Distinction Between Items And Contents In QuarXPress
Distinction Between Item & Contents In QuarXPress 8
One of the key concepts which any user of QuarXPress needs to master is the distinction between item & content. Basically an item is an object or container while the contents of an item may either be text graphics or nothing. Understanding this concept & being aware of which level you need to be working at to be able to perform an operation can help new users to avoid a good deal of confusion & frustration.
There are four types of item which can be placed on the page in QuarkXPress picture boxes text boxes path text lines & tables. Text boxes & picture boxes are both containers & QuarXPress allows you to convert one of them into the other. Just right-click & choose Content then Graphic Text or None.
An example of this distinction is the use of Item & Content tools. They are the first two tools on the toolbar & the two that are most frequently used. The Item tool is used for manipulating items. Typically one you select this tool when you want to move items around & when you want to work with groups of items. When this tool is active it not possible to manipulate the contents of items. Thus for example it not possible to select the text in a text box or move a picture around inside a picture box. Lines cannot be are not containers so it doesn’t usually make any difference which tool is selected when you want to manipulate a line.
Tables in QuarkXPress have three levels the item level the cells level & the text level. Basically as far as QuarkXPress is concerned a table is simply a series of text and/or picture boxes stitched together. Each cell is basically a box which can have the same content choices as other boxes graphic text or none. If the Item tool is selected you can only work with the table as a whole. However whenever the Content tool is highlighted you can work either with the contents of an individual cell or you can drag across a range of cells to work at the cell level.
Grouping items works in a very flexible way in QuarkXPress. Basically if you click on any item in a group using the Item tool the program recognises the group & selects it. However if you click on an item that forms part of a group using the Content tool the group is ignored & you can still edit the contents of that item. In fact you can even move the item by holding down the Control key & dragging it.
Another important distinction between Item & Content can be found in the menu Commands relating to items are found in the Item menu while command relating to the contents of items is found in the Style menu.
The author is trainer & developer with Macresource Computer Training an independent computer training company offering QuarXPress Training Courses in London & throughout the UK.
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