The performance you will get generating diaries, using Q++ Studio, is related in large part to the hardware requirements of successive versions of QuarkXPress. As a rule of thumb, you should expect to have to change your hardware with each new version of QuarkXPress (every 30 months or so), as each new version of QuarkXPress has been shown to require twice the RAM and at least twice the processor speed of the previous version.

 

One way to ensure that QuarkXPress opens up faster when scanning or generating, is to disable all the unnecessary xtensions of the internal QuarkXPress. This usually reduces the time needed for QuarkXPress to open up from 3 seconds to less than 1 (QuarkXPress 4) and from 12 seconds to 1 second (QuarkXPress 5). Details of which xtensions to disable, and how, are given here.

 

You should always try to use dotted lines rather than tabs with fill characters, as the latter can increase the time needed for the copying of pages during diary generation by a factor of 5 to 10 !

 

 

Another option, for diaries that contain over 200 pages, is to use the Muli-Step Diary Generation Option. The 200 page limit used above to determine if this option should be used is an approximation, and depends on how complex each diary page is. A better rule of thumb may be that any diary requiring more than 4 minutes to generate should be generated using Multi-Step Generation.

 

Apart from the requirements of QuarkXPress, speed issues that occur when generating diaries are essentially linked to the rate at which your PC can write data to its local hard disks. The main reason why this rate may be low is disk fragmentation. Make sure that you regularly defragment the c:\ drive of your PC, and that your c:\ drive is never more than 60% full.

 

Also, if you use an anti-virus (and you should), make sure that the Q++ database files are excluded from the files that the anti-virus monitors constantly. The files to exclude are *.db, *.px, *.mb, *.xg* and *.yg*.

 

 

The above screenshot is taken from Norton Anti-Virus, but every major anti-virus program has a corresponding option to exclude some file types from continuous scanning.

 

For other suggestions, see : Going Faster.

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Topic 174530 updated on 16-Apr-06 Topic URL: http://www.qppsupport.net/webhelp/index.html?generatingdiaries.htm