Every two weeks Quark VS InDesign.com and XChange International gives away 2 great prizes–an extraordinary xtension for QuarkXPress and an incredible InDesign plug-in. All you have to do to win is…

• Become a Quark VS InDesign.com member (free), and;
• Throw your name into the giveaway hat at the bottom of this page.

That’s all. No purchase or song and dance necessary. A winner will be chosen at random from those who enter on this page.

This contest has ended. On 2008-08-10 we gave
Xtags from Em Software
To Michael D. of Los Angeles, CA USA

Congratulations, Michael! Get some prizes for yourself on our Contests & Giveaways page.

The QuarkXPress XTension We Gave Away This Time

 
Xtags
QuarkXPress XTension from Em Software

Xtags is XPress Tags on Steroids!

Xtags is a powerful import and export text filter supporting the full Quark XPress Tags language plus several major enhancements designed for picture-based data publishing, classified ad building, input code conversion, data-driven document layout, and more. You can also copy and paste Xtagged text between applications or withinXPress itself, with Xtags.

Anchored text and graphics box creation.
Xtags supports tags to create and fill anchored text and graphics boxes in-line with the tagged text, letting you control all properties of the anchored boxes using appropriate tag parameters. You can fill a text box with further tagged text of any sort, and can fill a graphics box with a picture of any type supported by XPress. Anchored boxes are fully supported on output as well.

Unanchored text and graphics box creation.
Xtags supports unanchored text and picture box tags that allow you to create and fill unanchored boxes at the location on the page where an anchored box would have been placed, at an absolute position, at a position relative to another box, or on the pasteboard. These unanchored boxes can span columns and can be moved freely once imported.

Auto-sizing.
Xtags can automatically size an anchored or unanchored text or picture box to fit its contents horizontally or vertically, as well as size a picture to its containing box in the usual interactive fashions.

Input code translation.
Xtags supports a ³use translation table² tag that lets you apply a set of string translations in a file to the input text, at a lower level than XPress Tag interpretation (so that the translation target strings may contain tags). These substitutions can be as simple as character replacement, or as complex as foreign front-end coding translation.

Macros.
Xtags supports macro definition and use to simplify the invocation of common or complex tag and text sequences.

Master page selection.
Xtags provides ³apply master spread² and ³apply master page² tags that choose the master spread or page to be applied to the text at the point of invocation. With this facility, you can build fairly complex documents with input-driven per-spread or per-page layout.

General enhancements.
Xtags is more forgiving than XPress Tags about the base language. Xtags also supports relative values (e.g., increase point size by 20%), omitted parameters, and the ability to apply only the character styles from a style sheet to portions of a paragraph.

Error reporting.
Xtags has an optional facility for reporting on each error as it is encountered, creating a brief message directly in-line at the point of error(unlike XPress Tags, which simply quits).