IN MOST COMPUTER APPLICATIONS, A “FILE”—A NAMED ENTITY stored in a specific location—contains a single document. The document, whether a letter or book chapter or dining menu, is one size and usually covers one topic. Think of a picture file from a digital camera or a word processing file.
In QuarkXPress, however, a file can be more than a single document. A QuarkXPress file is called a project, not a document, and it can contain multiple documents called layouts. Layouts can be different sizes—so the same project file can contain business cards and letterhead, for example—and they can be for different media. QuarkXPress can produce print, Web, and interactive (Flash) layouts, all of which can be stored in a project file.
Storing several layouts in a project file has many advantages. For one thing, all the “supplies” for the project—such as colors, style sheets, and shared text and graphics—are available to all the layouts. Changes to shared text, for example, can be made once simultaneously for a brochure, Web site, and interactive catalog at the same time. In addition, storing layouts in projects creates fewer files to manage and back up.
In this chapter you’ll learn how to save projects and create, append, delete, and export layouts.
A single QuarkXPress project file can contain multiple layouts for the same or different media—print, Web, and interactive (Figure 1.1)
Figure 1.1 In QuarkXPress, a project file can contain multiple layouts for the same or different media. For example, a project may contain three variations of a print layout such as a book cover in three different languages. Or, a project may contain a print, Web, and interactive version of the same content.
To create a project in QuarkXPress, you will actually create its first layout. While this is easy to do mechanically—you just click a few commands—you need to make various decisions that will affect the final output. First, you need to decide what type of layout to start the project with: print, Web, or interactive. Then, you’ll need to know the finished size of the piece:
For print: Figure out the finished page size after any trim. (Pages are trimmed to the final size when items such as photos bleed off the page.)
For Web: Decide whether you want a fixed-page width or if you want pages that adjust according to the width of the browser window.
For interactive: Use the height and width of the exported presentation as it will be viewed onscreen. This will vary depending on how you are distributing the presentation; for example, if it’s part of a Web site, it will be smaller than if it’s a full-screen presentation.
Depending on the job, you may need advice from a printer, an IT specialist, or a marketing department to make these decisions. You can, of course, change the size later, but you may end up making many time-consuming manual adjustments. Other decisions you make, such as margins, are easy to change later.
Once you know what you want to create for the first layout in the project, choose File > New > Project. Here, we will take a look at how to set up a print layout, which you are likely to do most of the time. (See Chapter 12 for how to set up Web layouts and Chapter 13 for how to set up interactive layouts.) Highlights of the New Project dialog box include:
Layout Name: This is not the name of the project—it’s the name of the first layout that the project will contain. While it’s easy to change this later, it’s a good idea to enter a descriptive name (such as Brochure) rather than leaving the default name of Layout 1.
Layout Type: This is where you choose the media for the layout: Print, Web, or Interactive (Figure 1.2). You can change this later if necessary, but changing it will render all the other settings in this dialog box moot.
Page: The size you set up here is the final page size after the pages are trimmed at the printer. Do not create larger pages to contain items that bleed off the page; you can create your own bleed guides or set them up using the Guides palette (Window menu).
Facing Pages: If you want to see reader spreads—the two pages you read side-by-side in a book or magazine—check Facing Pages. When this is checked, you can also set Inside and Outside margins rather than Left and Right margins for the pages.
Automatic Text Box: Checking this automatically places a text box on the default master page and the first page of the layout. The automatic text box is helpful in two ways. First, you can start typing as soon as you create a new layout. Second, if you import a long text file, it automatically flows through the automatic text box, adding pages as necessary to accommodate the length of the text. This saves you the very tedious task of manually adding pages and linking boxes.
Margin Guides and Column Guides: The values in the Margin Guides and Column Guides fields control the placement of default guides that you can use for item placement. They are not strict borders and are easy to change. The one important thing to know about these values is that if you use the automatic text box, it is placed snugly inside the margin guides with the number of columns specified.
When you click OK, QuarkXPress creates a new project containing the initial layout.
Tip: Precision Project Names
Many companies have rules regarding file names—for example, the project file for a book may be named with the book’s ISBN number, or an advertisement may be named with a job number. If you’re working for yourself or have no rules to follow, create a file-naming strategy to ensure that files are never misplaced or confused with older versions. A common issue with project names is that they are too general. For example, if you create an ad campaign for a client and you name the project with the client’s name, what do you name the second project for that client? How does the printer identify the job if they have multiple jobs for that client? And finally, if you ultimately give project files to clients, the name is useless to them—they already know their name. A good name might identify you, the client, and the job.
Even though you named the first layout in the New Project dialog box, the new project file is unsaved.
1. Choose File > Save or File > Save As.
2. Navigate to a location for the project file—for example, a folder for the project and client.
3. Enter a name that identifies the entire project in the Save As field—for example, the name of an advertising campaign or a magazine issue.
4. Add the file extension .qxp to the file name. While this is not required, it helps your system identify file types.
5. Leave the Type setting at the default: Project. Later, if you design a template—a pre-designed starting place for new projects—you will choose Project Template.
6. On the Mac, you can check Include Preview to see a thumbnail of the first page of the document in the Open dialog box.
Tip: Skip the ‘Documents’ Folder
When you start creating and saving projects, set up a strategy for where to save them—a folder for each client with subfolders for each job, for example. In general, you will want to store all the content for a project (text files, picture files, and so on) in a single folder. Saving projects in the Windows My Documents folder, or just whatever location opens in the Save As dialog box, quickly leads to confusion about where files are.
Tip: Default Path for Save As
If you tend to save files in the same location, you can have QuarkXPress automatically open the Save As dialog box to that location. In the Preferences dialog box, click Default Path at left and check Use Default Path for Save/Save As. Use the Browse button to navigate to your preferred location.
All QuarkXPress projects contain at least one layout, so all projects involve at least two names. You have the name of the project file and the name of the layout. In many cases, projects simply contain one layout—an ad, a sticker design, a brochure—and having two names is pointless.
If you prefer a single name for the layout and project, check Single Layout Mode in the New Project dialog box. The Layout Name field disappears and you name the project in the Save As dialog box. If you rarely or never store multiple layouts in the same project file, check Single Layout Mode in the Project > General pane of the Preferences dialog box (Figure 1.3). You will never be bothered with layout and project names again.
Figure 1.3 The Single Layout Mode preference simplifies project and layout naming when most of your project files contain only one layout.
Tip: Single-Layout Mode for Looks Only
Veteran users will appreciate working in single-layout mode because it sends QuarkXPress back in time to versions 1 through 5. But even if you prefer to work this way most of the time, single-layout mode is nonrestrictive. You can still add and duplicate layouts as you wish.
You open QuarkXPress project files the same way you open any file on your system: Choose File > Open, double-click the filename on your desktop, or drag the file on top of the application icon. The project opens to the last layout you were editing. A few things may happen when you open a project:
Nonmatching Preferences alert: If a long, complicated alert displays regarding preferences, click Keep Document Settings. This ensures that nothing changes in the layouts within the project file.
Missing Fonts alert: If any layout in the project uses fonts that are not active on your system, click List Fonts. Note the missing fonts and activate them through a font manager or through your system. You can also replace the missing fonts with active fonts, but this can change the design of the layouts.
Modified Pictures alert: If an alert indicates that pictures files imported into one of the layouts have been modified, click List Pictures to see which ones. (This might happen if you import a picture file into a layout, then perform more edits to the picture or graphic in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.) You can then update the pictures, which updates the previews displayed in QuarkXPress and the links to the files. This alert only displays when the Auto Picture Import preference for the project is set to Verify (Preferences > Project > General).
If you need to take a quick look at a file, it’s fine to bypass the Missing Fonts and Modified Pictures alerts. For final output, however, it’s important that the correct fonts are active and all picture files are updated.
Tip: Use a Font Management Program
For most graphic designers, the font management tools available through your system are not adequate for managing the volume and variety of fonts you eventually have. A professional font manager such as Suitcase Fusion (www.extensis.com) provides expert features for locating specific fonts, previewing them, and controlling which specific fonts are active. Some font managers also provide QuarkXPress XTensions (plug-in software modules) that activate fonts automatically as projects are opened.
Projects can contain an unlimited number of layouts. Once in a project, layouts can be shared and exported—they are not stuck within the project file. None theless, you will not want to get too crazy storing layouts within projects. You want to keep the project file at a reasonable size so you can burn it on a DVD to share or archive, for example. To create a new layout within the active project:
1. Choose Layout > New. Or, to create a copy of the active layout, choose Layout > Duplicate.
2. In the Layout Properties dialog box (Figure 1.4), enter a Layout Name and choose a Layout Type.
3. Use the remaining controls to configure the print, Web, or interactive layout.
When you click OK, the new layout displays.
To control which layout displays, click the tabs at the top of the project window (Figure 1.5).
Figure 1.5 Tabs at the top of the project window let you control which layout displays. Here, the project contains a print brochure, Web page, and interactive Flash file of the same content.
Tip: Change Layout Properties
You can change any characteristic of a layout, including its name, type, and size. For example, you might duplicate a print layout and then change its type to a Web layout to get started on a Web page. To do this, choose Layout > Properties. Changing layout properties may alter the content—for example, if you change a Web layout that contains interactive elements to a print layout, the interactivity will be lost. A warning displays if the layout’s contents may change.
Millions of files exist in QuarkXPress format. If you happen to have or inherit some of those pre-existing files, most are in the old one-document-per-file format. To take advantage of the benefits of storing multiple layouts in a project file—such as shared style sheets and master pages—you can import layouts from existing QuarkXPress files into project files. To append a layout into the active project:
1. Choose File > Append.
2. Navigate to and select the document (from QuarkXPress 3.3–5.x) or project (from QuarkXPress 6 and above). The Append dialog box may take a few seconds to open, depending on how old the document is or how many layouts the project contains.
3. In the Append list at left, click Layout.
4. In the Available list in the center, click the layouts you want to append. Click the right-facing arrow to send the layouts over to the Including list (Figure 1.6).
Figure 1.6 Use the Append dialog box to import layouts from QuarkXPress 3.3–5.x documents and from QuarkXPress 6.0 and above projects.
5. When you click OK, an alert warns you that style sheets, colors, master pages, and so on are going to come along with this layout. You can click OK again—if necessary, you will be able to resolve conflicts such as colors with the same name but different definitions.
Once you append a layout, save the project file.
Tip: Resolving Conflicts
If the Append Conflict dialog box displays, you can carefully review conflicting definitions such as differences in H&Js or color definitions. This can be tedious and difficult, so it may be better to click Auto-Rename and then check Repeat for All Conflicts. This places an asterisk in front of the imported style sheet, color, H&J, or whatever. You can then review the usage in the layout and decide whether to keep the old settings or use the settings in the project. For example, say a project contains a style sheet called Body that specifies Adobe Garamond Pro and you append a layout with a style sheet called Body that specifies ITC Garamond. Text will probably reflow significantly if you override the appended layout’s style sheet with the project’s style sheet. If you rename the Body style sheet in the appended layout, you can review the layout to see if you want to change the style sheet or not.
Not only can you import layouts through File > Append, but you can export layouts through File > Export. You can export one layout as a separate project file or select several layouts to store in a new project file. You might export a layout in order to share a template or a smaller file with another user, for example. (You do not need to export a layout to send only that layout to a printer—use File > Collect for Output to do that.) When you no longer need a layout in a project, you can delete it.
To export a layout from the active project:
1. Choose File > Export > Layouts as Project.
2. In the Export Layouts as Project dialog box (Figure 1.7), specify a name and location for the new project that will contain the exported layouts.
Figure 1.7 The Export Layouts as Project dialog box lets you extract selected layouts as separate projects and downsave layouts for use in QuarkXPress 7.
3. In the Layouts area in the lower-left corner, make sure only the layouts you want to export are checked.
4. If you are exporting a layout to serve as a template, choose Project Template from the Type menu. Templates, which serve as a pre-designed starting place a new layout, are write-protected files that open as new, unsaved projects.
Exported layouts are copied into new projects, so they remain in the source project. After exporting a layout, you may want to delete it from the source project.
Tip: Downsaving to Quarkxpress 7
If you need to open a QuarkXPress 8 layout in QuarkXPress 7, you have to export the layout from the project—even if it’s the only layout in the project. In the Export Layouts as Project dialog box, choose 7.0 from the Version menu. Be sure to change the file name or location so you can easily distinguish the 7.0 version from the 8.0 version.
If you no longer want a layout in a project—because you exported it, because that part of the job was canceled, or whatever—you can delete it. If you want to save any of the content, you can export a layout before you delete it or save some of the contents in a library (see Chapter 4). To delete the active layout, choose Layout > Delete. When the alert displays a warning that this cannot be undone, click OK.