Stroking and Filling Text in QuarkXPress 6.5

Text can’t be stroked natively in XPress but a quick trick will let you whip up this effect

Strokes and fills can be had in QuarkXPress…just resort to the dependable old “Text to Box” command.

Stroking and filling text is a nifty trick to pull out occasionally. But in QuarkXPress? Well, InDesign makes it native, but QuarkXPress doesn’t seem to have this effect. You can, using a quick and elementary workaround, come up with layout-worthy stroked and filled text.

All you need is the Text-to-Box command, available from the Style pulldown, and your Modify box commands. It’s simple and easy:

1. Create a text box, and fill it with the text you want to stroke and fill. Style appropriately before going any farther.
2. Using the Content tool, highlight the characters you’ll be changing
3. From the menu bar, do Style>Text to Box. The result of this is a copy of the outlines of the text you’ve highlighted, as a beziér picture box, offset from the original text (the original text is preserved, you just get a box-copy)
4. The text in question is now a box, meaning you can change content, alter the stroke along the frame, and fill with a color, just like any other box

The box modify commands (Menu: Item>Modify or Item>Frame, Windows ALT-M or ALT-B, Mac CMD-M or CMD-B) now control the stroke of the frame and the color fill. Any color you have or can define and any line, dashed, double, or otherwise, and now be applied. One note of caution: since your text is now a box, it’s no longer editable as text, of course. So make sure you have your text the way you want it before you convert.

And, hey, let’s be careful out there: too much of this sort of thing is bad for your eyes….