search for from the Item pop-up menu. You can choose: Text Box, Picture Box, Line, Horizontal Guide or Vertical Guide. Next, select the attribute from the Attribute pop-up menu. Depending on the attribute chosen, you will be presented with editable fields (for Angle, Width, etc.) or pop-up menus (for Runaround Mode, Trap, etc.) in Find what and Change to. If the Find what field is left blank (or you select Any if there is a pop-up menu), then searching will be done for any instance of the item in the document, regardless of the status of the attribute.
When you are ready to begin the search, click the Find Next button. Searching is always done from the current page up to the end of the document. To do a document search, go first to the first page. If an instance is found that matches the search, then you can click either the Change, then Find, Change or Change All buttons, which behave in a similar fashion to the ones in the Find/Change command in Quark.
Change All will change any instances from the current page up to the end of the document, and it will display the pages in which the changes are taking place. When finished, a message with the number of instances found will be shown. This number is not necessarily the number of instances that have been changed, since there may have been items whose attributes could not be changed (for instance, when changing Line Lengths, certain lines may fall outside the pasteboard area, so they wonﾔt be changed).
If you enter an invalid number or measurement in the Change to field, a beep will sound and the change will not be made, so make sure that you input proper values. This is especially true when searching and changing colors ﾐ you must enter the name of the color exactly as it is spelled in the Colors menu in Quark (though it can be upper or lower case).
Units are optional (i.e. 100 or 100% are the same for Shade), and the default units are the same as Quark defaults or the ones currently set in the Quark Preferences.
To stop a lengthy search, or to stop a running Change All, click ﾐ and hold ﾐ the animated icon in the lower right corner of FindPalette. You can also type Command-period to abort at any time.
Tip: To speed up the process of finding and changing after hitting Change All, hide QuarkXPress.
Note: When searching for Horizontal or Vertical Guides, if a guide matching the attributes is found, FindPalette will not ﾒshowﾓ it or ﾒselectﾓ it: only the page that contains that guide will be shown. Additionally, changes will be done in the order in which the guides were created.
Explanations of Some Attributes
Although most of the attributes are self-explanatory, there are a few that require additional information:
ﾐ Background Color (applies to Text and Picture Boxes): To specify a transparent box, enter ﾒNoneﾓ or ﾒnoneﾓ in the Find what or Change to fields. Do not leave it blank.
ﾐ Visible at Scale (applies to Horizontal and Vertical Guides): This is the minimum view scale at which guides will become visible (and items will snag to them). When you create a new guide in Quark, the Visible at Scale is 0%, meaning that it will be visible at any view scale. If you create a guide while holding down the Shift key, that guide will only be visible at scales that are the same or higher than the one that is currently set. With FindPalette you can search and change the Visible at Scale of any horizontal or vertical guide (values must be between 0% and 400%).
ﾐ Locked (applies to Horizontal and Vertical Guides): There is no way to lock guides in Quark. However, you can lock and unlock guides using FindPalette. Once a guide has been locked, it cannot be moved (you can delete it, unlock it or change its Visible at Scale, however).
Limitations
ﾐ Some attributes have not been included in this release (e.g. Corner Radius), and others are not fully implemented (e.g. the lack of Custom trapping). Future versions may contain them.
ﾐ There is no Undo feature in FindPalette. After a change has been made, you cannot undo it.
ﾐ FindPalette will not work in Master Pages; only document pages can be searched.
ﾐ You cannot search or change guides that were created in the pasteboard; only page guides can be searched and changed with FindPalette.
Shareware Information
FindPalette is not free. If you find it useful, please send $10, along with any suggestions, to:
Dario Badia
392 Sherbourne St. #802
Toronto, Ontario M4X 1K3
Canada
Your contribution will encourage me to improve FindPalette and create more ﾒPalettesﾓ in the near future. Thank you!!
You can also e-mail me at dario@netcom.ca
Other Shareware Products
There are two other shareware Palettes that I have created: TabPalette (version 1.5) and SelectionPalette (version 1.0). They are $10 each and you can download them from the Quark Forums of America Online or Compuserve.
TabPalette allows you to easily manipulate tab settings in Quark. It features two modes ﾐ Absolute and Relative (distance between consecutive tabs) ﾐ Move and Move and Repeat a group of tabs, and Save and Load up to 9 settings of tabs.
SelectionPalette gives you a sort of ﾒcharacter-based style sheetﾓ and the ability to apply a group of text attributes as soon as you finish making a text selection (without the need for any keystrokes or menu selections). Also, you can ﾒrecordﾓ text selections and apply the changes all at once.
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Trademarks
Quark, QuarkXPress and Xtensions are trademarks of Quark, Inc.
AppleScript and HyperCard are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
