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Q.How do I stroke text (for example, give type a yellow outline and a black fill) in QuarkXPress?
A. There’s no dedicated command for stroking text, so you’ll have to take a few steps:
1. Highlight the text you want to apply the stroke to.
2. Go to Item > Convert Text To Boxes, then to Item > Frame, and then select your attributes.
By default, this adds an outline (or “frame,” as Quark calls it) to the inside of the characters. If you prefer the outline on the outside, change the default by going to Preferences > Print Layout > General. Select Outside next to Framing. Changing this preference doesn’t affect boxes already drawn, only new boxes.
To add a stroke (called a “frame” in QuarkXPress) to text, first convert your text (1) to vector (2). Then select Frame, which will appear on the inner edge by default, and select the attributes (3). Change the frame to the outer edge by changing the Preferences before you draw the box (4).
You can facilitate this process by setting a frame style. Go to Window > Item Styles > Edit Item Styles > Frames (QuarkXPress 8) or go through the XPert ItemStyles XTension (QuarkXPress 7).
The default position of a frame is on the inner edge, but you can change it to the outer edge by going to Preferences > Print Layout > General, and select Outside next to Framing. Changing this preference doesn’t affect boxes already drawn, only new boxes.
Important caveat: When you convert text to boxes, you make the text an uneditable vector. So it’s best to wait to apply strokes until you’re sure the text is final.
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This article was last modified on May 15, 2023
This article was first published on March 12, 2009
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InDesign is fine if you happen to be a designer but Quark is much more text friendly. As a chief sub on national magazines for as long as desktop publishing has been around, I would still choose Quark when it comes to text editing.
Thank you!
I keep forgetting how to get to this command.
Thanks a million! This was really helpful. And I DO love type!
Do people still use Quark? I moved over to InDesign some 5 years ago with CS1, and have never looked back, at the time the gap between the 2 was cosmic, with InDesign bringing tables, layers, native PDF support, PSD support, Quark on the other hand was still working on more than 1 undo… sometimes. I used to love that if you grouped objects and scaled them, that was it, no going back!I understand that there is a “new” version of Quark, but every time I read about it’s “new” features I find my self shaking my head and going “but we have had that for years in InDesign
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Any way to apply a stroke and custom text color w/o converting the text to outlines? InDesign does this, and it’s something I’ve gotten quite used to. It seems pretty basic of a feature to me.
Yes, at least I use Quark only because there is way too many files to convert to indesign at this time.
Works perfectly… You have no idea how much time I spent of this, trying to add strokes… Thanks really again!
-Julien
Do people still use Quark? I moved over to InDesign some 5 years ago with CS1, and have never looked back, at the time the gap between the 2 was cosmic, with InDesign bringing tables, layers, native PDF support, PSD support, Quark on the other hand was still working on more than 1 undo… sometimes. I used to love that if you grouped objects and scaled them, that was it, no going back!
I understand that there is a “new” version of Quark, but every time I read about it’s “new” features I find my self shaking my head and going “but we have had that for years in InDesign”
So bringing it back to the story, “Creating this effect in Quark XPress” what effect? I was waiting for something to load? I thought that the beta of Safari 4 was failing me, where is this effect?
Stroke around type wow-fricking-hoo. And the best thing, what to stroke outside, thats a trip to Preferences! But what if I don’t what my whole document to do that, just this one thing….
What a joke.
This is sort of a bogus solution.The best method would be to create your outline text in a program like Illustrator or CorelDRAW and Save/Export it in your favorite flavor for placed images. That way you cannot only apply strokes (and some fancy ones at that), your original text remains fully editable and you can apply dozens of other transformations (fit to a curve, perspective,etc.) at the same time.