Composition Zones Continued
Page 9

Composition Zone Usage

The collaboration setup dialog box is concerned with composition layouts. The composition zones tab of the usage dialog box, on the other hand, is concerned with placed composition zones. You can use this pane to view and update the status of composition zones that are based on linked composition layouts. Yet again, it's helpful to think of composition zones as similar to pictures — if the project containing a composition layout that you're using is missing, you'll want to know about it before you go to output.

Converting Composition Zones to Pictures

Any time you’re dealing with synchronization, you have to consider the possibility that you might one day want to stop synchronizing a particular instance of something in other places where it is used. For example, Eric is scrupulous about archiving old issues of the newspaper in case someone from the town goes on to be famous; the issue with the photo of little Janey hamming it up for the school play could be a hot item if Janey makes it big in Hollywood. However, what if that old issue includes advertisements and columns based on composition zone projects that have since been updated or, even worse, lost? It’s not really an authentic back issue any more, is it?

For reasons such as this one, QuarkXPress 7 provides you with a means of freezing a composition zone by converting it into an EPS file. The process itself couldn’t be simpler — select a placed composition zone and choose item > composition zone > convert to picture. (Like most other item-specific operations, this can also be done from the contextual menu with control click or right click on the composition zone and choose the same option.) QuarkXPress automatically converts the composition zone into an EPS file, stores that EPS file in the same folder as the host layout’s project, turns the composition zone into a picture box, and imports the EPS file into that box. From that point on, you can do whatever you want with the file containing the shared composition zone, and it won’t affect this host layout.

Limitations

One of the most interesting things about composition zones is the way they work at output. It’s nothing you need to worry about as a layout artist — QuarkXPress takes care of all the details — but it’s good to know, for a number of reasons.

Before we reveal how it’s done though, think about what it is that’s happening. You are essentially taking a layout from one project and putting it into another layout, possibly in an altogether different project. It sounds simple, but like most things that sound simple, it isn’t simple at all.

For example, there are a lot of preferences and so forth that are specific to individual layouts. Just to name a few: there’s auto leading percentage, baseline grid increment, hyphenation language, ligature and kerning settings, color-management settings, and default trapping settings. All of these can be different from layout to layout. That means you might have a composition zone where the text uses different automatic kerning or a different baseline grid than the surrounding text. Good to know!

 

Fonts and Composition Zones

Now, what about fonts? Let’s say Hannah gets it into her head to do something fancy with a font she acquired when she installed a Corel product five years ago — a font that neither Nancy nor Eric have ever heard of. Furthermore, let’s go out on a limb and say that Nancy loves what Hannah has done and overrules Eric’s objections to using Log Cabin bold. What happens when Eric runs collect for output in preparation for sending the newspaper to his output provider?

The answer is, of course, that there’s no way QuarkXPress can reach across twenty miles and pull Log Cabin bold off of Hannah’s iBook, no matter how tricked-out her wireless network is. There’s also no way QuarkXPress can reach across the home network and pull a Windows font off of Nancy’s machine and convert it to a font that can be output on Eric’s G5 (although QuarkXPress 7 does offer full support for cross-platform OpenType fonts). These are not limitations of QuarkXPress; they’re limitations of the concept itself. So just be aware when using composition zones: make sure everybody involved is using fonts that can be found on the machine where the host layout document is sent to output.

Trapping and Composition Zones

Trapping, too, deserves a mention, because of this: when QuarkXPress sends a project containing a placed composition zone to output, it creates an EPS of the composition zone and inserts it into the spot where the composition zone is (just as it does when you choose item > composition zone > convert to picture). QuarkXPress EPS files support overprinting and knockouts, but they don’t support chokes and spreads — so any trapping settings in a placed composition zone (other than overprint and knockout) are ignored.

Now, it’s entirely possible, and possibly likely, that this doesn’t matter to you. If you use a composite-based workflow with a downstream separation process (on the RIP or elsewhere), QuarkXPress trapping settings are going to overridden anyway, and composition zones will be trapped just as nicely as everything else — but still, it’s good to know.

Composition Zones QuickStart Guide

Getting up and running with composition zones is easy as pie. Here's the process in a nutshell.

Decide what kind of workflow you want to support. Do you have remote users who need to supply content in QuarkXPress format, or an element you want to share among various projects, or a page you want to break up and share among people on your network? If any of these are the case, you probably want an external composition zone. Do you have a complex design element you want to use multiple times in a document and keep synchronized? If that's the case, you probably want an internal composition zone designated as this project only. Create the composition zone. You can convert a box or group of boxes to a composition zone by choosing item > composition zone > create, draw the composition zone with the composition zone tool, or turn an entire layout into a composition zone by choosing layout > advanced layout properties > share (check box).		Share the composition zone. If you converted a box or boxes to a composition zone, or you drew the composition zone with the composition tool, just choose item > share. If you're converting a layout to a composition zone, you can do this when you make the conversion. If you want the composition layout to be available for linking, choose all projects. If you want the composition layout to be in a separate project file, click external and save the external file. Open and edit the composition layout. If it's internal, you can do this by selecting the composition zone and choosing item > composition zone > edit. If it's external, just open the project containing the exported composition layout and edit away!
Composition Zones: Watch Out, Sliced Bread! Despite the limitations of composition zones, they are a powerful feature that allows you to streamline your workflow by splitting it up. You don't need a dedicated server or a gigantic budget to use them: just a little bit of planning and basic file management. In addition, they're quite versatile: we've touched on a few uses for composition zones here, but by now you've probably thought of a few others yourself.  Won't it be fun to try them out?

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