Xdata for QuarkXPress

InData/Xdata bring the full layout, design, typographic and picture publishing power of InDesign/QuarkXPress to bear on all your data-driven repetitive publishing tasks. Simply put, InData/Xdata work like a mail merge on steroids. You create a template in a normal document, with rules that tell it how to format your text and graphics. Then, with a single menu invocation, the plug-in builds your document at jaw-dropping speeds-up to hundreds or even thousands of pages per hour.

What is new in this release:

• Adds the picture property pictureimportpage to import a specific page from a PDF. For example, <<set pictureimportpage of pic 1 to n>> would select page n of the imported PDF, where n is an expression resulting in a non-negative integer. Page numbers begin at 1 (one), but page 0 (zero) may be specified in order to use QuarkXPress’s global default (the page last set in the PDF import options dialog).

  Specifying page zero is the same as not setting the pictureimportpage property at all. Invalid page numbers (negative or out-of-range values) result in the first page being imported.

  Note that because of how QuarkXPress works, the specified page number will become the global default for future imports until changed by another pictureimportpage.

• Adds the picture property pictureimportcrop to control the cropping of an imported PDF page. For example, <<set pictureimportcrop of pic 1 to n>> where n is an expression resulting in one of the following values:
  • 0 (zero) – uses the InDesign global default (the cropping last set in the PDF import options dialog).
  • 1 – crops to the media
  • 2 – crops to the page
  • 3 – crops to the content (bounding box)
  • An invalid value is ignored. As with pictureimportpage, the specified cropping will “stick” as QuarkXPress’s default until changed by another pictureimportcrop.
• Fixes a long-standing problem that would cause an import to fail if the file’s name contained a colon (displayed as a forward slash in Finder). (macOS, QuarkXPress 10+ only)

What is new in version 4.5.1:

ixes a problem introduced in the 4.5 release where using Xdata > Import from File... could cause QuarkXPress to shut down.

What is new in version 4.4:

- Adds support for QuarkXPress 10 (Windows only, for now). The QuarkXPress 10 XTension requires a valid Xdata 10-level license. Please contact our sales department to purchase an upgrade license or to obtain a free upgrade if you purchased Xdata within the last six months.
- Removes support for QuarkXPress 8. Download links for Xdata 4.3.4, the final version for QuarkXPress 8, can be found in the side-bar on the Xdata 4.3.4 Release page. While we will no longer fix problems in or add features to this older version, we will continue to support the people using it.
- Adds replace(expr1, pattern, expr2), which replaces the first occurrence of pattern in expr1 with expr2. Pattern is case-sensitive.
- Adds replace(expr1, n, m, expr2), which replaces a range of characters, from n through m, within expr1 with expr2. This function can be used in conjunction with offset() to search and replace using a case-insensitive pattern.
- Adds replaceAll(expr1, pattern, expr2), which replaces all occurrences of pattern in expr1 with expr2. Pattern is case-sensitive.
- Adds offset(pattern, expression, from) variant, which searches for pattern within expression starting at character position from. As with the original offset() function, pattern is case-insensitive.
- Adds boxinfo(4), which returns the name (scripting label) of the current box.
- Adds an encoding parameter to the filecontents() function. The filecontents() function has always required that the text file being read be stored as the current OS's native 8-bit text encoding (either MacRoman in OS X or WinLatin in Windows). UTF-8 was supported too, but required the use of a byte-order-mark (BOM) prefix on the file for it to be read properly.

Now, the file's encoding may be specified as a second parameter to filecontents(), like

filecontents(path, encoding)

where encoding is one of "win", "mac", or "unicode" (or "w", "m", or "u" for short). If no encoding is provided, filecontents() defaults to its old behavior as described above.
- Adds a non-centering Size to Fit w/o Distortion option to Preferences > General > Default picture position. Also adds aspectratiofitleft for use in prototypes, as in A"set picpos to aspectratiofitleftA".
- Adds a Pause and show import speed at end of import checkbox to the General Preferences dialog so that the traditional pause at the end of an import can be disabled. The pause is enabled by default.
- Re-labels the option that was called I'm an expert user as Suppress warnings when imported text is overset, which better describes what the option actually does.
- Adds .mer as a valid snapshot file extension to better support FileMaker Pro 12.
- Improves imports by falling back to the OS's native 8-bit encoding if Unicode was selected as the import's encoding but treating the imported text as UTF-8 would cause a decoding error.
- Fixes a problem where text pasted from the clipboard could end up with an extra CR. (Windows only)