I thought I was being clever by saving my Preferences file, but that doesn’t contain my Output Styles — those are stored in a separate file in the Preferences folder named OutputStyles.xml. I had overlooked it, because all the other items in the Preference folder are either “.prf” files or cache folders, both of which would be rebuilt when QuarkXPress next launched.

Time Machine to the rescue! Fortunately, since I’m running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and I enabled Leopard’s Time Machine backup, I could go back to my last installation of QuarkXPress and grab that OutputStyles.xml file. After moving it back into the Preferences folder, my custom Output Styles returned.

Lesson: if you’re in the habit of backing up your XPress Preferences.prf file, and you don’t want to back up your entre Preferences folder, at least back up your OutputStyles.xml file.

To find out your version of QuarkXPress, either watch the splash screen as it launches, or choose QuarkXPress> About QuarkXPress.

(To export a file from QuarkXPress 7 in v.6 format, choose File> Export> Layouts as Project…, then choose 6 from the Version popup menu.)

The answer is: QuarkXPress 6.52 and earlier will NOT work 100% properly with Leopard (nor does Adobe Creative Suite 2, which is of the same vintage). And unfortunately, since no recent Macs can run on earlier operating systems, you’ll need to either upgrade QuarkXPress or find a used Mac that can run 10.4 or 10.3. (I’d strongly encourage upgrading QuarkXPress!)

You see, Mac OS X 10.5 was nowhere on the horizon when Quark shipped QuarkXPress 6. In fact Mac OS X 10.3 was current when QuarkXPress 6 was released, almost two full years before Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which was the predecessor to 10.5. Apple changed a LOT of basic-level things from 10.3 to 10.4, and then again in 10.5.

Since I couldn’t find a one-stop source that listed the problems you’re likely to encounter when trying to use QuarkXPress 6.5 in Mac OS X 10.5, I thought I’d try to collect as many broken bits as I could find.

Picking through Quark’s user forums, here are the problems I found so far:

• File corruption, especially when opened across a network.
• Unexpected quits when saving a file.
• “Unexpected end-of-file occurred. [-39]” errors.
• Font confusion in existing documents, especially Zapf Dingbats.
• Fonts don’t print correctly, defaulting to Courier.
• Loss of some printing capabilities.
• Loss of printer PPD file location.
• Loss of PDF generation.
• Not everything shows up in menu items, dialog box components, or palettes.
• Can’t input values for new Section.
• Can’t input values when adding pages.
• Can’t input values for Step and Repeat.
• If you hide the application, it sometimes won’t come back — you have to force quit it.

As you can see, it isn’t pretty. You may not run into all of these problems, but even one or two would be a showstopper for me.

And before you ask: QuarkXPress 7.5 works relatively well in Leopard, except for the window hiding issues and the PPD file location issue noted above. For a solution to the PPD problem, see here.

If anyone has additional problems running QuarkXPress 6.5 in Leopard, we’d love to hear about them — just use the comments feature below. (But please, keep it to version 6.5 AND Mac OS X 10.5!)

Canto Cumulus

New features in version 7.6 include: built-in rendering of PDF thumbnails and previews for files; generation of PowerPoint presentations from cataloged presentations, slides and images — without PowerPoint and even over a Web browser; and watermarking of files. 

Pricing is based on the size and complexity of the solution, and Canto offers a free WebEx live product demonstration.

Enhanced spell checking:

With QuarkXPress 8.01, you can set a preference to ignore capitalization and spacing errors when spellchecking. Click the SpellCheck pane in the Preferences dialog box (QuarkXPress/Edit > Preferences).

The following controls are new
to QuarkXPress 8.01:

• Check Ignore capitalization for German languages to disable capitalization and spacing checks for the supported German languages. The default setting is unchecked.
• Check Ignore capitalization for non-German languages to disable capitalization and spacing checks for all non-German languages that support spellchecking. The default setting is checked.

PANTONE Goe Uncoated:

QuarkXPress 8.01 includes the PANTONE® Goe™ uncoated color libraries.

The full lists of Resolved Issues and Known Issues were not available at the time of this writing. We’ll post another story when that information is available.

You can download the updater at www.8.quark.com.

Debunking an urban myth about QuarkXPress Preferences

QuarkXPress stores a lot of its settings in preference files. To find those files, it first looks in its application folder for a folder named Preferences. If one exists, it uses these preferences or creates new ones inside that folder if necessary. If not, QuarkXPress looks for a Preferences folder that’s inside the User folder of the OS. If yes, it uses these, if not it creates them there. You’ll find that folder here: /Users/<user name> /Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress <version number>/

A common troubleshooting technique is to create a new folder in the QuarkXPress folder and name it Preferences.

When you create a Preferences folder in the folder containing the QuarkXPress application, it basically has the same effect as deleting the Preferences folder in the User folder — as QuarkXPress launches, it finds a Preferences folder in its application folder. Because this folder is empty, QuarkXPress creates new preference files there.

Therefore it seems as if creating a Preferences folder in the app folder solves program issues. And it does this first time, but only the first time; the next time there’s an issue with the prefs, you will need to delete the prefs (in the app folder).

So why two locations for preferences?

Many people ask us why Quark doesn’t create a Preferences folder in the app folder by default? Well, it is easy: Preferences should always be stored in the User folder because multiple users using the same machine would otherwise share the same preferences — and they may not want to.

For example, if you have two users who never log in at the same time, they will be confused because if one creates preferences, then when the other logs in, QuarkXPress will behave as the first user left it — not as the second user left it the last time they used QuarkXPress. Even worse, it could also cause some users to be unable to use QuarkXPress. This is because every user must have the operating system’s permission to change these preference files within the Applications folder, but every user may not have the appropriate operating system privileges to change files in the Applications folder. And if you can’t change the preferences files, QuarkXPress won’t launch for you.

Another problem arises if two users log on at the same time and the Preferences folder is in the Applications folder. As the first user launches QuarkXPress, QuarkXPress locks the prefs, and the second user cannot launch or use QuarkXPress.

Therefore it’s best if the Preferences folder is kept in the User folder, unless you use the machine just by yourself with one user. Then it doesn’t really matter.

This makes sense so far, right?

There is one exception where you should have your Preferences folder inside the QuarkXPress application folder: when you have several instances of the same version of QuarkXPress installed on the same machine. Not QuarkXPress 7 and 8 (different versions of QuarkXPress use different Preferences folders in the User folder), but several copies of QuarkXPress 8 with different sets of XTensions. Here leaving the Preferences folder in the User folder would mean that both copies of QuarkXPress 8 would access the same preferences and you would run into issues again.

The latter is also the reason why when running pre-release versions of QuarkXPress, you should create a Preferences folder inside the app folder (because you are working with alpha and beta versions and the prefs format may change between releases).

Is everything still clear?

Bottom line:

If you have problems launching QuarkXPress:

1. Deleting the Preferences folder is a good thing to do. By default the Preferences folder is in /Users/<user name> /Library/Preferences/Quark/QuarkXPress <version number>/
2. Therefore having a backup of your Preferences folder is a good idea. You may want to back it up on a regular basis.
3. If that doesn’t help, then make sure you have read/write access to the Preferences folder, either by selecting it and choosing File> Get Info or by Repairing Permissions using the Mac OS X Disk Utility.

Where should preferences be stored?

• If you have several users using the same machine, they SHOULD be stored in each User’s folder (which is what QuarkXPress does by default)
• If you have several instances of the same version of QuarkXPress installed (two v8, NOT v7 and v8), then create a folder called Preferences in each folder where QuarkXPress resides. If you are the only user, fine; if there are more users, make sure they all have read/write access to that folder.

In Leopard, Apple changed the location of PPD files. In Tiger and earlier, they are inside the incredibly cryptic “en.lprog” folder at /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lprog. They’re now one folder level up, at Drive/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources.

If this is affecting you, you can tell QuarkXPress to look into that folder by choosing Utilities> PPD Manager, and then enabling the “Use Auxiliary Folder” option and pointing it to that folder.

All the printer PPDs in that folder will then be added to the list of PPDs in QuarkXPress.

Most of them are very specific to particular circumstances. Still, if those are YOUR circumstances, it kinda sucks…

Another person asked me whether it was “safe” to upgrade to the latest version. All I could say was that I think of these upgrades like visiting the beach — every person will have a different experience because of their activities, what they run into, what they expect, etc. (even the weather and the tides). And that’s always been true, for every program, as long as I can remember.

Well, yeah. That’s what I want to know. Contrary to the way Preferences works in every other case, if you set that preference with no document open, QuarkXPress 7 will still create every new document with multiple layouts enabled. In other words, you have to do this dance for every new document.

Fortunately for We Who Have Upgraded, QuarkXPress 8 fixes that, and it also offers a “single layout mode” checkbox in the New Project dialog box when you’re creating a new project. (That checkbox is also available in QuarkXPress 7 if you’ve installed Quark’s free XPert PageSets XTension.)

By the way, here’s how to enable Single Layout mode:

Go to Preferences (on a Mac: QuarkXPress Preferences or on Windows: Edit  Preferences). In the Project area, click General and tick the Single Layout Mode checkbox. This will change that one project to Single Layout mode.

In addition, you can add or remove objects such as registration marks, color bars, or any page item. You can add smaller PDFs to larger PDF pages, record Action Lists for batch processing many PDFs at once, create templates, convert text to outlines, check for ink coverage, view objects that overprint, and much more.

If you find a problem, it will take you to it and helps you fix it.

Version 8 adds the ability to convert colors using the Adobe CMS, Little CMS, or the default CMS on your operating system. Version 8 also supports PDF/X-4, converts font formats, checks for missing glyphs, allows custom PDF profiles, and more. Upgrades cost $199–$299.