CopyFlow Gold

Batch Import/Export of RTF files from/to QuarkXPress

Features

  • Advanced Autonaming of text boxes and inline (anchored) boxes
  • Import and Export using any standard QuarkXPress filter
  • Export all the text of a Quark document into a single file of XPress Tags which can be batch re-imported into the Quark document or a copy of the Quark document after language translation or other processing.
  •  Batch Import and Export Quark XPress tags in ASCII, UTF-8, Unicode UTF-16, or numerous other encodings (see CopyGlow Gold Preferences)
  • Support for roundtripping of anchored text and picture boxes in the Single XPress Tag Format

 

CopyFlow Gold Overview

CopyFlow provides tools to batch import and export text. To import or export the contents of boxes, they must be named. CopyFlow Gold (CFG) provides manual box by box naming and automatic Autonaming -- a process which can name all or certain boxes in the document in page order. CFG makes the export and import of the formatted text and art of Quark documents rapid and easy. CopyFlow Gold (CFG) adds a menu to the QuarkXPress menu bar.

 

 

CopyFlow Gold Batch Operation

The menu item CFG Batch Tool displays the CopyFlow Gold floating palette. The illustration below shows the floating palette after an Autoname operation. The scrolling text display at the bottom - the logging window - lists the results of the current operation, in this case a list of boxes named with AutoName.

At the top of the palette are the buttons to trigger Batch Export, Batch Import and Batch Flush. On the right hand side is a popup menu listing available text filters, a check box to "remember" the last selected import and export folder and the name of the currently selected box -- in this case 'bk 2'

The buttons Clear and Save operate on the logging portion of the palette. Clear erases the text in the logging portion of the palette. Save writes the contents of the window to a file. The Close button closes the palette.

Clicking the Export button begins the batch export process. The entire document is scanned for named boxes and then the boxes are sorted by page order and geometry. If an Export folder has not been "remembered" (i.e., selected with 'Remember folders' option on) a dialog allows the user to select an Export folder. This is where CFG will write the exported files or file. In the above illustration XPress Tags has been selected as the export format. A separate file will be created for each named box or story.

 

 

The default export selections are:

 

A popular export choice is 'Single XPress tag File' in which all the tagged text is written into a single file. It can be translated or processed an batch imported in the same single file format. A Single XPress Tag File contains XPress tags and a NAPS tag to identify which text flows into which box. In CFG7 the NAPS tag looks like #boxname=bx1. The 'Single XPress Tag filename has a .tag file extension.There is a choice for RTF in the list. This is not yet recommended for round trip use in QXP 7. The best bet for round-tripping text is Single XPress Tag format in your chosen encoding(see CFG Preferences). We are expecting Quark to update the RTF and Word filters in the future.

Clicking the Import button begins the batch import process. If an Import folder has not been "remembered" (i.e., selected with 'Remember folders' option on) a dialog allows the user to select an Import folder. The entire document is scanned for named boxes and the Import folder searched for a file of the selected filter type to import into each named box. In the example below a batch Import has just completed. 42 files of roughly translated Portuguese text have been read in, replacing the text contents of the boxes with the imported and still formated text. For example the box named 'bk 34' has been filled with tagged text from the file named 'bk 34.xtg' in the selected import directory. When translating text files be careful not to disturb or translate the tags and other markup.

 

 

 

Anchored Boxes in CopyFlow Gold ( Single XPress Tags File only )

CopyFlow Gold has extended QuarkXPress's standard tags in XPress tags to support most anchored text and picture boxes. This option is enabled by setting the InLine checkbox in the CopyFlow Gold Preferences. When a named text box containing anchored text or picture boxes is exported CopyFlow Gold tags are added to the exported Single XPress Tag file describing the location of the anchored text boxes, their size and contents. There is no need to Name anchored boxes, CopyFlow Gold does this automatically. Inline text box tags preserve anchored box width and height, baseline or top alignment and any content. (N.B., QuarkXPress dissallows anchored boxes within other anchored boxes.) Inline picture box tags support any picture content allowed by QuarkXPress, box width, height, alignment and these picture positioning attributes: offset across and down, scaling across and down. The path to the picture content is written out as part of the tag - this information is used to reimport any anchored picture content, so the picture must be in the same location and available at re-import time.

 

CopyFlow Gold Preferences

The CopyFlow Gold preferences are now integrated with the other Preferences in QuarkXPress.

The CFG preferences are divided into three groups - Box Naming, Import/ Export, and Art. CFG 7 will introduce a new concept in CopyFlow, Bundling. Bundles are groups of text and art elements exported together.

  • AutoNaming has several new options . With Page Sequence, the only method supported with single bundles, if exporting to a single tagged text file, the files are sorted by page and geometry into a logical sequence. Only AutoName Text boxes prevents the autonaming of Art boxes . Skip Numeric Cells prevents the autonaming and therefor the export of numeric table cells - a useful option for translators.
  • Import/Export can now be set to import and export Text Only, Art And Text or Art Only. Of course, only the contents of named boxes will be exported/imported.
  • XTG Encoding: this popup sets the tag character encoding, e.g., Unicode UTF-16 or MacRoman, etc. Here is a list of the encodings available on the Macintosh for tag files: XPRESS Tags and Single XPRESS Tag File.
  • Character Encoding Choice
  • There are two choices for Art export - exporting the low resolution image from within the Quark document or finding and copying the hi-res image source into the export directory. Strip Last CR - results in the last carriage return being stripped on Import. Setting the (Mac only) Less Tags option removes the style definitions from the exported XPress tags file. This means less material for translators or editors to plow through. Inline Tags turns on the CopyFlow Gold extensions to XPress tags, adding support for inline anchored text and picture boxes - see Anchored Box support.

NOTE:
To install the software on your computer, an internet connection is required!

 

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