This is a demonstration version of the Managing Editor® XT from Managing Editor Software. To use the demonstration copy, simply place the file “Managing Editor® XT” into your QuarkXPress® folder and start up XPress.
The demonstration copy allows you 15 uses, 8 hours of continuous use or a two-week time frame in which it can be used (whichever comes first) before it stops operating. You will be able to see a maximum of two files from any folder you select and the XTension will not be able to save and remember your Gather Sets — an important part of the program, as you will see.
The Managing Editor XT is really a “Finder™” program built right into XPress. You’ll be able to quickly place and replace text and graphics in your document simply by dragging those items out of your Managing Editor XT runsheet and dropping them on pages in your Quark document. You’ll no longer need to go through the time-consuming process of creating boxes and locating and importing their contents: the Managing Editor XT will do it all automatically.
And once placed in a your document, Managing Editor XT stories and graphics will be crossed off your runsheet so that you can easily keep track of what items have been placed and what have not.
This version of the Managing Editor XT functions with version 3.0 - 3.2 of Quark XPress and requires that you be using System 6.0.7 or later of the Macintosh Operating System.
After installing your demonstration copy, go to your copy of Quark XPress and double-click on its icon to launch that program.
If installation was successful, you’ll see a brief screen display telling you how many more uses of the Managing Editor XT are allowed. This number will decrement with each usage.
To display the Managing Editor XT, go to Quark’s View Menu and select “Show Managing Editor XT”. The Managing Editor XT Palette will appear.
You may position the palette anywhere within your XPress workspace — its location and whether or not the palette is opened or closed is remembered each time you leave XPress and will be restored when you restart the program.
The palette window can be dragged and resized in standard Macintosh fashion. When it is open on screen, the XPress View Menu option changes to read “Hide Managing Editor XT”. You can close the palette either by selecting this option or by clicking in the palette’s close box located in its title bar.
To quickly move the Managing Editor XT from one side of the XPress workspace to another, you can hold down your option key and click anywhere in the Managing Editor XT palette. The palette will be redisplayed on the opposite side of the screen at the same vertical height, collapsed to its smallest size. This allows you to work in the area previously obscured by its window.
The top area of the palette is called the Control Bar and contains the controls you use to change Managing Editor XT options and perform different actions.
Beneath the Control Bar is the Managing Editor XT’s Editing Bar, where you can rename different Managing Editor XT Sets and obtain information about files and folders.
Below the Editing Bar is the Gather List which displays different lists of elements depending upon the current view. Beside the Gather List is a scroll bar that can be used to move up and down within the list if all its elements are not visible.
the control bar
The Control Bar includes several items:
• Current View Icon: At the far left is the Current View icon which changes depending on the view you have selected using the Managing Editor XT’s View Menu. Right now you should be looking at Sets View.
• Alerts Checkbox: The box marked Alerts is used to turn the Managing Editor XT’s alerting feature on and off. When the box is checked, as it should be now, you will receive warnings whenever you are about to undertake an action the Managing Editor XT wants you to think about first.
• Keys Checkbox: The box marked Keys is used to turn the Managing Editor XT’s extended key set on and off. When checked, the Managing Editor XT will “intercept” your XPress keystrokes and determine whether they should be used by the Managing Editor XT or by XPress. For instance, when Keys are on and you press the cursor down key, the Managing Editor XT will scroll down one selection in any of its lists. With keys off, XPress will handle this keystroke instead.
• Trash Can: The trash can is where you dispose of any items in any of the Managing Editor XT’s lists. If you no longer want to keep a Gather Set or Gather Folder, you can drag it to the Trash, release the element and it will be permanently removed. When Alerts are turned on, the Managing Editor XT will always ask whether or not you want to delete the item.
• View Menu: The View Menu is used to change between the Managing Editor XT’s three different list view: Sets View, Folders View and Files View. Click here to see the pop-up menu. Right now the Sets menu item is checked because you are in Sets View. The Folders and Files menu items should be dimmed because you have not selected any set (we haven’t created one as yet).
• Do Menu: Depending on the current view, the Do Menu changes to reflect the actions that can be performed. Menu items will be dimmed if they are unavailable.
The Managing Editor XT, in essence, is a readily-available filing system displayed directly on your XPress desktop. To make it function, you create what are known as Gather Sets which contain lists of folders the Managing Editor XT should search for documents you want to place within XPress.
A Gather Set can be one of two types: either a Text Set, or a Graphics Set. A Text Set will only display documents that XPress can place in text boxes while a Graphics Set will only display documents that can be placed in picture boxes.
Once a set is created, you can add and remove Folders from that set. Each folder in a Gather Set represents an actual file folder located somewhere on your hard drive or network. A Gather Set can contain as many folders as you want from as many locations as you desire.
When you have finished adding folders to a Gather Set, all you have to do is double-click on the set name when in Sets View and — automatically — all the files within that folder set that can be used by XPress will be displayed in the Gather List. From there, all you have to do is drag a file out onto a XPress page and it will be placed automatically and marked as used in the Gather list.
To create your first Gather Set, go to the Do Menu and select the Add Text Set menu option. An untitled set will be added to your Gather list.
Type the name “Text Folders” and press either the Return or Enter key on your keyboard. The set will be renamed and displayed in the Sets listing under the name “Text Folders”.
Whenever you want to change the name of a Gather Set, all you have to do is select its name in the Gather List, then click in the Editing Bar. The name will become highlighted, and you can type in a new title for the set.
Now go back to the View Menu and select the option named Add Graphics Set. This time, when the new set appears, type in the name “Graphic Folders” and press Return or Enter.
Notice that the text set has a different icon next to its name. This lets you quickly distinguish between different types of gather sets.
Now that we have created our two Gather Sets, let’s add some folders to them so we can see the power of the Managing Editor XT.
Position your cursor over the name of our Graphics Folder set you just created. Click to select the set (its name will become highlighted in the Gather List). Now go to the View Menu and select the Folders option.
Folders View will be displayed. Notice the new icon for this view and that the Editing Bar shows information about the folders in the Graphic Folders set (right now there are none).
When you move into Folders View, the Do Menu changes to reflect the actions that can be performed in this view.
Go to the Do Menu and select the Add Folder option. You will see the standard Macintosh dialog box, which is used to locate all the folders you want to incorporate into your Gather Set.
At the bottom of the dialog is an instruction line which, in this instance, should read “To add a graphic folder, open it and click ‘Add’”. Use the dialog to locate a folder in which you know there are pictures.
As you open folders, the Managing Editor XT helps out be displaying any pictures within the folder that can be placed by XPress. When adding text folders, only those stories that can be read by XPress are displayed in the dialog.
When you have located a folder in which pictures are stored, click the Add button. (Remember, as the instruction notes, that you must open the appropriate folder so that its name appears in the pop-up menu above the files listing in this dialog). As the folder is added to the Gather Set, the name of its “path” appears in your Gather List.
You can continue to add as many folders to the Gather List as you want simply by locating and adding them in the manner described above.
When you are finished adding folders to your set, simply click the Done button and the dialog will be removed.
To return to Sets View you can either select Sets from the View Menu, or you can double-click on the Current View icon at the left side of the Control Bar. The latter method is a quick and convenient way to move from a specific view back to Sets View.
Now that you have folders within your Gather Sets, you can quickly see what’s in them.
Two methods are available to move from Sets View to Files View: you can choose Files from the View Menu or — the quickest method — you can simply double-click on the set name. You will now be in Files View (notice that the Current View icon changes to display an opened folder).
In Files View, a new bar appears just beneath the Editing Bar. This is the Folder Name Bar, and will always display the name of the folder set whose contents you are viewing. Double-clicking on this bar, as well as on the Current Folder icon, will return you to Sets View.
If there are more file names than will fit in the list, then the vertical scroll bar will become active and you can easily scroll up and down to view the entire contents of the list. Similarly, you can resize the Managing Editor XT palette by clicking in its lower right-hand size box and dragging out the palette to a new size.
To see information about a file, click on its name in the listing. The Editing Bar will display the type of document at the left, followed by the date and time the file was last modified and ending with the size of the file in kilobytes (multiples of 1,024).
Sometimes, when viewing file listings, special icons will appear to the left of the file name. The disk-checked means that the listed file is being used by somebody else on your network, and as such is probably unfinished. A lock icon indicates that the file is locked on your hard disk and therefore cannot be deleted.
Now we’ve come to the fun part — actually using the Managing Editor XT to do what it was built to do: rapidly placing and sizing text and graphics in your XPress document.
For the purposes of our demonstration, create a new XPress document by selecting New from XPress’s File Menu. (It doesn't matter what size document or settings you use, although it will be helpful for demonstration purposes to make sure that the document is viewed at full size. ).
Position your Managing Editor XT palette so that you have an unobstructed view of the XPress document’s pages.
Now, click on a name in the Managing Editor XT list, hold down your mouse, and drag out over the document page. You’ll notice that large crosshairs follow you as you move your file around. This allows you to orient the document you are about to place both to XPress’s rulers and to other boxes you may have created on the page.
Find a spot where you want to place the document and release your mouse button.
The Managing Editor XT palette disappears so that you can fully view the XPress page area. Do not click … instead, continue moving your mouse around the screen: you’ll see that a second set of crosshairs follows your mouse movements. The Managing Editor XT is waiting for you to specify the dimensions of your new box.
Drag the mouse until you are satisfied with the new box size and position, then click your mouse button. As soon as you click, the Managing Editor XT will create your new box, the palette will reappear and XPress will begin importing the selected file into the newly-created box.
When the import has finished, a new pop-up palette appears, as we’ll explain next.
Depending upon the type of file you have just placed, the Managing Editor XT will display a special pop-up palette from which you can choose a specific box import option.
In all cases, you select an option simply by positioning your arrow cursor over the option you want to choose, then clicking your mouse button. As you move the cursor over options within this pop-up palette they become highlighted.
If you want to ignore all of the options presented and keep the newly-created box in its “default” state, simply click anywhere outside the pop-up options palette.
Following placement of a picture, the Managing Editor XT displays a palette with four options:
• Scale to Fit: Choose this option to have the Managing Editor XT precisely fit the new graphic into the box you have created — even if the aspect ratio (scaling in the horizontal and vertical dimensions) — differs between width and height.
• Size to Fit: Choose this option when you want the Managing Editor XT to resize the entire box to match the precise dimensions of the picture you have placed. In this case, the box will be enlarged or contracted to a size that completely encloses the picture.
• Scale to Horizontal: Select this option if you want the Managing Editor XT to use the horizontal dimension of the box to scale the picture vertically. In other words, the picture is scaled to fit precisely in the width of the box you have created, and then that scaling factor is used to calculate the height of your new box. Thus, the aspect ratio of the picture is maintained.
• Scale to Vertical: This option functions precisely the same as Scale to Horizontal, except that the height of the picture box is used to calculate the necessary width for the graphic.
Following placement of a story, the Managing Editor XT displays a columns number pop-up palette.
The number of items on this palette depends purely on the number of columns you have specified in your newly-created document. The Managing Editor XT wants to know over how many columns you want to set the story within its text box.
The Managing Editor XT will never display less than 8 columns and never more than 16 columns in this palette.
There is one case in which this palette changes. When you place a story into an existing chain of linked text boxes, the pop-up palette will display a new first item, “Set for All”.
In this case, the Managing Editor XT wants to know whether it should apply the column settings you select to all boxes in the linked text chain, or to just the one in which you have placed your story. To use this option, you simply click the Set for All line on and off. When the Set for All option is selected, a line will appear beneath it.
Notice that after you placed your document within XPress, a line was drawn through it in the Managing Editor XT’s list. This Strikeout Rule quickly tells you whether a document has or has not been placed within the XPress document.
Scroll to a different page or location within your new XPress document.
Now simply double-click on an item that has a Strikeout Rule. You will be scrolled right to the location of the placed document, with its box positioned in the upper left-hand corner of your XPress document window.
You can also use this feature from the Managing Editor XT’s Do Menu simply by choosing the Find In Document option.
To remove an item that has a strikeout rule, simply select its name in the Files List, then choose Remove from Document from the Managing Editor XT’s Do Menu.
You will be scrolled to the box containing the item and the box and its contents will be deleted. (If your Alerts box is checked, the Managing Editor XT will first ask whether you want to remove the box). When using this feature, it is important to remember that both the box and its contents will be removed from the XPress document and, in the case of linked story boxes, all the boxes in the link chain will be removed.
The Managing Editor XT lets you sort your files listing in one of four ways: by name, by date, by type and by size. To sort the list, simply click in the Do Menu and select the appropriate sorting method.
To display the mouse coordinates as you create Managing Editor XT boxes, go to the Do Menu when in Files View and select the Show Coordinates option. In this mode, the Managing Editor XT will display the mouse coordinates during placement (relative to the current ruler settings).
When setting the end point for your box, the Managing Editor XT will show both the dimensions of the box (on top) as well as the mouse position (on the bottom line).
There will be times when you want to use the Managing Editor XT to place documents into boxes that already have been created in XPress. Doing so is a simple matter.
Go to your Files Listing to find the story or graphic you want to place in an existing box. Drag it out of the Files Listing in standard fashion. This time, as you drag, hold down the Command Key.
Position the cursor over the box whose contents you want to replace and release the mouse button.
The Managing Editor XT will remove the existing contents of the box and replace them with the new document.
In addition to replacing the contents of a text box, the Managing Editor XT can also add the contents of one text document to the end of the text in a given box.
To do so, hold down the Command and Option keys as you are dragging a file over a text box. The cursor will change into a down-pointing arrow with a small plus sign. When your cursor is positioned over the text box to which you want to append the second (or third) document, release the mouse button. The text will be appended to the end of all text in the current box.
The disadvantage to appending text is that the Managing Editor XT will only remember the most recent document that has been imported into a box. Any memory of previously-placed text will be lost and only the most recently imported document will be crossed off the Managing Editor XT runsheet.
Because this version of the Managing Editor XT is a demonstration copy, use of the Check Set and Check All Sets options need not be explained — your Gather Sets will not be maintained from session to session as in the true version of the XTension. You can, however, see various folder related functions as explained below:
You can delete entire Gather Sets or selected folders from a set within the appropriate Managing Editor XT view.
To delete any list item (except for files), simply select the item and drag it to the trash icon. The icon will “bulge” as you drag over it. To complete the deletion, release the item into the trash.
If your Alerts box is checked, the Managing Editor XT will display an alert message, checking to make sure that you really want to delete the item. If you do, click the Yes button, else click No.
In both Sets and Folders View, the delete option also shows up on the respective Do Menu for that view. To delete using the menu, first select the item you want to remove then choose the appropriate Delete… item from the Do Menu.
If you have purchased a copy of Ad Director or Page Director from Managing Editor Software, new XPress XTensions are available from the company that will automatically allow the Managing Editor XT to recognize stories and graphics that are directly imported by those two publishing programs.
If you don’t already own a copy of Ad Director or Page Director, and work in any size publishing operation, you might want to call us to find out more about these powerful tools for the Macintosh.
