XV4 64-bit build 22187 of 22-sep-2020
Documentation for the Q++Studio diary and calendar automation and publishing software, the choice of the world's foremost diary and calendar publishers, since 1999, to automate the typesetting of their diaries and calendars, reliably and efficiently.
September 22, 2020 (build 22187)
New
•Added a new tool, the list of processes dialog listing all the processes that Q++Studio currently sees as running on your workstation. This can be particularly useful when trying to investigate the reason for message 184535.
Improved
•Improved the detection of copies of QuarkXPress and/or InDesign remaining in memory, sometimes leading to the spurious appearance of message 184535.
Fixed
•Fixed some spurious QuarkXPress failures when iterating through all the objects of a page and layer, in response to a zap layer token or the result of a macro or the result of a sara, for very complex script with hundreds of objects per layer and/or 10 or more layers (Blueline and Burde, 19-sep-2020).
•The QuarkXPress PDF output styles were not being synchronized between the external and internal versions of QuarkXPress, since the beginning of July (JMata, 6-sep-2020).
August 31, 2020 (build 22129)
New
•Added a search bar to the list of saras in the saras manager dialog.
•Added a new Fit box to picture option to the picturebox alignment editor, such as used as a result of a macro or a SARA, has a new option to re-size the box to fit the picture.
Improved
•The position and size of the main window, as well as the relative positions and sizes of the script editor and the properties inspector, are now saved whenever you close Q++Studio, even on multiple-monitor configurations.
•Added code to allow the restore from backup feature to restore very old scripts.
Fixed
•Fixed a spurious message that a screen-only font was missing (Burde, 27-aug-2020).
•If you changed the definition, but not the name, of a color used in a Sara, saved a long time ago, then QuarkXPress would not find the color name due to its changed CMYK components (Alpha, 26-aug-2020).
•Fixed the Max char per line of holidays abbreviation setting of holidays abbreviations (JMata, 22-aug-2020).
•Fixed an issued that would occur spuriously when generating diaries of over 450 pages containing over 25 different templates (Letts, 20-aug-2020).
July 31, 2020 (build 22002)
New
•The official Quark company support for QuarkXPress 2018 ends on July 31, 2020. As usual, Q++Studio will aim to keep supporting older versions of QuarkXPress for many years (we currently support QuarkXPress versions, from 8 to 2020).
•Support for QuarkXPress 2018.3.5, the latest, and probably final, update to QuarkXPress 2018.
•Support for QuarkXPress 2020.0.1, the latest update to QuarkXPress 2020.
•Added a search bar to the Moon and Sun Options dialog, the GenTokens Special Cases dialog, the Generation Options property editor, and the Diary Generation Options dialog which appears when you launch diary generation.
Improved
•The list of used files popup menu item of the scripts explorer now displays all the used files, whether they come from a DiaryGridLine or a Quark Pages or InDesign Pages or PDF Pages script line.
•The data migration import (formerly Scripts Import) now restores the merged data automatically to your database.
•The templates explorer now also displays document sizes in points.
•Removed padding spaces in the diary generation logs, which reduces their size by about 50%.
•The PDF Pages script lines now use the original PDF file directly, rather than extracting the pages one-by-one. This ensures that any advanced settings, used in the creation of the PDF file, are maintained.
•The script preview is now displayed in a stand-alone, re-sizable window, so that you may compare the page preview with the script as displayed in the main window's script editor.
•Added a warning if the document you are scanning contains pages of different sizes.
•You can now type directly into the Moon phases symbols editor.
•Moved the preferences search to the title bar.
Fixed
•The nightly backup would include temporary alias folders created during data migration (30-july-2020).
•Using the replace previously-imported data setting of data migration could fail under certain circumstances (29-july-2020).
•The selection of data elements, of the restore from backup function, would be lost if using the arrow up/down or the page up/down keys to navigate the data set (JMata, 26-july-2020).
•The script preview would cause the current script to spuriously have its NeedsSaving property set to true (14-july-2020).
June 30, 2020 (build 21876)
New
•Added a new holiday name variation code which allows you to specify that a different name should be used, depending on the weekday on which the duplicated holiday occurs.
•Added a menu option to view the current script as xml.
•Added support for tabulations in the paragraph formatting applied to macros and saras, as well as, more generally, when specifying native paragraph formatting.
Fixed
•The colors selected to modify text as the result of a macro were still being saved as CMYK values, rather than by name. This means that, from one workstation to the next, or one version of QuarkXPress to the next, these values could differ, requiring a re-selection of the color, unless the script had been saved at least once. (30-june-2020).
•The slogans property editor has been modified so that, when you encounter message 15023, and your current template contains no slogans tokens at all, then you are still able to clear the selected slogans sets (JMata, 22-june-2020).
•Fixed the erroneous appearance of message 180745, in updates since May 29, 2020, in QuarkXPress 2016-2017-2018-2019-2020 (Alpha Edition, 18-june-2020).
•Fixed a UI bug that would allow a user to change the details of a holiday recurrence rule, without first having set that holiday state to modify (Alpha Edition, 15-june-2010).
•Some of the results of the EFS file server were being read incorrectly, if the filenames contained diacriticals, such as "für" (10-june-2020).
•Fixed a bug in the conversion of xpress tags when migrating a script from Quark 2019 to 2020 (1-june-2020).
May 31, 2020 (build 21769)
New
•Support for QuarkXPress 2020, the new version of QuarkXPress.
•Added a new sara regular expression option allowing you to specify that the replacement of a regular expression should only affect one of the capture groups, rather than the entire found text. This can be used to look for things that are not possible using look-behind syntax, such as searching for a variable number of characters, if the text formatting "before" text varies and/or is different from the formatting of the text to be replaced.
•Added the override hyphen with option, where you specify text and/or tokens surrounding each holiday occurrence, for cases when you want to join repeated holidays one way if they are just 1 day apart, and another way if the range of dates is more than 2 days apart.
•As usual, Q++Studio has been compatible with QuarkXPress 2020, the new version of QuarkXPress, weeks before its official release on May 28, 2020.
Improved
•Whenever a recurring holiday, whose recurrence rule contains a conflict rule is displayed, an indicator now appears in the calculated dates area, to remind you that the calculated dates do not include the effects of conflict rules.
•Added a help topic on tweaking holidays copied from the worldwide public holidays database showing examples on how to tweak holidays names and occurrences, without losing the benefits of subsequent holidays synchronization.
•The calculated dates preview of recurring holidays now takes into account any use of the <DELETE> variable holiday names code.
•Clicking on the ancestor id link of recurring holidays now always jumps to the original holiday, such as one copied from the worldwide public holidays database.
•Optimized the treatment of layers during diary generation, particularly invisible layers, when using QuarkXPress 2016 and above.
Fixed
•A change, last December, to the threaded handling of database parsing, meant an empty list of available/suggested field names, if you type a dot after a table name, in the SQL Query editor (23-may-2020).
•The fact that a DiaryGridLine was using combined multi-day holidays options in its multiple holidays options would not be copied over when using drag and drop to copy a scriptline (14-may-2020).
•Fixed a bug in the automatically generated Xpress Tags representation of paragraph format, when using QuarkXPress 2019 or above (Burde, 8-may-2020).
•Fixed the spurious occurrence of message 180925 in complex templates (Zettler, 4-may-2020).
April 30, 2020 (build 21683)
New
•Added a new token to more generally display the number of working days in a given month.
•Implemented the paragraph attributes Drop Caps, Keep Lines Together, Keep with Next Paragraph, Lock to Grid, Rule Above and Rule Below, used as the result of Macros and Saras.
Improved
•The jump to help topic function can now be used to access a topic in the online webhelp documentation, as well as in the locally-installed Windows help documentation, as before.
•Increased the size of the buffer that contains the various attributes set in the QuarkXPress native formatting as well as in the result of Macros and Saras. This was previously limited to 16 attributes (text + paragraph + box) and has now been increased to 128, a number which should never be reached.
Fixed
•Percentage offsets would not be saved in minicalendar paragraph formatting options (JMata, 20-apr-2020).
•The style of text framing options would not be saved (JMata, 20-apr-2020).
•Any planetary override names would not be saved properly (JMata, 16-apr-2020).
•The value of the setting Display Moon Transit times even on days when the moon does not rise and set was not being saved properly (JMata, 16-apr-2020).
•When opening an old script, not opened since 2012, an error would occur due to the presence of the old pre- and post-processing scriptlines from before the XE2 version of Q++Studio (3-apr-2020).
March 31, 2020 (build 21560)
New
•The fonts usage report now includes references to various fonts inside a script, such as in the results of a macro or the font used for Moon phases or xpress tags used in minicalendars or used in a macro or a sara (for scripts that have been saved as XML).
•Q++Studio is compatible with QuarkXPress version 2019.2.1, released on March 3 (QuarkXPress 2019 Known and Resolved Issues).
Improved
•Improved the workaround instructions to manually install Q++Studio updates. Additionally, the updater, when used with a manual update, now displays the actual build number of the update being installed, and prevents you from accidentally installing an older build.
Fixed
•Fixed some UI glitches in the selection of QuarkXPress files, and the processing of QuarkXPress messages, when using stand-alone saras (JMata, 3-mar-2020).
February 29, 2020 (build 21484)
New
•Converted some of the larger screenshots to image toggles in both the Windows Help and the online Web Help. Clicking on any of these smaller image toggles then brings up the related image at 100% of its size, so that all its details may better be seen.
•Added MAPI as a method to send technical support emails using your own email client.
Improved
•Updated and expanded the header menu links located at the top-right of the webhelp version of the Q++Studio documentation.
•Added workaround instructions to manually install Q++Studio updates, if these updates are being blocked by your firewall and/or network settings.
Fixed
•The extracted PDF pages during diary generation would be treated as temporary files and cleared away before each new diary generation. These extracted PDF pages are now named after the script ID, as well as the page number (such as Script_2182_Page_7.pdf, for example) and are now copied into the same folder as the output file, meaning that, despite these PDF files having been moved, they are automatically found by QuarkXPress when the output file is opened. (JMata, 23-feb-2020)
•Fixed a bug in the list of compiler settings that would prevent the compilation of macros using the List_GetFullText function (21-feb-2020).
•The box keep, box modify and box delete options of minicalendar dates framing and shading could apply to a neighboring row, if the size of the text was close to that of the leading separating each row (JMata, 16-feb-2020).
•The value of the open output file (if no errors) setting was not being saved as part of a script, although it was being saved as part of user preferences (6-feb-2020).
•Fixed a problem with the FTP upload of backup files larger than 2 GB in size (5-feb-2020).
January 31, 2020 (build 21344)
New
•Q++Studio is compatible with QuarkXPress version 2019.2, released on January 31.
•Added the option of specifying an offset of more than one page, from the current page, in page number tokens.
•Added message 182990 to warn you, when using QuarkXPress 2018 or above, if you need to refresh the list of print-only postscript fonts.
•Added message 182985 to warn you, when using QuarkXPress 2018 or above, if the support for postscript font styles has not been initialized.
•Added layer override minicalendar modifiers to allow you to specify that some minicalendars should use a different layer number than the one specified in the text framing and shading minicalendar options dialog.
•Added a message to warn you if the font used for Moon phases symbols is not available.
•Added an installed fonts viewer which also shows which fonts require QuarkXPress 2018 and above.
•The new advanced font list is now replacing the font list combobox all the dialogs where a font is specified to be used in QuarkXPress, namely the text formatting dialog used in the minicalendar options dialog, the grid options dialog, and the time formatting editor, the moon and sun options dialog, the macros options dialog, and the saras editor.
Fixed
•Page number tokens were not being displayed in Global Saras (Alpha Edition, 28-jan-2020).
•The Alignment and Char Align values of paragraph settings changes used in Saras and Macros would be ignored when generating a diary (JMata, 16-jan-2020).
•Fixed an incoherence between the behavior of the user interface controls for paragraph settings changes used in Saras and Macros. These paragraph settings changes would be ignored when generating a diary, if the Style check-box was unchecked (JMata, 16-jan-2020).
•Fixed an error in the display of values in points and inches, in the textbox changes user interface controls, used in Saras and Macros (JMata, 15-jan-2020).
•Spurious values would be saved as safety minutes if no Muslim prayer time source was specified (11-jan-2020)
•The minutes formatting setting of solstices and seasons would not be saved properly (11-jan-2020).
See also: release notes 1999-2019.
