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Miscellaneous
Tips and Tricks For QuarkXPress™ - Part One |
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Tip No. 1
Setup the Measurements palette so lines are measured by "First Point".
This choice gives you the X1, Y1 coordinates along with the line's angle
and length. The default of "Endpoints" gives you the X1, Y1, X2, Y2
coordinates and is not as easy to work with.
Tip No. 2
For the height of all text boxes allow a minimum clearance of one x-height
below the lowest descender of the font used in the text box (a font's
x-height is the height of the letter "x"). There are minute differences
between computer systems. If you establish a text box height that is
too tight on your system, it is liable to be too small for the text
to display or output on another's. The example below illustrates what
can happen and just how deep your text boxes should be to avoid this.
Tip No. 3
When making text boxes with reversed type or with colored backgrounds,
it is better to make separate objects for the background and text rather
than make it as a single object. In the example below, the preferred
method is the one on the right. See Tip No. 2 above for why. The output
result of the one on the left below may be a plain red box with no type.
Tip No. 4
When making corners from intersecting lines, be aware that measurements
and snapping occur from the midpoint of the line. In the example below
there is a corner made from the intersection of two 8-point wide lines.
Both the horizontal and vertical lines on the left have the same x and
y coordinates. In the example on the right, the horizontal line was
shifted to the left 4 points (half the line thickness) to make a mitered
corner. Likewise, if 1-point wide lines are used the shift would have
to be .5 point to compensate.
Tip No. 5
A simple ad splash can be made from a polygon. Create the polygon, give
it a 1-point black frame and a white box color. Then drag and drop it
into a library and save it with other library items. In the example
below, the top item shows the polygon points, and the bottom one was
made by making a copy of the polygon for a shadow. The shadow was given
a black box color.
Tip No. 6
When you have applied a paragraph style and want to remove it without
changing the appearance of the text, Click Style > Paragraph Style
Sheet > No Style. This removes the style sheet link and
effectively applies local formatting to the text.
Tip No. 7
Once you have setup local text formatting on a block of text and you
need to use it repeatedly in your document but you don't want to create
a style sheet, you can save a lot of time simply by copying only one
or two characters and pasting them at the location where you want to
repeat the style. This will save the repetitious mouse clicks required
to set it up each time.
Tip No. 8
Numbered and bulleted lists often use a hanging indent. A hanging
indent is where the text is indented to the right of the bullet or number.
To make a bulleted list style like the example below, select the paragraph
and click Style > Formats... In the dialog enter a positive
number for a "Left Indent" amount and the same number as a negative
number for a "First Line" amount. Then paste a Zapf Dingbat character
for a bullet in front of the first line. Save the formatting as a style
sheet and apply it to the remaining paragraphs without the bullets.
Paste the bullets after applying the style sheet.
The base style is 14 point AGaramond with 14 points of leading and a
space after of 3 points. The Zapf Dingbat bullet is a 10 point character
created from a keypress using the lowercase "u" (both Macintosh® or
Windows®). There is one blank space of AGaramond after the bullet character
and before the main body of text. In this case I used 12 points for
a "Left Indent" and -12 points for the "First Line".
Tip No. 9
When making paragraph styles to separate paragraphs use either "Space
Before" or "Space After" but not both...otherwise you may wind up with
a confusing mess. I prefer "Space After" because most of my text is
top aligned (Ascent) and all my text boxes have extra space at the bottom.
Tip No. 10
Set your leading to the same number of points as the point size of the
font you use. Example, with a 14 point font, set the leading to 14 points.
Quark's "auto" leading is a bit too loose for my taste.
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