Howdy! Congratulations on purchasing XPert Tools Vol. 2! You’ll find the XPert Scripter XTension to be invaluable in using scripts with QuarkXPress. Follow the instructions in the manual for activating these scripts.
Enclosed with XPert Tools you'll find selected scripts from Sal’s AppleScript Snippets—a collection of over 100 fully editable scripts that can be used as tools or opened to view much of the syntax and commands necessary to script QuarkXPress. They are available for $39 from XChange at 1-800-788-7557.
If you’re interested in learning to script QuarkXPress, please log onto my web site at:
http://users.aol.com/nyhthawk/welcome.html
and download the intructional material there. You'll also find other free scripts and links to related sites.
The scripts included with XPert Tools:
Link Me!/Open Me! • An interesting set of scripts! "Link Me!" will allow you to place a link button to another QuarkXPress document on the current document's layout. When run, the script will prompt you for the document to "link to" and then create a picture box containing an icon on the top left of the current page. It will also place a text box containing the name of the "link to" file next to the picture box. Select both boxes (group them if you like) and move them to the pasteboard or wherever you desire. The text box containing the "link to" doc name is created for your convienince and may be deleted if you want since the picture box contains the link!
To open "link to" documents, select the link icon boxes representing the files to open (don't worry if they're grouped since the script will "see" them anyway), and run the "Open Me!" script--it will open all "link to" documents. If a "link to" document has been moved to another location, the script will offer to find every matching file and open them.
The "Open Me!" script requires the scriptable Finder that ships with system 7.5 or higher.
TIP: You can create link buttons and place them in a QuarkXPress library and drag them onto a QuarkXPress layout. Link buttons may also be copied and pasted between documents!
PPrep • Make FPO Overlays
PPrep • FPO TBox - Print
PPrep • FPO TBox - No Print
PPrep • FPO TBox - Delete
A set of scripts for placing and controls "FPO" boxes over images in your document. The first script, makes FPO overlay text boxes over every selected picture box. The second script sets the overlay boxes so that they will print the "FPO" text. The third script disables printing for all the overlay text boxes. The last script will delete every FPO overlay box.
Tool • Page Background • This script will create a background picture box for the current page after prompting the user for color and shade to use.
Windows • Full-Zoom • This script will zoom the frontmost document's window to full screen. NOTE: This script uses the scriptable Finder that comes with System 7.5 or higher. Make sure that the FInder Scripting Extension is activated!!!
Text • Dollars to Yen/Pounds • Interesting and powerful, this script will convert all the dollar amounts in a selected text chain to Yen or Pounds! It looks for amounts formatted with a dollar sign-then the amount-and followed by two decimals ($3,333.33). After prompting you for the conversion rate to use (for example: 89.34 yen to the dollar), it will find the dollar amount occurences in the selected text chain, perform the conversion calulation and replace the original number with the amount in Yen or Pounds with the proper currency indicator! (not-editable)
Text • Price Formatter 1.0 • Another powerful script, this will format all the dollar amounts in a selected text flow. It looks for the same type of formatting as the script above ($3,333.33) and will adjust the size and position of the dollar sign and the cents. It will set the font and kerning as well. This version is saved as run-only—you'll have to get the Snippets if you want to edit the preferences.
Prefs • Set Measurement System • This script will allow you to set the measurement sytem without having to dig through dialogs and pop-ups!
I hope you find these scripts useful and informative. Welcome to the world of scripting and QuarkXPress.
