Product Reviews

A Great deal more effort seems to have been spent on hyping the potential of XML than on creating the XML solutions to make it a reality. Now, at last, Easypress has released the first off-the-shelf QuarkXPress XTension for integrating conventional page design into a practical XML workflow. Uniquely, Atomik Roundtrip supports XML in and out, for valid and well-formed XML data.

To understand the significance of what Atomik Roundtrip represents, compare it to other XTensions already available for dealing with XML products such as Easypress Atomik 3.1 and Quark's own avenue.quark. Quark's product (free with QuarkXPress 5.0) helps you mark up existing layouts for repurposing through the medium of XML to other publishing formats, both print and electronic. This puts QuarkXPress at the start of the workflow. Atomik Roundtrip can help you do this too, and it lets you receive XML sourced from elsewhere to use as content for a new layout. This puts your content at the start of the workflow, while QuarkXPress becomes just another repurposing tool along with your Web design software, eBook generator and syndication server.

Take a scenario in which you want to publish a document to various formats. The words are written and images prepared. Then, using an XML editor, all this is tagged up to indicate headings, crossheads, body text, captions, image references and so on. At the same time, a coder can be writing the document type definitions (DTDs) for each destination format, determining the structure and basic attributes to be given to the XML tags. As raw XML, this content is now reusable, and QuarkXPress, with the Atomik Roundtrip XTension installed, is one of the applications that can use it.

Atomik Roundtrip adds two floating palettes to the QuarkXPress interface: a general control palette for navigating XML structure on the page, and the

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main Roundtrip XML palette for handling XML content, DTDs and rulesets.

If the content is updated in the XML file, you can apply the update to your layout with one click in the palette. This makes it ideal for streamlined workflows in which standardised content is regularly changed for a periodical, while there's no need for the layout to stay the same if you don't want it to. But Atomik Roundtrip doesn't just turn QuarkXPress into a template program for incoming XML.

A matter of style

Having brought in all the XML content, you can edit the text as you normally would in QuarkXPress, then save the changes back to the XML file - again, with just one click in the palette. This in turn would allow the changes made in QuarkXPress to be updated effortlessly back to all your other XML destinations that use that content, such as your Web site.

Adding raw XML content to text and picture boxes leaves it unstyled or, at best, QuarkXPress applies whatever style is already current in each box. So to automate appropriate styling for each element, Atomik Roundtrip lets you create 'rulesets', which go beyond just mapping tags to style sheets. Double-clicking on an element in the DTD/Schema tab calls up a large Ruleset palette, where you can apply comprehensive settings for character and paragraph text, and graphics settings such as 'fit to box proportionally'. Obviously, being able to drop XML into text and picture boxes in their correct style is a massive time-saver. Used in conjunction with 'placeholders', by which Atomik Roundtrip assigns elements to boxes independently of their content, rulesets could turn an empty QuarkXPress template into a final layout with one click again.

Rulesets can only be set up for valid XML, so you need a DTD; but even basic DTD without structure and just referring to '#PCDATA' for each element tag will do. Otherwise, you'll need an expert coder to write detailed XML and tag the centralised content. Atomik Roundtrip deals only with the QuarkXPress part of your XML workflow.

Another limitation is QuarkXPress' glitchy interface in Classic mode, and Atomik Roundtrip's glitchy palettes. But the biggest distraction is its high price. Multi-user licences can make it cheaper, but it's a lot of money for a glorified filter XTension. On the other hand, it costs a fraction of developing a bespoke XML publishing solution for QuarkXPress, and - most important of all - it works brilliantly.