I wanted to share some of what I've come across using AppStudio and what I consider to be the "workarounds" or "what works" for me. I am finding that as a designer I'm fighting the new AppStudio but I think it's more because I have years of print design working against me and then also to have published an iPad App/Issue using the earlier App Studio (now AVE Publishing). Having just sorta figured out AVE Publishing we are all now jumping into the new AppStudio and are finding that the differences are significant. QuarkXPress 9.5 doesn't look all that different except for a few different dropdown menus. However, how you use the tool is signifcantly different now.
I just spent a few hours trying to "fix" how my text looks in a scroll zone, so I would like to address that here by sharing what I've learned works, hopefully you can avoid the headache on your own.
First, and I'll address more of this in another post...setting up your workflow. Since we are building "issues" chapter by chapter in their own document families (as opposed to having a 60 page issue all in one Quark document), I have found that it makes sense to create ONE generic document that has all of the margins, guides, master pages, style sheets, colors, etc. prepared in advanced and saved...I use the name "AppStudio_base" and save the document in my main issue folder. Whenever I start a new chapter, I open this document and save it as a new name, such as "Issue_01_Covers" or whatever the chapter is. This way I can have consistency throughout my issue.
There is good and bad with this. The good thing is not having to redo style sheets, redo colors, redo guides, etc. for every new chapter. The downside is that you can't just change one Style Sheet to effect the whole issue, you must go into each "chapter" individually to change a style sheet (or color or whatever). So, it's important to get this right as early as possible.
Now, on to the issue of text. Since the new AppStudio utilized real fonts on export you need to be sure that you design with device specific fonts if you care at all how the end result text is giong to look. iOS has many standard fonts. I find that I'm using Helvetica because it is clean, crisp and used on all iOS devices. Also, bold and italic versions are supported on the devices which is great for the headers, titles, etc. For Kindle Fire the same can be said for Arial. For Android, the only font supported on all Android devices is Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif, none of which have bold or italic so keep that in mind. However, some newer Android devices now come standard with Roboto in many forms that also include Black, Bold and Italic version. So...you will have to decide if you turn fonts into graphics if you want Black, Bold or Italic...or use Roboto and hope the end user has it installed.
On that last note above, I made an earlier comment in another post about turning unsupported fonts into graphics using Illustrator and Photoshop to active the exact look I want and still have transparent backgrounds. It's the 3rd comment in the post titled "Nothing lines up" if that helps you.
So anyway, I setup my Style Sheets for all the font sizes I wanted to utilize in my issue. As a print designer I'm used to setting up the Indents, Leading, Hyphenation, etc. in QuarkXPress using Edit > StyleSheets... So, I set everything up as I'm used to doing.
My Problem (finally): I setup a simple scroll zone in my document. I pasted my plain text (no formatting) in the scroll zone layout. I selected all text and assigned the appropriate StyleSheet "04 Normal iOS" (Helvetica, Plain, 16 pt., Black) and it looks as it should on screen in my Quark scroll zone layout. Switching back to the main layout that references the scroll zone and all looks as it should. I upload the document to AppStudio. The thumbnail looks as it should after compiling the document. When I preview the chapter online in my browser the first three rows of text in every paragraph appear double spaced which is INCORRECT. When I download to the iPad, same thing...WRONG. So I spend a long time making adjustments to the scroll zone thinking that may be the issue. Maybe it's a runaround issue, maybe it's that I adjusted the text box in the scroll zone to make room for the scroll bar - which is another silly point...you need to make room for the scroll bar or it will go over the top of your text...anyway, spent hours making changes. I tried different StyleSheets, etc. Always the same problem and if you have been doing this you know how seemingly long it takes to save a document, upload to AppStudio...wait...wait...wait, ok now go compile on AppStudio, maybe a refresh or two...hit the TEST button, download to my iPad...still downloading...still downloading...zzzzzzzzzz...OK and and AND...oh it's still wrong. again.
So my latest thought process was along the lines of "this has to be a font-related issue somehow" even though I'm using the correct fonts for my iOS devices. Everything looks like it's suppose to. Then however, I thought well maybe the StyleSheet is messing it up somehow even though there is not a hard return or page break. In my StyleSheets I typically put in the "Space After:" box a value of 10 px so that after a hard return there will be a proper space before the next paragraph. Looks much cleaner than doing a double space. Well, unfortunately when the QuarkXPress document is converted to HTML5 that gets lost in the translation somewhere.
My Solution (again, finally): I removed the 10 px value from my "Space After:" box in the "Formats" tab of "Edit Paragraph Style Sheet". Then, I manually double spaced my paragraphs. Not quite the spacing I want but now everything looks as it should in the document, online in the browser and on the iOS devices.
Dumb your text down, don't setup any sort of formatting beyond the name, size, color. Anything beyond that and it will typically look fine in your Quark document but it will look some variety of incorrect in your exported layout. I have found that even using the Item > Modify > Text to vertically align the text as centered or bottom doesn't work. Sometimes even simple align centered or align right doesn't work WYSIWYG. So, again, keep your text simple or the formatting will get lost on export.