A Guide to QuarkXPress 2022

Overview

To help customers publish in popular Indic languages, QuarkXPress offers native support for Indic Unicode fonts as well as embraces native OS features for keyboard input methods for Indian languages. It also supports analyzing and reordering characters as per Indic orthographic syllable boundaries; conjunct creation and glyph positioning; Hunspell library support for 11 Indian languages that offer spell checking and hyphenation methods; text input through keyboard, copy & paste and import.

Text and Typography support

Quark now offers core text and typography features in QuarkXPress to enable Indian publishers to build and publish documents in various Indian languages that support Unicode fonts. QuarkXPress supports the latest Unicode, ICU and Harfbuzz libraries.

QuarkXPress provides support for 11 popular Indian languages:

Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Odia, Gujarati, Marathi, and Assamese

Support for Indic Unicode Fonts

QuarkXPress offers support for all Indic Unicode fonts. Users can obtain Indic Unicode Fonts from font vendors like any other fonts (Latin script fonts) without having to use specialized third-party XTensions to support keyboard mapping and other Indic language features.

Integration with Input Method Editors (IMEs)

QuarkXPress supports all the default Input Method Editors (IMEs) for different Indian languages on both Win and Mac. It also supports the Input Methods offered by different vendors.

Indic text input 

QuarkXPress supports the input of text in popular Indian languages. Indic text can be input through a keyboard, online keyboard viewer, text copy and paste, text import, text drag and drop. It also supports analyzing and reordering characters as per Indic orthographic syllable boundaries; conjunct creation, glyph shaping and glyph positioning.

Indic text deletion

QuarkXPress supports Unichar- based text deletion for Indic text using the Backspace key. It also supports syllable-based text deletion using the Forward Delete key.

OpenType features

QuarkXPress supports OpenType features used by Indic scripts, namely:

• 'nukt':    Nukta form substitution

• 'akhn':    Akhand form substitution

• 'rphf':     Reph glyph form substitution

• 'rkrf':      Rakaar form substitution

• 'blwf’:    Below-base form substitution

• 'half':      Half form substitution

• 'vatu':    Vattu variant substitution

• 'cjct':      Conjunct form substitution

• 'pres':     Pre-base substitution

• 'abvs':    Above-base substitution

• 'blws':    Below-base substitution

• 'psts':     Post-base substitution

• 'haln':     Halant form substitution

• 'abvm':  Above-base marks positioning

• 'blwm':  Below-base marks positioning

These OpenType features are enabled by default for Indic scripts in QuarkXPress. On inputting Indic text, OpenType glyph substitution and glyph positioning changes occur automatically to allow glyph reordering and conjunct creation. There is no separate UI to view/ customize these OpenType features in QuarkXPress.

Spell Check

QuarkXPress offers support for Hunspell libraries to allow spell checking in popular Indian languages. Users can spell check their Indic language documents, replace/ replace all suspect words, skip words, add words to the auxiliary dictionary. The auxiliary dictionary is in XML based format, and the user can also externally add words to it.

Hyphenation

• QuarkXPress offers support for Hunspell libraries to allow hyphenation and line breaking in popular Indian languages.

• QuarkXPress supports syllable-based hyphenation support for Indian languages.

• Users can view the hyphenation of the current/ selected word using Suggested Hyphenation.

• Users can customize the hyphenation of Indic words by adding them to the Hyphenation Exception for the desired language.

  

• Users can customize the hyphenation rule by editing the Auto Hyphenation settings in the H&J set (Edit the values for Smallest Word, Minimum Before, Minimum After)

  

   

• By default, the Auto hyphen character is displayed in the text while hyphenating words in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese languages. While in the case of Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Odia languages, the Auto hyphen character is not displayed in the story.

  

  

• QuarkXPress allows the customization of default settings for display auto hyphen in different Indian languages.

   

Windows: Go to QuarkXPress application folder > Edit the Settings.xml

Mac: Invoke the contextual menu for the QuarkXPress application > Go to Show Package Contents > Contents > Shared Support > Settings.xml. Copy the Settings.xml to Mac HD/ Users/ Current User/ Library/ Application Support/ QuarkXPress 2022 > Edit the Settings.xml.

Mac App Store build: Invoke the contextual menu for the QuarkXPress application > Go to Show Package Contents > Contents > Shared Support > Settings.xml. Copy the Settings.xml to Mac HD/ Users/ Current User/ Library/ Containers/ com.quark.quarkxpress.infinity/ Data > Library/ Application Support/ QuarkXPress 2022 > Edit the Settings.xml

In Settings.xml file, value for ‘true’ means Auto Hyphen will be displayed; value of ‘false’ Auto Hyphen will not be displayed.

Drop Caps 

QuarkXPress supports syllable- based Drop Caps support for Indian languages. Irrespective of the Drop Cap character count, if the character is a syllable, then Drop Cap will be applied on the complete syllable. On incrementing the Drop Cap character count thereafter, Drop Cap will be applied on the next character only after the count exceeds the number of glyphs composing the previous syllable.

Find/ Change

QuarkXPress supports syllable- based Find/ Change support for Indian languages. Only a complete syllable will be searched and replaced. Users can search and replace Indic text along with attributes.

Enhanced Glyph palette support

QuarkXPress now offers enhanced Glyph palette support for Indic glyphs. Indic glyphs can be inserted from the Glyph palette. Indic glyphs are now classified as per Unicode blocks in the Show pop menu in Glyph palette. Users can select the desired Unicode block for the Indic script and insert glyphs.

Font grouping, Font fallback, Font Locking, Language locking

• QuarkXPress allows grouping of Indic fonts as per script in the font menus.

• QuarkXPress supports font fallback for Indic scripts. User can define the preferred fallback font of their choice for Indic scripts (Preferences > Font Fallback)

• QuarkXPress supports font locking for Indic scripts. This helps in preventing users from mistakenly applying different script font on the Indic text.

• QuarkXPress supports language locking for Indic scripts. This helps in preventing users from mistakenly applying different text language on the Indic text.

Kerning/ Tracking

QuarkXPress supports syllable- based Kerning and Tracking for Indic text.

Support for Zero Width Joiner and Zero Width Non-Joiner 

QuarkXPress offers support for Zero Width Joiner and Zero Width Non-Joiner in Indic text. Zero Width Joiner is used to prevent a ligature-conjunct from forming; it is used to prevent the display of reph. Zero Width Non-Joiner is used to prevent conjunct ligature or half forms from forming and to display an explicit halant form instead.

QuarkXPress allows input of Zero Width Joiner and Zero Width Non-Joiner:

• Input from Utilities menu > Insert Character > Special

• Input using key commands (Zero Width Joiner:  Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1 (Win), Cmd+Opt+Shift+1 (Mac), Zero Width Non-Joiner:  Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2 (Win), Cmd+Opt+Shift+2 (Mac)

• Input using text copy and paste

• Input using the text import