Therefore it may seem impossible to replace it with your own version, but here’s a trick that works:

• Quit any font managers that may be running (FontExplorer, Suitcase, FontAgent, etc.).
• Go to /System/Library/Fonts/ and copy all the Helveticas you find there to /Library/Fonts/
• Delete them from /System/Library/Fonts/ (admin password needed)

Because the Helveticas are no longer in the “System” fonts folder, but are in the “all-users” fonts folder, your font manager should now let you deactivate any of those Helveticas and activate your own versions.

Well, here’s one way:

Type “0” in the first field (Distance — or offset)
Type 100% in the second field (Scale — or size)
Then play with the third field (Blur) to get what you want.
The value in the “Angle” field can be anything — it doesn’t matter.

Here’s an example of how it could look on text:

And on a star:

By the way, I used the Starburst tool to create the star, with these settings:

To access the Starburst settings, you can either double-click the Starburst tool in the toolbox, or select the Starburst tool and then single-click on your page. If you use the first (double-click) technique, the next star you draw will have those settings; if you use the second technique, then when you close the settings dialog box a star will appear on your page where you clicked.

I like the article because it not only explains the concepts and steps you through the process, it shows how COMPLICATED it is to use. Not a bad thing, just complicated. I fully expect a simplified workflow to appear in the near future — designers will demand it. (Because that’s exactly what happened to some previously complicated Web procedures.)

Read the two-part article at www.tinyurl.com/yglg9cu and www.tinyurl.com/ybmjnz9.

Just double-click the icon in the Tools palette that you’d like to control (for example, a picture box). In the resulting dialog box, click the Modify button, and in the Runaround tab, change Type to None. (Or, choose Item as the Runaround type, and then type in your preferred runaround distances.)

If you make the above change while a document is open, the change will apply to that document only. If you make your change with no documents open, it will apply to all new documents.

It turns out that because the Jabberwocky feature was added a long time before operating systems began to understand Unicode fonts, it was not Unicode-compliant. Since QuarkXPress 8 relies heavily on Unicode, the Jabberwocky Sets feature had to go.

Now you know.

That way, your computer only has to redraw a small area of your document each time it finds an occurrence, thus speeding up the display. Also, since the highlighted word appears in a smaller area of your page, you don’t have to work as hard to see it.

Bonus tip: to more easily see each occurrence, increase your view percentage before using Find/Change. This also has the benefit of reducing the number of items XPress has to display.

You select multiple paragraphs of text on a QuarkXPress page, then choose among bullets, various numbering schemes, and whether to indent or not. Bullets don’t even have to be bullets: they can be any character from any font. Bullets and numbers can be bold or not, and styled with any existing Character style. Different levels of indent can have different numbering schemes and you can set the amount of indent — in other words, you have control over just about all the formatting.

If you change your mind, all bullets & numbers can be removed with one click. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t change if you edit the list, so you have to reapply the formatting after any changes.

Find out more about this $59 XTension at Gluon’s website. www.gluon.com

For example, TextEdit can open and edit Word files, and if you have iWork, you can use Pages. Keynote can open PowerPoint files and Numbers can open Excel files.

If you don’t have iWork installed, you can have the creator save the file as an earlier version by choosing File> Save As. And as a last resort, download Microsoft’s free Open XML File Format Converter to convert Office 2008 files into a format Office 2004 can read, at Microsoft’s website.

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XChange UK and ThePowerXChange are pleased to announce a new promotion starting January 4th 2010 that offers users a free Xdata for QuarkXPress with their purchase of QuarkXPress 8 full versions or upgrades. Users save and can utilize Xdata for any type of database publishing, achieving immediate return on investment with the first use. Additionally, Quark have extended their popular QuarkXPress 8 “Buy One Get One Free”.

XChange UK and ThePowerXChange, the sources for extended technology worldwide are pleased to announce a new promotion starting January 4th 2010 that offers users a free Xdata for QuarkXPress with their purchase of QuarkXPress 8 full versions or upgrades. Users save £250.00/$400.00 and can utilize Xdata for any type of database publishing, achieving immediate return on investment with the first use. Additionally, due to popular demand Quark have extended their popular QuarkXPress 8 “Buy One Get One Free” offer until January 31, 2010. There has never been a better time to buy QuarkXPress 8.

“We are really excited to be able to offer users these substantial savings on a tool that will continue to save them time and money. The automation this tool offers is invaluable and anyone who works with databases and publishing will immediately benefit from Em Software’s Xdata. Em Software is one of the longest-standing developers for QuarkXPress and they have always produced quality products, backed them with superior customer service. With this economy, any business – large or small – will find they have made a wise investment that continues to prove indispensable,” offers Greg Stodghill, Support Services Manager for ThePowerXChange.

Xdata is a document building tool that bring the full layout, design, typographic and picture publishing power of QuarkXPress to bear on all data-driven repetitive publishing tasks. Simply put, Xdata works like a “mail merge on steroids.” Users write simple text statements to import and format their text and graphics. Then the menu-driven tools, in a few clicks, build their documents at hundreds of pages per hour.

QuarkXPress’ typographic controls can be used for each variable field and for any intervening text, to get just the right look for a user’s data. Xdata has a powerful English-like scripting language. Users can put any field from their data source in any order in the text flow, force page breaks, generate headers/footers, apply master pages as needed and lots more. The product’s scripting language can be used to build simple or complex rules for including or excluding fields, pictures and static text. And there are no limits on a data: records and fields can be as many and as long as users need.

Xdata is easy enough to use for simple jobs, and powerful enough for the toughest projects. The XTension accepts pre-sorted tab- or comma- delimited data files and users can create exports from their Mac OS or Windows database, spreadsheet applications (Excel), or download them from their corporate information systems.

The product boasts sophisticated picture importing and sizing. Users can import related graphic images (of any type supported by QuarkXPress) into picture boxes anchored in the incoming text (flowing with the text). Users can size the image to the picture box or the box to the image using one of several sizing options. Users also have the ability to calculate and store information for later use in the prototype, or for use in later records. Users can create more sophisticated record templates that apply different formats to a field, based on its own or another field’s value. With this feature, for example, they can print heads and subheads only when they change, or generate a page break, given a change of value indicating a new section or subsection.

Xdata offers the ability to create multiple, independent “dictionary-style” headers and footers on each page or spread, with sophisticated controls over the header/footer contents, and based on incoming data, use different page layouts by applying master pages. Additionally, users can script Xdata under Mac OS for automation of repetitive single jobs, as well as large, complex jobs involving multiple imports in multiple documents.

Xdata is perfect for product catalogues, financial and legal reports, conference guides, abstracts, real estate guides, trader and swap magazines, classified advertising, timetables, phone books, course listings, TV guides and much more. Users save money and time on the first job with Xdata. Xdata has been in production use at thousands of sites world-wide since 1990.

The Free Xdata with QuarkXPress 8 full version or upgrade promotion is available now through XChange UK and ThePowerXChange. To order, or for more information, users can visit the websites.

US Customers Direct Link: http://www.thepowerxchange.com/quarkxpress_8_with_free_xdata_10162_prd1.html
UK/Europe Customers Direct Link: http://www.xchangeuk.com/pd/detail/QXPBAP08Q1PH01/quarkxpress_8_uk_ireland_edition_with_free_xdata.html