QuarkXPress Document Search Filter Updated For Leopard

by Dan Logan, Technical Product Manager, Desktop, Quark Inc.

Spotlight is the file-searching technology built into Mac OS® X 10.4 and above. It works by indexing meta-data for the files on your computer and then searching that index based on whatever criteria you define. Spotlight extracts the data for a file by using a filter that allows it to read the file's specific format. By default, Spotlight can read most common file types like HTML and PDF, but it requires filters to read most native application files like QuarkXPress projects.

We released a filter a few years ago for QuarkXPress v3-6 files, but that filter cannot read QuarkXPress 7 files. This new version of the filter can read v7 files and fixes a few issues with the previous filter.

Take a look if you're using Mac OS X and QuarkXPress 7 and as always, let me know if you have any problems. I'm also curious if there's some specific data you want us to add support for.

New in this version

• QuarkXPress 7 compatibility
• Universal Binary
• Single filter (previously we had two filters—one for v3-5 and another for v6, these have been combined)
• Supported Metadata*
  • Full Text Search
  • Page Width & Height
  • Layout Names
  • Style Sheet Names
  • Font Names

Known Issues

• The filter only reads text content when indexing v3-5 files, so it won't index metadata like font names when reading documents in these older versions
• If you already have the old filter installed you should manually delete it before installing this new one
• Strings using non-Roman encodings may translate incorrectly
• This filter does not support East Asian QuarkXPress documents

* To search for custom metadata follow these steps:

1. In the Mac Finder select File > Find or press Cmnd+F
2. In the New Search dialog, click the search attribute popup and select Other.
3. Select one of the following and click OK:

• Page Height
• Page Width
• Fonts
• QuarkXPress Layout Names
• QuarkXPress Style Sheets

Installing Spotlight filter:

1. Double click on the decompressed QuarkXPress.mdimporter file.

To download this software, you must click here to accept the Quark labs EULA.