![]() Moving and Deleting LayersĪdding page items to your layers is only half the fun! You also need to be able to manipulate the layers themselves: moving them up and down, merging them together, duplicating them, and deleting them. Those sneaky folks at Quark added a feature to the Layers palette that few users ever find: You can tell XPress to select all the items on a given layer by choosing Select Items on Layer from the context-sensitive menu (Control-click on a layer in the palette on the Macintosh, right-click in Windows). Note that you can have up to 256 layers in your layout (including the Default Layer), but I recommend keeping your layers to a minimum whenever possible, for the sake of simplicity. Layers always appear named "Layer 1", "Layer 2", and so on, but it's easy to change these names (I'll cover that in a moment). To make a new layer, click on the New Layer button (that's the one that looks like sweat is flying off it). You can control everything having to do with layers in the Layers palette (select Show Layers from the Window menu see Figure 3-58). Of course, you can always select a master page item on your document page and assign it to another layer, but that breaks the link between this item and the master page (so changes to this item on your master page won't change this object on your document page anymore). Instead, when you place an object (a box, line, or whatever) on a master page, XPress always assigns it to the Default Layer, but on your document pages these objects appear below the other objects on your Default Layer-as though there were a separate master page layer. Sadly, there is no way to assign master page objects other layers while viewing the master page (see Chapter 4, Building a Document, for more on master pages). While the Default Layer appears as a separate layer in the Layers palette, this one does not. The other "layer" is the master page layer. This is the layer that your objects live on when you don't specify any other layer-it's the basic layer that you're probably used to from earlier versions of XPress. ![]() The first is the Default Layer, which cannot be deleted. Before I get into the details of creating and manipulating layers, I need to mention two kinds of layers that appear in every document you create. Layers have long been a staple of illustration programs like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia FreeHand in fact, if you've used layers in those programs, you'll be right at home using the Layers palette in QuarkXPress. For instance, if your picture boxes were all on one layer, you could duplicate that layer, hide the original layer, then play with those pictures all you want, knowing that if it doesn't work out, you can just delete this duplicate layer and go back to your first idea. You can also use layers as a way to play around with a new design concept while keeping other parts of your layout intact and not compromised, like a trial-and-error playground. Because only visible layers are output when you print, you could hide the Spanish layer when printing the English text, and vice versa. Or, in a document that will be distributed in two countries, you could put English text on one layer and Spanish on a second layer. Then, your copy editor could hide all the pictures in order to focus better on the text. For instance, you could put all your pictures boxes on one layer and text boxes on a different layer. The Layers palette helps you work in a more organized manner when building your documents by letting you separate each part of your layout into its own layer.
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