Changes

• Adds a new C code letter for the sizing specs field of an anchored or as-anchored box tag’s width and height parameters. C may not be combined with S or R but may be used with F to size the box’s contents to the column as well. Sizing-to-column is allowed for anchored box tags, as-anchored box tags (unanchored, but with both x and y parameters left empty), and line tags.

  Unlike S, which is only allowed to shrink a box, C is only allowed to grow a box to fit its column. Thus, its initial size is its minimum size, and what was the minimum (4th) parameter therefore becomes the box’s maximum size.

  For example, <&pb((32pt,CF),(128,S),,,,,,,,,C,,,,,,,”p1234.jpg”)> would create an anchored frame with its width sized to the insertion point’s column, with the picture’s width scaled to the frame’s (and therefore the column’s) width, and with the frame’s height set to that of the picture.

• Removes Xcatalog’s link marker guard characters (for Xcatalog’s enhanced text link editability feature) from copied/saved tagged text so that tags for catalog links aren’t littered with unnecessary <\z>‘s.
• Fixes a problem where OpenType features tags (o(...)) were being generated with incorrect feature names.

Issues

We know of a problem introduced in this release which prevents anchored frames from shrinking to their contents. If this could affect you, please delay updating until a newer release becomes available. Feel free to contact Em Software Support for an interim solution if you need any of this version’s changes (below).

Changes

• Adds a progress bar for long imports.
• Adds support for the OpenType Features tag, o(...), that was introduced in QuarkXPress 7.
• Improves compatibility with CS6′s Primary Text Frame autoflow machinery.
• Fixes a problem where importing an anchored box tag with a non-zero frame width parameter via File > Place could cause a crash.
• Fixes an issue with character style tags, where they weren’t removing active character-level overrides. For example, in previous releases the tags <z7>small<@24PtStyle>big would incorrectly style “big” as 7pt text. Now, applying a character style will reset all overrides such that the same tags will produce “big” in 24pt text. (The z7 is removed when 24PtStyle is applied, which is what our Xtags for QuarkXPress sister-product has always done.)

Pat Bensky of CatBase fame, describes how Xtags works with CatBase to produce imoderni‘s catalogs. (Also see the CatBase case study for Kellogs for another application of Xtags Pro.)

Below is a PDF of a catalog that Xtags was used to create. The entire document was built automatically, with minimal intervention from the user (telling InDesign to create the TOC, for example).

• The data is maintained in CatBase. This includes all the details, picture names and sizes, etc.
• The customer selects which products to publish (e.g., all products for one manufacturer, as in the attached example; all products of a certain type, such as sofas; all products that a certain dealer sells; all products in a certain collection; etc.).
• They then click the Publish button in CatBase, and CatBase creates an Xtags input file.

• The resulting input file is imported into the InDesign template using Em’s Xtags plug-in.

  The Xtags input file places and formats all the text, places and auto-sizes the embedded graphics, and applies different master pages for the Legend and Warranty pages at the beginning of the document.

• An InDesign script is run, which does certain manipulation of the product detail tables.
• The TOC is built.
• The price list is converted to a PDF.

This project was set up for our client, imoderni, in Miami. They represent a number of Italian furniture manufacturers in the USA. They needed a way to combine all the manufacturers’ price lists–which are of course all in completely different formats–into one database so that they can produce consistently-formatted price lists. CatBase provided the solution.

Neil Somerfield of imoderni says:

I really don’t know how we could have accomplished this project without CatBase and Xtags. We are able to combine price lists from various manufacturers into one database and then publish the data in any way we choose really quickly. CatBase works with Xtags and InDesign to produce complex, beautifully formatted and illustrated price lists in a matter of minutes.

Click on the image to view the full catalog PDF.

Changes

• Adds a new C code letter for the sizing specs field of an anchored or as-anchored box tag’s width and height parameters. C may not be combined with S or R but may be used with F to size the box’s contents to the column as well. Sizing-to-column is allowed for anchored box tags, as-anchored box tags (unanchored, but with both x and y parameters left empty), and line tags.

  Unlike S, which is only allowed to shrink a box, C is only allowed to grow a box to fit its column. Thus, its initial size is its minimum size, and what was the minimum (4th) parameter therefore becomes the box’s maximum size.

  For example, <&pb((32pt,CF),(128,S),,,,,,,,,C,,,,,,,”p1234.jpg”)> would create an anchored frame with its width sized to the insertion point’s column, with the picture’s width scaled to the frame’s (and therefore the column’s) width, and with the frame’s height set to that of the picture.

• Adds support for all InDesign-specific paragraph alignments, including *N for justify with last line aligned center, *G for justify with last line aligned right, *I for align towards spine, and *O for align away from spine.
• Fixes a long-standing problem where <$>, when used with some fonts (Adobe Garamond Pro, to name one), was applying a “Regular” override rather than resetting the typeface to that of the paragraph’s style.
• Preserves the justification component of alignment applied to paragraphs with tabs.
• Generates proxy picture paths for missing pictures in newly-created documents so that they’re relative to the user’s home folder. Note that this fall-back behavior may be avoided by saving the document before importing your tagged text.
• Fixes a problem where inserting a duplicate text anchor using the &Ya tag could cause a crash.

Mark Jockin, CEO of Pre1 Software in Portland, Oregon explains how Em Software’s Xtags product became a backbone of the Pre1 newspaper software sold to hundreds of publications across the Americas.

In 1999, Pre1 first sold its newspaper software to an alternative newsweekly in Portland, Oregon. Today, more than 400 titles are printed using Pre1′s SmartPublisher, with more coming online each month. By now, literally millions of ads have been converted into print. Xtags made it all possible.

Pre1’s mission is to streamline workflow for publications by integrating into one product multiple business processes vital to newspaper and magazine publishers. For the most part, every publication works the same. The sales reps sell ads, the accountants collect money, and the production department builds the ads. When deciding how to unite these various disciplines in a single software product for newspapers and magazines, Pre1’s challenge was which technologies to count on to get the job done.

For contact management, sales, accounting and reporting, we chose to build a custom FileMaker solution. A big piece of the puzzle, however, was converting largely unformatted classified ad data into stylized output designers would be proud of.

We’ve all seen the back of various publications on the newsstand: the classified ads are filled with different fonts, sizes, images, borders, highlighting, you name it. To handle all the different possibilities Pre1 needed a highly adaptable solution.

Using Xtags, SmartPublisher offers extremely configurable output satisfying the needs of a host of newspapers and magazines:

Designers set the look and feel of their classified ads by entering familiar production settings or style names:

Ad takers then select the options the advertiser would like to see such as borders, backgrounds, images, bolding, font and size, etc.:

At press time the entire classified section can be exported with one click and imported into either QuarkXPress or InDesign using Em’s Xtags plugin, yielding pages of ads with almost no work by the design team. It’s truly a thing of beauty!

Changes

• Added support for relative line sizing, so that relatively-placed lines can now be sized relative to their referenced boxes. Lines always shrink (they never grow) towards their start point (the referenced corner) and their direction is always maintained.
• Added support for UNIX/POSIX-style paths (like /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/Chris/Pictures/Rhubarb.jpg). Note that, for backward compatibility with MacOS/HFS-style paths, a path must contain at least one slash (/) and may contain no colons (:) to be treated as a POSIX-style path. (Mac only)
• Fixed a long-standing problem where a relatively-placed box could, in rare situations, be sized incorrectly.
• Restored support for the box lock flag.

Notes

With this release, the CS6 plug-in now requires a valid Xtags 8 (CS6) serial number.

This release bundles our InFlow companion plug-in, which may be required for your tagged text imports to automatically add pages properly. Note that InFlow is not installed by the Xtags zxp installer; instead, you’ll need to double-click the separate InFlow zxp installer file.

Changes

• Adds support for InDesign CS6.
• Adds support for new version 7 XPress Tags: p (opacity, ignored), n (language), G (ligatures), \e (en space) and version 7 paragraph rules (opacity parameter, ignored). Note that Quark changed the meaning of a couple of their special character tags with its move to version 7 tags. The \m tag is now an em space (was an em dash), and the \f tag is now a flex space (was an en space) which is converted to a regular space in InDesign.
• Adds a \k special character tag to insert an InDesign style break character, since Quark is now using \e as an en space tag in version 7. The \e tag will still produce a style break in pre-version 7 tags (imported tags prefaced with a <v2.0> tag), while the \k tag will produce a style break in all tag versions.
• Defaults to version 7 tags on import, if no version is specified in the imported tags with a <v...> version tag. Add a <v2.0> at the start of your tagged text to retain pre-version 7 behavior.
• Exports all tagged text as version 7 tags.
• Improves compatibility with InDesign’s Smart Text Reflow feature, such that page additions are now performed as part of the import. Scripts that drive tagged text imports should no longer need to pause (to let the document settle) before saving the document.

• When importing InDesign Tagged Text using the &it tag, a start file tag is now allowed and, if present, indicates the desired encoding of the import. A “narrow” tag like <ASCII-MAC> at the beginning of the tagged text now forces the tagged text to be treated as Roman/Latin characters and enables special character tags like. Likewise, a wide tag like forces the tagged text to be treated as Unicode characters.

  For example, <&it"""<ASCII-WIN>bullet character: <0x2022>."""> will now properly place the bullet character.

  The default encoding, when no start file tag is provided, has not changed and is still UNICODE.

Our internal testing is showing Xtags 8.1.4b1 to be as stable and reliable in CS6 as its 6/7.1.4 predecessors have been in CS4, CS5, and CS5.5. Given this, we expect it to progress quickly through its beta phase.

You can download the beta from the sidebar on the right or from the beta sidebar on the main product page . When you download and expand the linked .zip file, you’ll find a folder Xtags 8.1.4b1 for InDesign CS6, containing the Adobe Extension Manager CS6 installation files for Xtags 8.1.4b1 and InFlow 8.2.2b1 for your selected OS (xtags814b1_installer_win.zxp and inflow822b1_installer_win.zxp for Windows, and xtags814b1_installer_mac.zxp and inflow822b1_installer_mac.zxp for Mac OS). Double-click on each .zxp file to install Xtags 8 and, optionally, InFlow 8 (which you may no longer need, given CS6′s new Primary Text Frame feature).

If you already own a license for Xtags 7 (beginning “ET-N-7″) for CS5/CS5.5, then this same license will also activate Xtags 8 during its beta phase. If you’ve an older license or are in need of a new license, please contact our sales department to purchase a license for Xtags 8. As always, you’re welcome to try Xtags 8 for free as a Demo, which limits imports to 50 paragraphs.

Please note that this beta plug-in will expire on July 1, 2012.

Thanks for giving this beta a try!  We value your feedback, so please contact us with any questions or concerns while you use this, or any other, Em product.

The server plug-ins will be freely downloadable from our website; however, to try them you’ll need to contact us to obtain a trial license or to purchase a full license.

For the time being, we’re only providing Windows versions of our server plugins, since Adobe is emphasizing the 64-bit server (available only under Windows), and since most folks are using this version. If you need the Mac OS X version of a server plugin, please contact us at the coordinates above.

As an additional help for your development and testing, we can provide a free desktop license along with the server license of our plugins.

Watch for the individual server product releases over the coming weeks (Xtags for InDesign is already available), and feel free to contact our support crew, if you have questions about availability, or would like to discuss how our plug-ins could fit into your server workflow.

Changes

• Fixed a scripting problem where imports resulting in non-critical errors (like translation table file not found) were being automatically undone.
• Dealt with a scripting problem where importing directly from a long string would sometimes cause InDesign CS4 to crash on OS X 10.6. (Mac OS only)