Xtags Release History

Xtags for InDesign

Changes/new features at Xtags For InDesign 4-5.1.0.3 release

• Fixed a problem introduced in the previous release which was failing to output tab characters in text saved or copied with Xtags.

Changes/new features at Xtags For InDesign 4-5.1.0.2 release

• Fixed a long-standing problem with font face toggling where, with certain fonts, once toggled on via a <B> or <I> the new face would 'stick' and not easily turn off. (Mac OS only)

• Fixed a problem with character style definitions where the char-based-on parameter wasn't being accepted and, if specified, would instead cause the style definition to fail.

• Errors in style definitions are now reported. Previously, errors in style definitions were silently ignored.

• Fixed a problem where the insertion of an Xtags error could nullify subsequent character style changes.

Changes/new features at Xtags For InDesign 4-5.1.0.1 release

• Added support for hierarchical styles, where group names are separated with a | (vertical bar) both in style definitions and applications. For example, @header|small: would apply the paragraph style "small" from style group "header". A literal vertical bar is represented by the escape sequence \|, as in @header|foo\|bar: . (CS3 only)

• Changed the non-breaking space tag <\!s> to produce a single Unicode "hard space" character (U+00A0) in CS3 rather than a space + no-break sequence used in previous versions. (We avoided using U+00A0 in earlier versions because their composers wouldn't justify lines of text containing such characters. This appears to have changed in CS3, however, where the composer now justifies lines containing hard spaces.) The single character non-breaking space can be used to end nested styles, for example.

• Changed the non-breaking hyphen tag <\!-> to produce a single Unicode non-breaking hyphen character (U+2011) rather than a hyphen + no-break sequence.

• Added an N tag to support InDesign's no-break character attribute. A non-breaking run is started with a <N1> and can be terminated with either a <N$>, to return to the current style sheet's setting, or a <N0>. This tag may also appear in style definitions.

• Added support for section marker characters via the <\1> tag.

• Fixed the output of page number, flush-right tab, no-break hyphen, style run break and flex space characters, which were either being ignored or output incorrectly.

• Generating tags for text colored rules no longer cause a crash. Instead, a T is now emitted as the color for text colored rules, where <*ra(2,,T)>, for example, would represent a 2pt wide text colored rule above.

• Fixed a long-standing problem where applying a master to a document's initial page was causing that page and all ensuing pages to contain too many boxes (like they had two masters applied).

• Moved keyboard shortcut entries so that they're each in their respective menu area (File and Edit) rather than being glommed into a generic Xtags area.

• Updated our menu entries to match those of the QuarkXPress 7 sister product. So what was File > Get Text with Xtags... is now File > Import Text with Xtags..., Edit > Copy Xtags Text is now Edit > Copy with Xtags and Edit > Paste Xtags Text is now Edit > Paste with Xtags.

• Fixed a problem where placing an unanchored box "as anchored" within a table cell would instead create the box somewhere within the table's containing story.

Changes/new features at Xtags For InDesign 4-5.1 release

• This release of Xtags 5 now supports InDesign CS3 (and Xtags 4 supports CS2). We no longer support Xtags 3 for InDesign CS. (Our policy is to support the two latest major versions.)

• Added the &nb and &nbu2 tags to represent "none" (unassigned, content-less) boxes. The anchored non box tag takes the form

  <&nb(width, height, anchored alignment, frame width, frame color, frame shade, frame style, background color, background shade, text outset, box name)>

  while the unanchored none box tags has the form

  <&nbu2(x, y, width, height, box angle, box skew, flags, item runaround, frame width, frame color, frame shade, frame style, background color, background shade, text outset, box name, layer name)>

• Added "version 2" anchored box tag variants (&tb2, &pb2 and &nb2) to support rotation, skew, flags and runaround on anchored boxes.

  (width, height, angle, skew, flags, anchored alignment, item runaround, frame width...)

  For example, the tag

  <&nb2(1",1",45,,,B,n)>

  would insert a content-less anchored box at a 45 degree angle to the baseline with no text wrap.

• Added full support for all QuarkXPress runaround styles (auto image, embedded path, alpha channel, non-white areas, same as clipping and picture bounds) as well as all InDesign text wrap methods (jump object, jump to next column and all CS2 and CS3 wrap around object shape settings) where the runaround parameter can now contain the sub-list

  (type, flags, index, noise, smoothness, threshold, side)

  where type is one of

  • n - None (QuarkXPress) / No Text Wrap (InDesign)

  • i - Item / Wrap Around Bounding Box

  • j - Item / Jump Object

  • x - Item / Jump to Next Column

  • a - Auto Image / Wrap Around Object Shape: Detect Edges

  • b - Picture Bounds / Wrap Around Object Shape: Bounding Box

  • c - Alpha Channel / Wrap Around Object Shape: Alpha Channel

  • e - Embedded Path / Wrap Around Object Shape: Phototshop Path

  • s - Same As Clipping / Wrap Around Object Shape: Same as Clipping

  • w - Non-white Areas / Wrap Around Object Shape: Detect Edges

  Flags may specify any (or none, the default) of the following:

  • i - invert

  • e - include inner edges

  Index specifies the embedded path or alpha channel when one of those types is selected. Noise, smoothness and threshold specify the tolerance settings for auto image, alpha channel and non-white runaround. Side, in CS3 or above, specifies to which side of an object text should flow and can be one of:

  • r - right side

  • l - left side

  • b - both right & left sides

  • t - side towards spine

  • a - side away from spine

  • g - largest area, the default

  Note that tags specifying item runaround will be imported more accurately into CS3 than into CS2. In CS2, item runaround is always converted to "Wrap Around Bounding Box" which then implicitly wraps to both sides of the object. In CS3, which adds a "Wrap To" setting, Xtags now properly converts QuarkXPress-style item runaround to "Wrap Around Bounding Box: Largest Area" so that text wraps to the side of the object with more area... just like in QuarkXPress.

• Fixed a problem where an unanchored box placed relative to a box on a spread's pasteboard was always being created on the first spread's pasteboard (in the correct position, just not necessarily on the correct spread).

• Fixed a problem where the first use of an undefined paragraph or character style was being replaced by the "none" style. Such "implicit" styles are now properly applied to the text on their first use.

• When scripting Xtags, importing from a string rather than a file no longer results in a "file not found" error.

• Added support for the import of QuarkXPress-style hidden text tags (the A tag) representing Xdata marks, mark references and sub-story names. Generally, these tags will come from Xdata-generated text exported from a QuarkXPress document by Xtags. If you're interested in generating these tags manually, please contact Em Support for their formats.

  Note that this support requires that the InData plug-in be present. Lacking InData, these tags will be (silently) ignored.

  Also note that Xtags does not (yet?) update headers automatically after importing marks. To update headers after importing marked text, use InData > Update Headers/Footers.

• Numerical character escapes like <\#nnn> now always result in a character from either the MacRoman or the WinLatin character set depending upon the current <en> setting and the OS. For <e0>, a numerical escape results in a character from the MacRoman character set. For <e1>, a WinLatin character is produced. If no e tag is present or if the e tag specifies an encoding other than 0 or 1 then the resulting character is from MacRoman on Mac OS and WinLatin on Windows.

  Previously we let the text source's encoding dictate the handling of numerical escapes, but doing so for Unicode sources was resulting in incorrect characters. Now only the <\#U+nnnn> and <\#Unnnn> variants can be used to produce Unicode characters.

• Added support for Unicode picture paths, box names and layer names.

• Added cross-platform path recognition which allows a Windows path like myfolder/mypicture.tif to work properly in Mac OS and a Mac OS path like :myfolder:mypicture.tif to work in Windows.

• Fixed a problem where unanchored boxes positioned as if they were anchored were occasionally being placed a few points higher than the ascent of the current line.

• Fixed a problem that was positioning unanchored frames with non-zero stroke weights incorrectly.

• Fixed a problem where placing an unanchored frame relative to an anchored frame could leave the unanchored frame in the center of the page in some situations.

• Paragraph languages in the *p() tag now use localized language names.

• Added support for translation tables. Xtags will search for translation files specified by a &tt2 tag in the folders ~/Library/Preferences/Xtags, /Library/Preferences/Xtags and then /Network/Library/Preferences/Xtags on MacOS or .../user/My Documents/Xtags and then .../All Users/Documents/Xtags in Windows. If Xtags doesn't locate the translation file in one of these folders, it will then search relative to the current document/template's folder and finally, if a tagged text file is being imported, relative to the tagged text file being imported.

• Added support for macros (the &!, ! and !2 tags).

• The new &it tag allows the pass-thru of native InDesign Tagged text to access InDesign features that were previously unavailable to Xtags. This tag takes the form <&it"""...""">, where the ellipsis is your InDesign Tagged Text sequence delimited at its start and end by triple quotes. Any InDesign tag should be usable, including the table, hyperlink and indexing tags.

  Note that Xtags automatically prefixes your InDesign tags with the proper start file tag (either <UNICODE-MAC> or <UNICODE-WIN>).

  Note also that passing tags thru to InDesign has a lot of overhead and is therefore quite a bit slower than using Xtags tags.

• Added support for nested inline (anchored) objects.

• Added File > Save Text with Xtags... and Edit > Copy Xtags Text.

  • Tagged text export supports multiple layout selections. For example, you can multi-select (without grouping) any number of text and/or picture frames; when saved or copied, their corresponding tags will be generated in the order required to re-create the appropriate back-to-front order.

  • For better compatibility with Xtags for QuarkXPress, CS2's default "[Basic Paragraph]" style is considered the "Normal" style, but only if there's not another paragraph style named "Normal" in the document. This allows Xtags to preface paragraphs based on [Basic Paragraph] with a simpler and more portable @: tag rather than a @NormalParagraphStyle: tag.

  • Since leading and language are paragraph attributes in pre-version QuarkXPress 7.0 tags but are character attributes in InDesign, the corresponding parameters of the <*p()> tag are filled only if the entire paragraph uses the same leading or language value. If the leading or language setting changes within the paragraph, the corresponding <*p()> parameter will be left empty.

  • Since InDesign supports multiple automatic methods for kerning, we've added a named variant to the existing manual kerning tag. The tags <k"Optical"> and <k"Metrics"> may now be used to apply the corresponding InDesign auto-kerning method.

  • The encoding of a saved file may be one of MacRoman, WinLatin, UTF-8 or UTF-16. Characters that can't be represented in the target encoding are automatically converted to a <\#Unnnn> tag.

  • Copy Xtags Text places UTF-16 text on the Windows clipboard and both UTF-16 and MacRoman text on the Mac OS clipboard (for compatibility with non-Unicode applications).

• Fixed a problem where quotes within pasted tagged text that were being converted and/or localized by InDesign before being processed by Xtags were causing Paste Xtags Text to fail.

• Added support for table cells, into which tagged text may now be imported and from which tagged text may now be saved. (NB: tables aren't imported nor exported by Xtags.)

• Added PDF page and cropping support to the picture box tags (&pb, &pbu and &pbu2). The picture path name parameter may now specify a sub-list with the format

  (filename, page number, cropping style)

  where filename is the absolute or relative path to the PDF, page number is the number of the page to be imported and cropping style is the type of the cropping method to be applied.

  Page numbers are integers in the range 1 ... n where n is the number of the last page in the PDF. Values larger than n are clamped to n while a value smaller than 1 will cause both the page and cropping pameters to be ignored. If not otherwise specified, Xtags will load the the PDF's first page.

  The cropping style parameter may be 0 (media), 1 (contents, the default), 2 (bleed) or 3 (trim).

  Xtags will silently ignore the use of these parameters on non-PDF images.

• Added support for the frame position lock flag (L) and the frame print suppression flag (B).

• Scriptors may now use the application's save text with Xtags to export the current selection.

• Scripting now supports object-based exports. Obtain a layer object and tell it to save as Xtags and all objects on that spread's layer will be exported, in order, as tagged text. This works for master spreads, layers, spreads, pages, stories, page items and any "text" object (like a selection, paragraph, column, etc.).

• If you're a developer whose plug-in invokes Xtags programmatically, you'll want our latest API. We've added a number of interfaces which allow you to generate tags and we've also added new methods with which to import tags.

Changes/new features at Xtags for InDesign 3/4.0.2 release

• Since InDesign won't break on special space characters (en space, flex space, punctuation space, etc.), like QuarkXPress does, Xtags now follows any such character with a zero-width space (on which InDesign will break) so long as non-breaking hasn't been specified. For example, a <\q> tag now generates two characters, a four-per-em-space followed by a zero-width-space, while a <\!q> tag will still generate just a four-per-em-space character with the no-break attribute applied.

• Baseline-aligned inline frames may now be offset up to 11 inches below the baseline.

• Fixed a long-standing problem where placing an unanchored box relative to the most-recently anchored box would instead either place that box relative to the most-recently created unanchored box or issue the error "No such previous box" if there was no such most-recently created unanchored box.

• Fixed a problem where support for all flavors of line-ends (DOS, Unix and Mac, introduced back in beta 2) wasn't working with tagged text files imported via scripting. This was causing text to import without paragraph-level formatting (as if the "Include style sheets" checkbox were deselected).

• Worked around an InDesign problem where vertically-centered text in baseline-aligned inline text frames (created via &tb) were being drawn top-aligned.

• Fixed a problem where <B>, <I> and <$> were not working consistently with Adobe Garamond Semibold.

• Fixed a long-standing smart quotes problem where quotes immediately following paragraph style callouts were producing close quotes rather than open quotes.

• Fixed a problem where displaying a filename with an empty filename extension like "mytags." would crash the Get Text with Xtags... dialog. (Mac OS only)

• Fixed a problem where the Get Text with Xtags... dialog wasn't alway showing valid tagged text files as selectable. (Mac OS X 10.4 and later)

• Fixed a problem where forced leading on an anchored frame that had been shrunk to fit its contents was using the frame's original height instead of the shrunken height.

• Text in an anchored frame that has been shrunk to fit its contents no longer starts partway down the frame.

• Fixed a problem where paragraph tags between an anchored text frame's final CR and the <&te> tag were being applied to the last paragraph. Such paragraph tags are now properly ignored.

• Xtags no longer causes a crash if a script makes a layout selection ("select text frame 1 of document 1", for example) rather than a text selection ("select text of text frame 1 of document 1") prior to invoking Xtags.

• In addition to English, Xtags now recognizes French and German-localized QuarkXPress Passport-standard color, frame style and language names.

• The default text wrap setting for baseline-aligned anchored frames has been changed from "item" to "none" in order to bypass an InDesign composer limitation which was blocking vertical justification in text frames containing one or more anchored frames with "item" text wrap. Since InDesign's composer flows text around the part of the anchored frame extending above the baseline (as if it were a character), the text flow resulting from this change should remain the same as it was before. The default text wrap setting for ascent-aligned anchored frames is still "item".

• Values specified as picas are now recognized even if they contain only a points component. For example, while the values "0p6" and "p6" both specify six points, using the latter no longer results an error.

• Hidden text tags in QuarkXPress-generated tagged text (<A(...)[...]>) no longer produce errors and are instead silently ignored (since there's no corresponding construct in InDesign).

• Fixed a problem which caused Xtags to issue a "missing composer" error instead of a "missing language" error.

• Improved support for toggling font faces when using Adobe Janson. Note, however, that Xtags is only able to toggle bold and italic on the fonts that InDesign itself is able to toggle bold and italic (via Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-B and Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-I, respectively).

• Xtags now recognizes German-localized QuarkXPress standard color and language names. For example, "Gelb" will now be treated as "Yellow" (so long as the document doesn't already contain a swatch named "Gelb").

• Added compatibility with our InData product such that XPress Tags-bearing data may now be imported by InData (versions 3.1.3b2 and 4.1.3b2 or later).

• Fixed a problem where shrinking an anchored frame to fit its picture with a tag like <&pb((346,S),(300,S),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"foo.tif")> was giving the contained image a non-zero vertical offset such that the top of the image was being cropped. Now the frame is properly resized and the vertical offset is left at zero unless otherwise specified.

• Shrinking a frame that strokes its path with the [None] swatch to its contents no longer leaves a small gap between the picture and the right and bottom edges of the frame.

• We've changed the <\!s> tag so that it generates a space with the no-break attribute applied rather than injecting a single "hard" space character since the latter turned out to be non-justifiable (and therefore differed from Xtags for QuarkXPress).

• All flavors of line-ends (DOS, Unix and Mac) are now handled properly.

• Unicode text files may now be imported so long as they begin with the appropriate byte order mark (BOM) to signal their Unicode-ness. For example, a UTF-8 encoded tagged text file would need to begin with the three character sequence 239 187 191 (that's character #239, character #187 and character #191).

• Added support for old-style Mac font names (platform font names) in order to improve compatibility with tags generated by QuarkXPress or previously targeted to QuarkXPress.

• PostScript font name handling has also been improved so that a font whose family name differs from its PostScript family name is no longer ignored. For example, a font like STHeiti Light with family name "STHeiti" may now be selected using its PostScript name "STXihei". Previously, the tag would have resulted in a "font not found" error.

• Xtags now takes steps to ensure text placed in created frames is displayed correctly. Before, the contained text would ignore a frame's non-rectangular shape, text inset and vertical justification until the user manually nudged the settings via the "Object > Text Frame Options..." dialog.

• Fixed a problem where sizing a text frame to its contents could result in overset text if the frame had non-zero text inset applied.

• Text surrounding an ascent-aligned anchored frame should now correctly flow around the frame rather than thru it. This addresses a long-standing InDesign CS problem where the only workaround was to always use baseline-aligned anchored frames. [CS only, not CS2]

• Unanchored oval frames are now placed correctly. Before, oval frames were always being created on the pasteboard.

• Fixed a problem where the checkboxes in the File > Get File with Xtags dialog would become unselectable, might disappear, and were just plain flaky in general. [Windows only]

• A parameter error in a frame creation tag now (correctly) aborts the creation of that frame.

• Resolved several minor memory leaks.

Changes/new features at Xtags for InDesign 3/4.0.1 release

• The Xtags 4.x series now runs under InDesign Creative Suite 2 (CS2).

• A new <\e> tag inserts an End Nested Style character. (CS2 only)

• A font specified by just a family name now maps to that family's plain style (whether explicit or implicit). For example, "Helvetica" becomes "Helvetica-Medium" rather than some other seemingly-random variant like "Helvetica-Narrow".

• Fonts may now be specified by their PostScript names in addition to their user-visible names.

• Fixed a problem where the "Get File" dialog could display garbage in its file types list. (Windows only)

• QuarkXPress standard color names ("black", "blue", etc.) are now supported. Note that a document swatch with the same name as one of these standard colors will "win".

• Baseline-aligned anchored text frames created with a vertical alignment other than "top" now display their contents using the requested vertical alignment. Before, InDesign was reluctant to display the applied alignment until the user had manually changed either the frame or its content.

• Fixed a problem where the superior text attribute, once on, couldn't be turned off.

• Added automation/scripting support. For Windows, we've added a method to both the application and the document objects:

  void getTextWithXtags(
          [in] VARIANT From,
          [in, optional] VARIANT_BOOL QuoteConversion,
          [in, optional] VARIANT_BOOL ErrorReporting,
          [in, optional] VARIANT_BOOL DocumentUpdating);

  For Mac OS, the event (found in the Basics Suite) is also available at both the application and document level:

  get text with Xtags from <alias or string>
          [quote conversion boolean]
          [error reporting boolean]
          [document updating boolean]

  As with Xtags for QuarkXPress, these entry points require a current document and a selected text frame.

• Fixed a problem where imports into an existing paragraph would remove applied character settings.

• Fixed a problem where error strings supplied by scripts and our facade interface weren't always correct.

• A font specified as a font family without any explicit style is now treated as an implicit plain style request so that, as in QuarkXPress, the tag <f"Times"> will actually call out "Times-Roman" (for example).

• Fixed a sporadic problem which was causing the creation of unanchored boxes placed as anchored boxes (i.e. with the x and y parameters left empty) to fail.

• Unanchored boxes are now placed in front of existing boxes by default. Previously, they were always being placed behind existing boxes.

• Added support for the send-to-back (K) flag, used to place new unanchored boxes behind existing boxes.

• Unanchored boxes placed as anchored boxes (i.e. with the x and y parameters left empty) are now positioned as they are in Xtags for QuarkXPress where the top-left corner is aligned with line's height rather than with the font's ascent. (This difference is really only apparent if the line contains a baseline-aligned anchored object.) That Xtags for QuarkXPress aligns to the line height rather than the font's ascent -- as the documentation states -- is probably a bug, but in the interest of cross-application compatibility we're going to mimic that behavior in Xtags for InDesign.

• Fixed a problem which was causing unanchored boxes placed as anchored boxes (i.e. with the x and y parameters left empty) to be positioned incorrectly if the paragraph's style differed appreciably from the No Paragraph Style's style.

• Fixed a problem with the <f$> tag which prevented subsequent <I> and <B> tags from working properly.

• Fixed a problem where typeface names containing their weight (e.g. "45 Light Oblique") were always being treated as plain even if they were really bold or italic (or both). This caused the <I> in the tagged text "The <f"Univers 45 Light Oblique">quick<I> brown fox..."--which should have toggled italics off--to be ignored.

• Worked around an InDesign issue which caused the tag <f"Univers 45 Light Oblique"> to emit an error even when the font was present. (This doesn't appear to be a widespread problem; we only saw it happen with "Univers 45 Light Oblique".)

• The non-breaking space tag <\!s> now emits a Unicode "hard space" rather than a normal space with the no-break attribute applied. This change allows InDesign to display the space as a special glyph when Show Hidden Characters is enabled.

New features/changes at Xtags for InDesign 3.0 release

• First release of Xtags for InDesign, so it's all new!

• Completely overhauled manual, integrating all previous manuals, Read Me's and manual addenda.

Xtags for QuarkXPress

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 6/7.3.1.1 release

• Fixed a problem that was causing character style references to fail. Both the <@...> tag and paragraph style definitions using named character styles now work properly. (QXP6/Mac only)

• Changed text generated via "Save Text with Xtags" in QuarkXPress 6.1/Mac to once again use MacOS-style line ends (CRs) rather than Unix-style line ends (LFs). This addresses an issue where simple text produced by Xtags could not be read back in using Quark's own "Get Text..." (which doesn't handle Unix line ends correctly).

• Fixed a minor problem where 6.x-style serials were being forgotten in some situations and needed to be reentered on each restart.

• Removed arbitrary limitations from the number of rows a table tag may specify. (Pro only)

• Fixed a tables problem when auto-sizing a row's height. A single line of text appearing immediately after a paragraph's rule is no longer clipped/overset by a too-small row height. (Pro only)

• Added support to <&tcs(...)> for a W flag which tells Xtags to allow that cell's contents to wrap. (In other words, the W flag tells Xtags to skip that cell when auto-sizing the column's width.) (Pro only)

• Fixed a tables problem where a table tag's interior vertical gridline properties were not being applied. (Pro only)

• Added support for $ as a gridline parameter value which indicates that the default value (from the table tool's preferences) be used for that position. (Pro only)

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 6/7.3.1 release

• Boxes being placed under a relatively-referenced box are now put behind the referenced box before being auto-sized so that the shrink-to-contents will account for any runaround on the referenced box. Prior to this change, auto-sized text boxes were becoming overset when sent behind a referenced box.

• Added support for additional picture box runaround types including auto image, embedded path, alpha channel, non-white areas, same as clipping and picture bounds. The expanded runaround parameter of an unanchored picture box tag takes the form of a sub-list:

  ..., (type, flags, index, noise, smoothness, threshold),...

  where type is one of n (none), i (item), a (auto image), e (embedded path), c (alpha channel), w (non-white areas), s (same as clipping), b (picture bounds). Flags may specify any (or none) of the following: I (invert), E (include inner edges), O (let path extend outside the box). Index specifies the embedded path or alpha channel when one of those types is selected. Noise, smoothness and threshold specify the tolerance settings for auto image, alpha channel and non-white runaround.

• Fixed a problem where text box background colors other than "None" were being ignored.

• Fixed a problem where the last character of any Copy-as-Xtags'd text was being ignored when pasted (via Edit > Paste) back into a text box. (Windows, QXP7 only)

• Added table gridlines. (Pro only)

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 6/7.3.0.3 release

• Boxes may now be placed relative to a named box that is anywhere in the document, on the current spread or on the current page. If the named box is not found, the box creation fails and an error is generated. If the name is prefaced with a question mark, the creation is considered conditional: if the named box is not found then no box is created and no error is reported.

  Where the named box is looked for can be specified by setting a new parameter in the relative reference sub-list to 'D' (to search the document's layout), 'S' (to search the current spread) or 'P' (to limit the search to the current page). The default search location is the current spread.

  <&pbu2((0,TL,"sidebar"),0,...)> looks for a box named "sidebar" on the current spread and places this new box on top of it. If "sidebar" isn't found, the tag fails and an error is generated.

  <&pbu2((0,TL,"?sidebar"),0,...)> also looks for a box named "sidebar", but if one can't be found no error is issued.

  <&tbu2((0,TL,"background",D),0,(1,R,0),(1,R,0),...)> searches the document for a box named "background" and creates a same-sized text box on top of it.

  Note that you can name a box on a master page and then position boxes on each document page relative to where the named master page box lies. This could be handy when tagged elements' placements need to be determined by the layout rather than the tags. For example, something like

  <&tbu2((0,TL,"?left-page-footer",P),0,(1,R,0),(1,R,0),...)>

  might be used to place a left-page footer only on left pages. Since no box named "left-page-footer" would exist on the right page master, the tag would silently fail on right-side pages.

• Added a new unanchored box flag, 'U', which may be used to send a relatively placed box behind (under) its referenced box. If both the U and K (send to back) flags are specified for a relatively-placed box, the K flags will be ignored.

  For example, the tags sequence:

  <&tbu2((0,TL,"fancybox",S),0,(1,R,0),(4",S,6),0,0,,...)>Some text.<&tbe><&pbu2((0,TL,1),0,(1,R,0),(1,R,0),0,0,U,...)>

  would create a text box aligned with (and as wide as) the current spread's "fancybox", shrink the box's height to its contents, then slide a same-sized picture box in behind that text box to provide a background graphic.

• Tags referencing H&J and L&F names with accented characters are now saved/copied correctly to Unicode. Previously, accented characters were being converted to unknown or invalid Unicode code points. (7.3.0.3 only)

• Fixed a problem introduced in 6-7.3.0.2 which caused table start tag parameters above the 7th (text-align/runaround) to fail.

• Attempting to use a table tag without a Pro serial number now produces a "table tags require a Pro serial" error message rather than the previous builds' "unknown" error.

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 6/7.3.0.2 release

• Added PDF page and cropping support to the picture box tags (&pb, &pbu and &pbu2). The picture path name parameter may now specify a sub-list with the format

  (filename, page number, cropping style)

  where filename is the absolute or relative path to the PDF, page number is the number of the page to be imported and cropping style is the type of the cropping method to be applied.

  Page numbers are integers in the range 1 ... n where n is the number of the last page in the PDF. Values larger than n are clamped to n while a value smaller than 1 will cause both the page and cropping pameters to be ignored. If not otherwise specified, Xtags will load the the PDF's first page.

  The cropping style parameter may be 0 (media), 1 (contents, the default), 2 (bleed) or 3 (trim).

  Xtags will silently ignore the use of these parameters on non-PDF images.

  This is an Xtags 7-only feature. Versions of Xtags prior to 7.3.0.2 will silently ignore these parameters.

• Fixed a problem where incorrect style names were being generated when exporting tagged text from some documents.

• Improved the handling of shrink-to-fit baseline-aligned anchored boxes where a negative baseline offset places the box either partially or completely below the baseline. Previously, the box would always maintain the negative offset by shrinking towards its bottom edge. Now, if the offset is large enough to place the pre-sized box completely below the baseline, then the resized box will shrink towards the baseline--meaning the gap between the baseline and the box's top, if any, will be maintained. For example, the tags

  <*R><&tb(30,(3",S),(b,-3"-6pt))>@:Sidebar: some interesting fluff<&te>

  will now create an anchored text box sized to its contents hanging 6 points below the baseline. (Before it would shrink towards the box's bottom, leaving a variably-sized gap between the baseline and the box's top.) In this case, the box is pushed to the right edge of the page in its own paragraph such that it floats next to the next paragraph like a sidebar.

  If the negative offset would leave the pre-sized anchored box straddling the baseline, then the resized box will now shrink about the baseline proportionally. For example, the tag

  <&pb((40,S),(40,S),(b,-20),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"photo.jpg")>

  will create an anchored picture box vertically centered on the baseline. After being fit to the image, the resized box will now remain centered on the baseline.

• Changed the minimum allowable baseline-alignment offset from -.5" to -11". The maximum allowable offset remains +11.5".

• Unanchored lines created with <&lbu> may now be sent-to-back using the K flag.

• Fixed a problem where index entries made via <XI> in a text box created with <&tb> or <&tbu> were being placed in the main story rather than in the created box's story.

• The angle field of the &tsu() tag is no longer ignored, allowing unanchored tables to be rotated. (Xtags Pro only)

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 6/7.3 release

• Fixed a box placement problem where attempting to place an unanchored box relative to the most-recently-anchored box (e.g. <&pbu2((1,TL,0),0,...)>) would instead place the unanchored box relative to the most-recently-created unanchored box, if there was one, or issue the error "Xtags error: No such previous box: tag &pb[u2]" if not.

• Added support for Unicode characters in box and layer names, though QuarkXPress's UI won't always handle them properly. (7.x only)

• Added support for text encodings--including Unicode--and direct-from-memory imports and exports to the XTensions interface. (7.x only)

• Fixed a problem where Xtags would issue an error for every box placed on the "Default" layer.

• Fixed a minor memory leak that could occur with each import.

• Added support for the <$$>, <a$> and <a$$> tags. For a description of these tags see QuarkXPress Help / Appendices / Using XPress Tags / Defining and Applying Style Sheets / Additional XPress Tags for Style Sheets.

• Added support for 7.0's opacity parameter in the paragraph rules tags. For tags marked as <v7.00> or later, the 5th (new) parameter in *ra's and *rb's parameter list now specifies the opacity of the rule. (7.x only)

• Added support for 7.0's new character-based language tag <n>. (7.x only)

• Added support for 7.0's new ligatures tag <G>. (7.x only)

• Added support for 7.0's OpenType Feature tag <o(...)>. (7.x only)

• Added support for Quark's new XPress Tags 7.0 space character tags, including: en <\e>, em <\_>, 3-per-em <\5>, 4-per-em <\$>, 6-per-em <\^>, figure <\8>, thin <\[>, hair <\{> and word joiner <\j>. (7.x only)

• The <\f> and <\m> tags now conform to Quark's XPress Tags 7.0 specification and produce a flex space and an em space, respectively, when imported from a <v7.00> source rather than an en space an a em dash as they do in prior tag versions. (7.x only)

• Xtags 7.x now supports the import and export of tagged text encoded as Mac Roman, Windows Latin, UTF-8 or UTF-16.

  On import, UTF-16-encoded files are always automatically detected and any <e> tag in the file is ignored. UTF-8 files must either begin with a byte order mark (BOM) or contain the tag <e9>. Otherwise, the file is assumed to be encoded as Mac Roman (on Mac OS) or Windows Latin (on Windows) unless an <e> tag specifies otherwise (<e0> for Mac Roman or <e1> for Windows Latin). (7.x only)

  On export, the desired encoding may be specified in the "Save Text as Xtags" dialog's new Encoding: pop-up menu. If a given Unicode character does not translate to the specified encoding (Mac Roman or Windows Latin), it will be converted to a <\#Uxxxx>. (7.x only)

• Xtags now supports Unicode translation files and macros using Unicode characters. (7.x only)

• The Apple Script interface now accepts and generates Unicode strings. (7.x only)

• Boxes created by Xtags now take their default values from the document's appropriate tool defaults: the rectangular text box tool for <&tb>, <&tbu> and <&tbu2> tags and the rectangular picture box tool for the <&pb> and <&pbu> tags.

• Added the <p%> tag to support text opacity in QuarkXPress 7. For example,

  The <p50>ghostly<p$> owl

  would import with the word "ghostly" with its opacity set to 50%. (7.x only)

• Accented characters in color, style, language, line, frame, H&J and layer names are now translated to and from Unicode correctly. (7.x only)

• We've added support for the <\#Uxxxx> (and <\#U+xxxx>) tag that was first introduced in our Xtags for InDesign product. With it, any character may be specified using its Unicode code point value. For example, an em-dash may be specified as <\#U2014> or <\#U+2014>.

• What was File > Get Text with Xtags... has been changed to File > Import Text with Xtags... and what was File > Save Text with Xtags... has been changed to File > Save Text with Xtags... to better align with QuarkXPress 7's updated terminology. (7.x only)

• Requests to shrink anchored text boxes to fit their contents are now attempted in additional situations (including when overset) in order to address a problem where some imports were seeing a portion of their anchored text boxes left unshrunk for no apparent reason.

• Added support for layers so that unanchored boxes may now be created on a specific document layer using the tag's layer name parameter. From the Xtags User's Guide:

  <&tbu2(x, y, width, height, box angle, box skew, flags, item runaround, frame width, frame color, frame shade, frame style, background color, background shade, text outset, columns, gutter, text inset, baseline offset, baseline minimum, vertical alignment, interparagraph maximum, box name, layer name)>...Text to be placed in the box, typically containing other tags...<&te>

  and

  <&pbu2(x, y, width, height, box angle, box skew, flags, item runaround, frame width, frame color, frame shade, frame style, background color, background shade, text outset, placement, picture scale x, picture scale y, picture offset x, picture offset y, picture angle, picture skew, picture path name, picture type, box name, layer name)>

  If the specified layer does not yet exist, it is created with default color and visibility. If the layer cannot be created, the box is placed on the currently selected (active) layer.

• Fixed a problem where a crash could occur upon File > Get Text with Xtags... if the initial folder contained a file lacking a Classic designation ('TEXT', for example) and having a name ending with a period. (Mac OS X only)

• The character resulting from a numeric escape tag is now governed by the <e> tag and mapped into the current platform's character set. So a Mac-based numeric escape tag like <\#17> now properly generates the TM symbol on Windows rather than a superscripted "a" character.

• When exporting Xtags text, a missing font's name is now included in the <f"..."> tag rather than being substituted with a question mark. For example, Xtags will now generated <f"Minion Pro Med"> rather than <f"?"> for the missing font Minion Pro Medium.

• Fixed an export problem which was occasionally preventing the generation of certain character attributes applied to text within a "none"-style paragraph with no character style applied. For example, the <cW> tag might not be generated for a span of white text within a "none"-style paragraph with no character style applied.

• Reverting to the paragraph style's character attributes via <@$p> no longer applies a random font/size/color if the paragraph style references a character style for its character attributes.

• Fixed a problem where loading a picture using a relative path of the form ":a folder:a picture file with a very long name.tif" or ":a picture file with a very long name.tif"would result in a file not found error even if the picture file actually existed. (Mac OS only)

• Worked around a problem caused by non-conforming XTensions (like PSD Import) where loading a picture was causing Xtags to emit incorrect text in its error messages.

• A problem in QuarkXPress 6 where the document's home folder is "forgotten" when the document was opened on a network volume has been worked around (the problem arises because XPress now copies a remote documents to a local version before working on it). Now Xtags will find pictures relative to the document's folder even when that document is on a network volume. (Documents on a local volume were never a problem.)

• When importing tags from a file, both the document's folder and the source file's folder will be searched when looking for pictures specified using a relative path, in that order. (What's new is searching in the source file's folder.)

• Exporting a group containing a box with an illegal shape no longer crashes. Instead, the export will fail with error code -27 (unsupported box shape).

• Translation tables now allow the vertical tab escape \v to represent character 11 ( <\#11>).

• The "No style" character style is now used instead of "Normal" when a reverting to a "No style"-styled paragraph's default character style using the <@$p> tag.

• The correct tags are now generated after a <@$p> tag is emitted within a "No style"-styled paragraph.

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 4.2.1/6.2.1 release

• Get Text with Xtags... no longer hangs with a spinning beachball in QuarkXPress 6.5. (Mac OS only)

• The Get Text with Xtags... dialog now allows the selection of any file with a valid filename extension (e.g., ".txt" and ".xtg"). (Mac OS only)

• Xtags now supports input and output of the full QuarkXPress index tags (XO, XC and XI) when Quark's Index XTension is present. (Without the Index XTension present and the Index palette open, all index tags will be lost on input or output with Xtags, the same as with Quark's XPress Tags filter.)

  For full index tag documentation, see the appendix in the file Guide to QuarkXPress.pdf (which lives in the appropriate language sub-folder of the Documents folder in the XPress 6.x folder).

  Known issue: If you select text containing index entries (index tags), and import or paste over it with Xtags (Get Text with Xtags... or Paste Xtags Text), the index database gets confused. This appears to be a generic problem with all XTensions, not just Xtags, and we're pursuing it with Quark. One work-around appears to be to close and re-open the Index palette, though that seems to also lose index tag information (and not just with Xtags--it also happens with their own XPress Tags support). Another is to manually delete what you're replacing, before importing or pasting with Xtags.

• Xtags now properly handles the save text as xtags AppleScript event in the presence of long file names or file names containing Unicode characters. (Mac OS X (6.x) only)

• Xtags once again supports a simple pathname string as a direct argument in AppleScript, working around a change in the Quark system-level coersion handlers. Previously, you'd have to coerce the pathname string with alias. (Mac OS X (6.x) only)

• Xtags now properly outputs text with both paragraph and character style set to "No style". (Before, it would crash.) (Mac OS only)

• Xtags now supports long file names (greater than 31 characters in length) under Mac OS X. (Mac OS X (6.x) only)

• Xtags now imports pictures with full (72 dpi) preview resolution rather than half-resolution (36 dpi).

• Xtags now supports an Upgrade button in its About... dialog that allows you to re-enter your new serial without hunting around the file system for the old serial storage and deleting it by hand, if you need to upgrade your serial to increase the number of simultaneous copies, etc.

• Xtags now handles multiple text inset values in text box creation properly (it was working before, but the XPress UI wasn't being notified, so you couldn't see the settings interactively). (6.x only)

• Xtags now allows the full 2" maximum on frame corner radii, instead of a 1" maximum.

• Xtags now properly labels the import option Delete file after successful import rather than after successful input, in both its preference and Get Text with Xtags... dialogs.

New features/changes at Xtags for QuarkXPress 4.2/6.2 release

• (See the Read Me.pdf file that's included in the Xtags download archive for further history.)