8.0

Table Of Contents

Working with placeholders

Placeholders allow a region of text in a QuarkXPress project to hold non-printing metadata. You can

use placeholders to store information from other systems, or to provide information to third-party

XTensions software or other tools that operate on QuarkXPress projects.

Placeholders are used by technologies within QuarkXPress, such as XML import. Modifier XT allows

placeholder data to be added to a QuarkXPress project from your application, and the placeholder data

can be read from a project using the

xml namespace.

Note: Unless a third-party XTensions software module for QuarkXPress is created to manage the

placeholders inserted by your application using Modifier XML, a user is not prohibited from deleting

placeholders from within the QuarkXPress user interface. In fact, users are not alerted to the presence of

placeholders through the QuarkXPress user interface. You can use APIs in the QuarkXPress Server

XTensions Software XDK to allow a suitable user interface for managing the placeholders inserted by

your application. Contact QuarkAlliance for details about the XTensions software developer program.

There are two types of placeholders supported in Modifier XML: Text placeholders and Text Node

placeholders. Text placeholders can be placed around a run of text to identify particular metadata with

that text content.

<BOX>

<TEXT>

<RICHTEXT>has a placeholder</RICHTEXT>

</TEXTPH>

</STORY>

</TEXT>

</BOX>

</SPREAD>

</LAYOUT>

</PROJECT>

When a Text placeholder spans multiple paragraphs, the PARAGRAPH and RICHTEXT hierarchy is

flattened. A new paragraph can be started using an empty

PARAGRAPH element.

Text Node placeholders can represent a hierarchical structure of meta-tagging around text. This can

allow more complex meta-tagging of data placed into a QuarkXPress project. Also, it allows some

structure to be preserved within the QuarkXPress project format.

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