Scissors Cuts Paper — and Paths
The Scissors tool in QuarkXPress cuts paths and boxes. Just click anywhere on a box of any shape, and it will become an open path at that point.
Try it with an oval, and then put text on the path!
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
Okay… I split the side of a picture box using the Scissor Tool and moved the open ends apart… now I want to join them back together while they are slightly separated by a 5mm gap… how do I join the two points together?
At this point, it works just like the Pen tool in Illustrator. My video tutorial at Lynda.com provides a good overview of how to use the Pen tool in QuarkXPress:
http://www.lynda.com/tutorial/50682
Works only if the path has been created with the Pen Tool. Not if you break a Picture Box with the Scissor Tool… can add and delete points… but not join points for some reason… modifying the shape only results in a square box again… and the options under merge are greyed out?
Peter: here’s a trick for closing an open path:
1. Select the item with the Item tool.
2. Hold down the Option/Alt key when choosing Item> Shape.
3. Choose the shape that looks like a painter’s palette (oval-ish)
This tells Quark that you want your formerly open path (represented by the squiggly line in the Shape menu) to become a closed path (represented by the painter’s palette in the Shape menu).
Does that help?
Thanks Jay… That worked!