Quarkxpress In A Nutshell

A Desktop Quick Reference: (Covers QuarkXPress 4.0)

QuarkXPress has long been the standard page layout software, allowing designers to combine pictures, text, typography, writing, editing, and printing in one application. The soon to be released QuarkXPress 4.0 has many significant new features, including Bezier-based drawing and design tools, long-document creation and editing, and advanced Hyphenation and Justification settings. Now, more than ever before, designers will be using QuarkXPress to create everything from newsletters to magazines.

With all of these new features, coupled with the many that already exist, QuarkXPress users are required to remember countless details necessary to successfully use the software. QuarkXPress in a Nutshell is a detailed reference that will enable even experienced users to make the right choices and help them navigate through the many techniques that are available, thus saving time and reducing errors.

In the current computer book market, there is an increasingly large population of users with many years of experience under their belts who don't want a lot of handholding. They just want the facts. This book, like other "In a Nutshell" books, raises the no-nonsense approach to an art form. Information that a user is going to look for again and again can be found here, as well as critical background information for the new but fundamentally sophisticated user.

QuarkXPress in a Nutshell describes every tool, command, palette, and sub-menu in QuarkXPress 4. Each item is accompanied by a list of its most common uses and misuses, as well as production-oriented background information. Where appropriate, the common uses contain step-by-step techniques, and the common misuses include experience-based advice and solutions. The book takes the topic and drills down, expands, and delights the reader by providing useful information that the reader didn't even expect to find.

There are four main sections:

• The QuarkXPress toolbox, including the Options Palette settings for each tool
  
  
• The menu commands, including every item of every dialog
  
  
• The floating palettes, including the function that each palette provides, as well as the ramifications of every value and palette sub-menu
  
  
• Step-by-step descriptions of over 100 detailed QuarkXPress techniques, as well as a list of the most useful QuarkXtensions and the functions they provide

The information in this book is organized in an encyclopedic reference fashion, following the structure of QuarkXPress itself. All topics are easy to find and fully cross-referenced, allowing you to intuitively explore the cause-and-effect relationships of each command.

About the Author
Donnie O'Quinn is a graphic arts consultant, on-site trainer, and author based in Portland, Maine. Classroom-based programs under his direction were described as "hands down, the best prepress training in the Northeast," by Printing Industries of New England. His past clients include Apple Computer, MetaCreations, and MacUser Magazine, as well as service bureaus, designers, and printers from New York to Nova Scotia. When not working or writing, he readies his overpowered '74 Chevy for a top-down, high-speed pursuit of the American dream. Matt LeClair has been involved in the computer graphics industry for the past decade as designer, artist, and educator. His clients have included Apple Computer, Microsoft, Implosion Magazine, and The Center for Creative Imaging. Most recently, he decided to turn the wealth of his experience to writing. You can find his work in MacUser Magazine, and in Digital Prepress Complete (Hayden Books), which he coauthored with Donnie O'Quinn.