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| QuarkXpress 6.5 XTensions to Turn Off | | Date Created: 26 Mar, 2005, 07:29 PM |
 In this article I want to talk about how to make QuarkXpress 6.x a little more stable by turning off a few XTensions that I have found (through a few different sources) to be problematic.
Although I'm sure there are some work-flows that are best served by turning off even more, we're going to focus on three key Quark XTensions. Two of them are a known problems and one is the result of some trial and error. |
 The first two problem XTensions (that we're going to talk about) came from Terri Wymore, the Art Director of Chicagoland Gardening Magazine located in Downers Grove, IL.
Terri, a Font Geek reader e-mailed me directly about it. She writes...
Hello Benjamin,
First, thank you for the website! I wanted to share with you a problem I was having and the fix. If you already have this info then I apologize for not finding it on the site. |
 I upgraded my version of quark 6 to 6.5 and immediately my Myriad font began printing in courier on all my printing devices. I had no problem in any other programs. After contacting Quark I was told to disable two XTensions in the Utilities > XTensions Manager. FontDownloadingXT and FontRetrieveXT. My font is printing correctly now. I was told these two XTensions allow a user to go to the Quark site and purchase/download needed fonts and they are aware that it is causing trouble with some fonts.
Hope this info can help someone out there... Since it is my primary font in the Magazine I design I was a bit stressed about it.
--
Terri Wymore
Art Director
Chicagoland Gardening Magazine |
| Before I go on, I'd like to thank Terri for her e-mail. I get a lot of e-mail from Font Geek's readers but very few that offer something new and helpful. Consider yourself an honorary Font Geek, Terri. |
As is my practice, when I receive any information about font related problems, I put this information to the test. I disabled those XTensions in QuarkXpress 6.5 on my own computer as well as a few of my customers. I'm pleased to report that Quark's overall stability was greatly improved. In fact it completely fixed the crashing (Quark was quitting) that one of my clients was experiencing.
To disable these two XTensions, launch QuarkXpress 6.5 and select the XTensions Manager menu option from under the Utilities menu. |
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| This will bring up the Quark XTensions Manager dialog box. Scroll down until you can see the FontDownloadingXT and FontRetrieveXT XTensions and uncheck them under the Enable column on the left. |
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The other XTension that we're going to turn off comes from my partner Larry Lamb -- through trial and error with one of MacDoctors' clients.
Although I haven't had any problems with this one, according to Larry the OPI XTension causes problems as well. To turn off this Xtension scroll down a little further in the XTensions Manager dialog box and uncheck it under the Enable column on the left. |
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Sidebar: For those of you who don't know if you need the OPI XTension or not, or even what OPI is, I thought I'd provide you with a short note about OPI.
OPI is an acronym for Open Press Interface
Open Prepress Interface -- Also known as image-swapping technology, this is the process that allows low-resolution copies of images inserted into a page-layout program for some prepress tasks, and then swapped with the high-resolution versions for output.
The idea is to use placeholder files (usually a low resolution TIFF) during production of a job to avoid using the actual much larger files. An OPI comment is actually nothing more than an instruction found inside an EPS file that instructs a RIP to insert a specific graphic image file from a certain location.
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Although the OPI XTension problem is more of a Quark stability issue rather than a font related problem, it is an XTension that I have tested and have turned off on my computers -- so I thought I'd share it with you.
Also according to Larry, turning off the Scripts XTension also makes QuarkXpress 6.5 more stable. But since this XTension allows QuarkXpress to have access to a built-in AppleScript menu, I do not have it turned off in my own version of QuarkXpress 6.5. |
| Once you've turned off the XTensions (in the XTensions Manager dialog box) that you want off, click on the Save As button. |
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| You will be presented with a new dialog box: the Save Set dialog box. Enter the name of the XTensions set and click on the Save button. |
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| Then click the OK button in the XTensions Manager dialog box to close the XTensions Manager and apply the changes. |
This may or may not help. But my guess is that most of you probably won't use these three XTensions anyway so turning them off probably won't hurt.
Thanks again Terri Wymore and Larry Lamb. |
Before I end this article, I'd like to say a few words about Quark (both the company and the program) and those of you who e-mail me about Quark vs. InDesign.
If you read any of the online forums or talk to QuarkXpress 6.x users you quickly find out that almost everyone complains about some aspect of the program. But you'll usually hear a lot more negative comments from people that don't use Quark for one reason or the other. And I think some of this is unwarranted.
Quark has become the program that people love to hate; and Quark bashing has become one of the most popular "blood sports" of the design / prepress industry.
To some extent, Quark (both the program and the company) have had this coming. But in recent days both the program and the company seem to really be turning things around -- although I think the company is now a bit ahead of the program in this regard.
Regardless of how you may feel about the program or the company, there are a lot of Quark users out there. And there are a lot of Quark documents out in the world. And saying things like... "just switch to InDesign" isn't all that useful.
Don't get me wrong. InDesign is a great program. And I tend to use InDesign CS for my own work more than QuarkXpress 6.5. But the reality of the new world of Design and Prepress is that many (if not most) new computers will end up having both programs on them.
There are a lot of people out there who need to have QuarkXpress on their computers. And Adobe has done a good job of making sure that almost everyone ends up with a copy of InDesign on their computer. And frankly I'm not fond of any situation that would force me to choose one over the other.
So for those of you who prefer InDesign to Quark, I say "Great!" Good for you. Please consider me as someone who agrees with you about InDesign's great features (for now anyway). But if you're one of those zealots who can't stop there, please do me the great favor of not e-mailing me about the evils of Quark anymore. I hear you. And to the extent that you're right I acknowledge you. |
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