Quark Forums

Is the scale tool going to be built in to quark 8 anytime soon or are the xpert tools pro xtensions going to be updated to work in 8? We use the Xpert scale all of the time. If you put any of the xpert toos in the extension folder of 8 the program crashes and will not load until you take them back out.

Hi Printtrick,

We cannot use XPert Tools Pro for QuarkXPress 8, those were design to work with QuarkXPress 7.x only.

XPert Scale might be incorporated in coming update for QuarkXPress 8

For the time being you can use group all the items on a page and then press and hold down (Cmd+Option+Shift) Click and drag down to scale down proportionally to the proper page size.

 Note: On windows Machine use (Ctrl+Alt+Shift)

OR

You can down-save the document to QuarkXPress 7. 

Open the document in QuarkXPress 7 and using XPert scale you can change the layout size.

 

 Printrick, join the 'We miss XPert Tools' club....

I too miss the XPert Tools set. Shame they are not being updated sooner rather than later.

Hi, all,

a numerical scaler is available in QuarkXPress 8.1:

http://downloads.quark.com/searchresults.aspx?pid=1&ftid=2&mid=2

Enjoy!
Matthias

It's good to see the XPertScale make its move to QXP 8. However I am a little disappointed that one is still bound to use the width parameter for proportional scaling. Since I cant see any technical reasons for this limitation... is it kept this way on purpose in regard to 3rd party tools?

then why include it in the first place?

 

(example for a more useable numeric resize: ResizeXT by thepowerxchange ...but thats another $100 I'd rather not have to spend)

 

Hi,

I hope this helps

Click on window>>scale

On the scale palette check the layout and then width filed is highlighted

Click on the small chain icon in between Width and height after that height will also be highlighted

Also there are scaling options that you can change

On the scale palette  click on the square on the upper right

click on scale settings

 

Vikas. If you want to proportionally scale items the height field is grayed out. This doesn't make sense. Why?

Vikas Chopra:

Hi,

I hope this helps

[...]

Click on the small chain icon in between Width and height after that height will also be highlighted

 

 

Thank you for trying to assist.
However, as LTD already pointed out, this does not help. If you need to scale proportionally based on height, you're left with hefty costs for an extension or the calculator (=wasted time).

You're right. Because of the way the UI was implemented you cannot enter a unit-based Height value when proportions are maintained. This was not a deliberate decision or a technical limitation, it's simply a carry-over from the original version of this XTension that we weren't able to fix during the 8.1 project. I would like to get this fixed in a future version, but I can't make any guarantees about timeframe right now. In the meantime here's an imperfect workaround:

1. Unlink the fields and enter your unit-based height value

2. Change the height field method from Units to Percentage (it will fill in the necessary % to get the measurement you entered)

3. Copy and paste the % value into the Width field

I realize this is a labor-intensive workaround so please don't curse me, I'm only suggesting it as an option. I swear I'll try to get this fixed in a future version.

Dan Logan

Product Manager, QuarkXPress

Dan, Thanks for responding. I have to tell you that it's these sort of things that drive me crazy -- the things that kind of work. XPress of late seems to be a breeding ground for this stuff. It's always work-arounds. Things unfinished or unfixed from previous versions remain that way in newer versions. Reading through the list of bug fixes for 8.1 reveals fixes for some very obscure issues. How come these get fixed and not issues that linger on and on. How do we get stuff fixed that affects our productivity? How do we do that? Really. How?

Checked here to post a work-around (another!) and was distracted by Dan's response. Here you go... Uncheck the link icon. Enter a value in the height field in Units. Hit the tab key to jump to the width field. Switch to Percentage for the height field. There you have it, the percentage to scale your height. Check the link icon and enter that percentage.

 

Dan Logan (Quark):

You're right. Because of the way the UI was implemented you cannot enter a unit-based Height value when proportions are maintained. This was not a deliberate decision or a technical limitation, it's simply a carry-over from the original version of this XTension that we weren't able to fix during the 8.1 project. I would like to get this fixed in a future version ...

 Thanks for the prompt answer on this matter. Just in case you have a tracker for this kind of stuff: It'd also be grand if the last picked choice (% or unit) would be remembered.

Another bug that is not worthy of it's own thread: The "Increment-Arrow" on the columns input (measures pl.) doesnt work.
This is certainly not a big issue, but the small annoyances do add up and impact the overall qxp joy ;-) 

 Is there a public bug tracker that can be used to report this stuff (no need to report the same things over and over again)?

 

LTD:

Checked here to post a work-around (another!) and was distracted by Dan's response. Here you go... Uncheck the link icon. Enter a value in the height field in Units. Hit the tab key to jump to the width field. Switch to Percentage for the height field. There you have it, the percentage to scale your height. Check the link icon and enter that percentage.

thanks... shorter, but by no means faster than simply using a calculator to divide the targetHeight by currHeight. Guess I'll have to stick with the latter for a while or buy the XT ;)

Like many people who voiced thoughts on the internet, we use the scale tool every day for flexo production. We cannot partially scale things. Q7 with scale Xtension had a flexo tab when you print. Now we keep having to export things to Q7 to get them done right. I was excited to install Q8.12 but it has several limitations. Disproportional scaling does not scale rotated text the right way. Auto tabs like .5" 1" 1.5" 2" etc do not scale. So I can't use Q8 except to bring me back to Q7. Please don't go to Q9 which probably won't be able to scale OR export to Q7, forcing us to no longer accept Quark documents. Norman

Hi, Do you guys have the xpert tool already available? tks