By Cyndie Shaffstall

Imagine being able to export all of the individual text boxes of a catalogue, translate the text, and then have it flow back into the document, in the same way it was exported. How about exporting all the text for archiving, or for creating web pages, or populating a database? It's not impossible, it's the feature set of CopyFlow Gold: round-tripping — or just exporting — of text and graphics between QuarkXPress or InDesign and Word RTF or tagged text files.

CopyFlow Gold for QuarkXPress 8 (and 7) and CopyFlow Gold for InDesign for CS3 (and CS2) are extremely easy to use, but given the possibilities that the product affords you and the time it saves, this product should have been named CopyFlow Rhodium.

Exporting your QuarkXPress project or InDesign document begins with naming the individual boxes. This tagging enables CopyFlow Gold to identify from what box each block of text is extracted, and — in the case of round-tripping — to what box the text should be returned.

CopyFlow Gold's dialogue boxes are prompted from the CopyFlow Gold menu that is added to your top menu bar upon successful installation. Name box, the first option enables you to name boxes individually, though for most projects, I find that using the automatic naming feature works best — it's certainly faster.

Figure 1a and 1b Once you have installed CopyFlow Gold into QuarkXPres (top) or InDesign (bottom), the CopyFlow Gold menu will be added to your top menu bar. Be sure to read the install.txt file if you are using InDesign, it's more than just copying the files into the Plug-ins folder.

The processes for using CopyFlow Gold within InDesign and QuarkXPress deviate at this point, so let's take a look first at QuarkXPress, followed by InDesign. If you would like to jump to the InDesign portion of this article now, click here.

Note: When translating text files be careful not to disturb or
translate the tags and other markup.

CopyFlow Gold for QuarkXPress 7 preferences

As with most applications, it's generally a good idea to first set your preferences. Upon successful install, CopyFlow Gold preferences become an integrated part of the QuarkXPress preferences as shown below. If you'd like to try CopyFlow Gold and follow along, click the demo button to the right to download.

Figure 2 To access the preferences within QuarkXPress, choose preferences from the file menu.

The CopyFlow Gold preferences are divided into three groups: Box Naming, Import/Export, and Art.

With CopyFlow Gold, you have the option of exporting bundles. Bundles are groups of text and art elements exported together. At this time, CopyFlow Gold only supports a single bundle. Import/Export can now be set to import and export text only, art and text, or art only.

Figure 3 With CopyFlow Gold for QuarkXPress 7, the preferences enable you to choose to export text only, text and art, or art only.

 

CopyFlow Gold for QuarkXPress		CopyFlow Gold for QuarkXPress
CopyFlow Gold for InDesign		CopyFlow Gold for InDesign

CopyFlow Gold has extended QuarkXPress' standard tags in XPress Tags to support most anchored text and picture boxes. There is no need to use the box-naming feature to name anchored boxes, CopyFlow Gold does this automatically. Inline text box tags preserve the anchored box's width and height, baseline or top alignment, and any content. Inline picture box tags support any picture content allowed by QuarkXPress: box width, height, and alignment, and these picture positioning attributes: offset across and down, and scaling across and down. The path to the picture content is recorded as part of the tag and used to re-import any anchored picture content. It is important to remember that the picture must be in the same location and available at time of import.

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