Composition Zones Continued
Page 8

Collaboration Setup

Earlier I referred to the collaboration setup dialog box as the nerve center for controlling a whole bunch of stuff related to collaboration. Three tabs here, in particular, are relevant to anyone using composition zones: linked layouts, shared layouts, and updates.

To understand what’s going on in this dialog box, you have to understand that here, the word layout means composition layout. With that bit of information in mind, let’s consider these three tabs.

The linked layouts tab is the control center for linking to both internal and external composition zones designated as all projects (see figure 26). When Eric needs to grab the carrier ad from the newspaper layout and drop it into the invoice layout, this is where he goes to do it. This is also where he goes when he decides to re-run Hannah’s scandalous column. The link layout button opens a standard open dialog box, and when you point it at a QuarkXPress project, all of that project’s available (all projects) composition zones are listed in this tab (and, of course, in the shared content palette, so that you can place them).

The break link and remove buttons let you sever the connection between your project and a linked composition layout. (Note that when you sever this connection, QuarkXPress keeps a copy of the composition layout in your project.)

Figure 26 The linked layouts tab of the collaboration setup dialog box lists the composition layouts to which you're linked. It also includes buttons for linking to and unlinking from projects containing available composition layouts.

You might notice that there are two name columns in the linked layouts tab. This is because one composition layout can end up having a lot of names. When a composition zone is created, it has only one name: the name of the composition layout (by default this is “Layout 2” or something equally exciting, but you can change it by opening the composition layout for editing and then choosing layout > layout properties). When you share a composition zone, you supply the name by which the composition layout is identified in the shared content palette. When someone links to your project, they see the composition layout name in their linked layouts tab, and that's the name that displays by default in their shared content palette — but they can change it in the shared content palette if they want. If they do, they'll end up with a name that's different from the original name. (Confused? I am!)

The shared layouts tab lets you keep track of the available composition layouts in your project that are designated as all projects (see figure 27). Layout names work the same way here that they do in the linked layouts tab; original name is the name of the composition layout, and name is the name as displayed in the shared content palette.

Figure 27 The shared layouts tab of the collaboration setup dialog box lets you view all of the composition zones in the active project that are available to other QuarkXPress users.

The updates tab lets you specify when QuarkXPress should check linked layouts for changes and, if necessary, update any placed composition zones in the host layout (see figure 28). By default, the while working box is checked with an interval of one second. (Just by the way, this setting also applies to Job Jackets.)

Figure 28 The updates tab of the collaboration setup dialog box enables you to control how often linked layouts are checked for updates.

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