Below is a list of the new features of the XV4 version of Q++Studio, at the time it was released, on April 1st, 2017.
For a list of more recent features and improvements, see the what's new? and release notes topics.
System/Database
•Optimized 64-bit database engine with inter-client messaging, allowing for multi-site work over normal internet connections.
•Multi-site and multi-database support with the possibility of importing from one database to another and/or having users connect on-the-fly to a different database and/or server.
•New module to restore individual data from backup (no need to ask tech support to restore the entire table anymore, you can now restore that holiday you accidentally deleted, or script line you modified in error).
•New database query module allows you to perform SQL queries against all the data tables of the current database.
•The improved p-Code Viewing Dialog now also shows the details of non-DiaryGridLines script lines, such as Place Holders, PDF Pages, and Quark Pages.
•Native 64-bit executable and libraries.
Languages
•Native Arabic support, without the need for any 3rd-party Xtensions or DLLs (supports both legacy AXT Arabic fonts and the modern Unicode Arabic fonts, even those which do not cover all the multi-character Arabic ligatures).
•Native Hebrew support, without the need for any 3rd-party Xtensions or DLLs.
Holidays
•Improved worldwide public holidays synchronization. In particular, you can now synchronize per source country rather than following the TreeView of your list of holidays.
•The new holidays changes log allows you to see what changes have been made to recurring holidays and holidays sets and, although this is a new feature introduced in September 2017, the underlying logs have been generated since 2012, behind the scene, meaning that you will immediately have access to log information dating back as far as 2012.
•The placement of recurring holidays based on the Islamic calendar in the holidays manager has been improved to take into account the time of the year (ie. if a given Muslim public holiday for the current year is in the past, then this holiday will be placed in a position that reflects its next occurrence the following year). In addition, this floating placement is now updated on the fly (previously it was only updated whenever the holiday rule was saved/modified).
•Improved search function for recurring holidays and one-time-dates. Instead of moving you from one result to the next, one by one, all the items matching the search are now presented at once with the search term highlighted in the result set.
•You can search for holidays sets, recurring holidays and one-time-dates using regular expressions.
•It is now possible to filter the list of recurring holidays.
•If a holiday name is too long to fit in the width of its column, or if the holiday name runs over more than one line, then the name is cut-off with three dots indicating that the name is not fully displayed, and placing your mouse over any of these holidays then shows the full name as a hint.
•Added a Search Footer to the list of One-Time-Dates.
•Implemented the ISNA/FCNA Muslim calendar used for North America.
•UI improvements to the list of recurring holidays and one-time-dates.
Saras
•A set of new Advanced SARAs Search Options allows you to specify, for each individual SARA:
oif it should be performed only on textboxes that have text overflow.
oif it should be performed before or after the Boxfit or Boxgrow tokens.
oif it should be performed only on text that has flowed over more than one line.
oif it should only apply (be included) to the first match of each paragraph, textbox, page or document, or alternatively that it should apply to all matches except the first match of each paragraph, textbox, page or document.
•A set of new Advanced SARAs Change Options allows you to specify, for each individual SARA:
oParagraph changes: apply most of QuarkXPress' paragraph attributes to the resulting text of a SARA (left, right, first indents, leading, space before, space after, horizontal alignment, ...).
oBox actions: specify that some of the attributes of the textbox containing the found text be changed (background color and shade, frame, and even replacing the textbox by an image).
oText in Box actions: specify that the box-wide text elements of a textbox be changed (the number of columns, the gutter width, the vertical alignment, the first baseline alignment, or the text inset).
oDeletion: the textbox, by itself or along with all objects that are part of the same group, can be deleted, as well as all objects on the same page and layer, or the page containing the current textbox can be deleted.
•You can use regular expressions in SARAs to search for, as well as replace, using regular expressions, including the use of capture groups.
•You can search for as well as replace, based on the non-breaking attribute.
•The Saras results dialog now allows message results of 512 characters instead of the previous limit of 200 characters.
•Improved the UI of the dialog which lists the SARAs Hits by better showing the result of each SARA and, in particular for regular expressions SARAs, showing the actual text found and replaced for each regular expression.
•Global Saras can now be applied to Quark Pages to display global information such as the value of the tokens [year] Script Year, [yyyy:now] Year of Now, [ref#] Job/Reference Number, which is useful to be able to apply copyright dates and reference/SKU information to non-dated pages of a diary.
•Warnings about Saras using an undefined color now include the name of the color and the position of the Sara in the list.
•Warnings are now issued if a Sara refers to a font which is unavailable.
•From the SaraSets Manager window, you can now get a list of all the scripts which use the currently selected SaraSet.
•The SaraSet ID is now displayed in the properties inspector and in the Saras Editor.
•If you click on any of the design-time messages that refer to a specific SARA, you are now taken directly to that SARA.
•You can have some global properties replaced by Global Saras, such as the value of the tokens [year] Script Year, [yyyy:now] Year of Now, [ref#] Job/Reference Number. This is useful to be able to apply copyright dates and reference/SKU information to Quark Pages and/or Place Holders.
•Saras can have a repeat list of values which allows the same Sara to be used for a list of different values.
Scripts
•Added new type of script line; PDF Pages script lines. These work in a manner very similar to Quark Pages, and allow you to have PDF pages inserted, instead of QuarkXPress pages.
•Added left/right page and even/odd page as GenTokens Special Cases Conditions.
•Extended the [sw] Token GridOptions to make them more flexible and independent of the value of the DiaryGridLine's WeekStart.
•You can now specify different text/tokens before/after multiple holidays to handle the cases when the same holiday runs for many consecutive days, and you wish to merge these dates into one line, as occurs in duration holiday tokens.
•Increased the number of available GenTokens from 12 to 18.
•Frame thickness in Macros and Minicalendars Options can now be specified in 1/100th of a point (was previously limited to 1/10th of a point).
•You can now override the Minicalendar Format Options Sequence to specify, for example, that in one diary dates of the current week should be bold even when they are outside days, and in another diary dates of the current week are grey and not bold if outside the month.
•Improved and modernized the UI of the Update QuarkXPress Template Path dialog with a segmented path editor and the displaying of the found files' modification date and size (in case more than one is found).
•It is now possible to specify that images inserted from Holidays, One-time-dates, Slogans and Macros, can now be set to be transparent for black & white and vector images.
•It is now possible to insert daily grids, as well as weekly grids, with the Month Fit option and Outside Days Formatting Options making the creation of daily diaries with monthly inserts, where the 1st of the month must always be in a specific position (usually at the top of the right page, but not necessarily), much easier (no need to add a macro to all tokens and customize one of the "skip days" macro.
•Added two new options, Skip First Occurrence and Skip Last Occurrence to the Insert Dates (repeating) script line property to better handle cases when you want to have the first Insert handled differently than the rest and/or you want no insertion to occur for January of the following year.
•The result of a Macro can apply any of the new text attributes introduced in QuarkXPress 2017; Text Background Shading, Text Framing, and Text Stroking.
•It is now possible to display the list of scripts which use a specific Moon Data Source or Sun Data Source.
•Warnings about MiniCalendars, Macros or GenTokens using an undefined color or an unavailable font now include the name of the color/font and more information about the specific sub-option from which the warning came.
•The text and box framing options provide the additional possibilities of creating, modifying, deleting or keeping objects located at the position of each date in minicalendars.
•Optimized access to, and editing capabilities, via the new XML format in which scripts are saved.
•Optimized access to QuarkXPress and InDesign files on LAN or WAN servers with the addition of EFS file indexing.
•Optimized detection of missing fonts.
Tokens
•Improved the user interface of the initial conditions tab of the macros options dialog, allowing more space to display input variables as well as allowing the use of the multi-line text editor to set and modify the initial value of string variables.
•Added the :fou minicalendar token modifer which can be used to to correctly display 4 week vertical minicalendar dates, when you may be using a 4-week minicalendar, a 5-week minicalendar and a 6-week minicalendar together with different tab positions to have the first and last weeks of all minicalendars justified or aligned.
•It is now possible to have multiple conditions in zap tokens and conditional tokens so that the zap/conditional action is triggered only if all the conditions are true.
•Added more suffix options to the start of week tokens so that the week number may be postponed if the Monday (or Monday and one or more weekdays) is an aeiou-holidays and/or a Moon phase.
•Template Page Attributes Tokens determine attributes of the page on which the current token is located.
•It is now possible to delete pages (not just the objects on the page, but also the page itself) using Zap tokens, Conditional tokens, Macros and Saras.
Macros
•Added macro functions to re-size and move textboxes, and these functions support rotated textboxes.
•References to text files located in sub-folders of the Server folder, as used in the initial conditions of macros, are now transparently updated if these files were physically moved to the new version's folder, but the Macro's Initial Conditions remained with a reference to a previous version folder.
•Textbox actions stemming from Macros, such as changing the background shade and/or color and/or frame/and/or image, can now be applied to specific box of a chain of linked textboxes generated by a GenTokens, for example.
•The palette of choices for the results of a Macro have new paragraph and textbox options:
oParagraph changes: apply most of QuarkXPress' paragraph attributes to the resulting text of a SARA (left, right, first indents, leading, space before, space after, horizontal alignment, ...).
oBox actions: specify that some of the attributes of the textbox containing the found text be changed (background color and shade, frame, and even replacing the textbox by an image).
oText in Box actions: specify that the box-wide text elements of a textbox be changed (the number of columns, the gutter width, the vertical alignment, the first baseline alignment, or the text inset).
oDeletion: the textbox, by itself or along with all objects that are part of the same group, can be deleted, as well as all objects on the same page and layer, or the page containing the current textbox can be deleted.
Diary Generation, QuarkXPress and InDesign
•Support for QuarkXPress versions 8*-2025.
•Support for InDesign versions 2020-2025.
•Support for the new font family features of InDesign and QuarkXPress 2018-2025.
•The guides of each GridTemplate used in a Script are now re-applied to the pages generated in the output file.
•When generating diaries containing multiple templates, warning are now issued if the same QuarkXPress attribute (color, dashes/stripes, style sheet, H&J) occurs with the same name in more than one template, but is defined differently.
•The diary generation log is now kept in memory by default, and only written to disk at the end, meaning a faster diary generation, as most log files contain thousands of entries.
•By including "HYPH" (in uppercase, without the double-quotes) in the name of one or more H&J assets, you can now specify that these H&J assets should keep hyphenation even though you are using the recommended default remove hyphenation diary generation option.
Astronomy
•Improved, expanded, and faster, 64-bit astronomical calculations library, including planets' visibilities and multi-body approaches (eg. nights when the Moon, Mars and Jupiter are near each other in the sky).
Astrology
•The new Moon Lore module can be used to calculate the auspicious/inauspicious days for gardening and lifestyle events and tasks.
Miscellaneous
•The default filtering for all text fields in all advanced data grids is now "contains" rather than "equals".
•The Q++Studio Documentation is now also available as a PDF manual.
On-going development
Q++Studio is continuously being improved. For a list of the most recent new features, see the what's new? page.
Topic 181780, last updated on 04-Jul-2023
