Quark 6 in January

[beatle888]

Re: what took you so long IH8Quark?

Originally posted by idkew


I would have thought you would have been the first poster.

As I have said before, I am done with Quark personally, I only use it when I am forced to. A company that works like Quark does not deserve to be in business, especially in this economic climate.

It only took Adobe 2 versions to get way past Quark in nearly every area of typographic design. The only thing I see that InDesign is missing is add ons such as DragX, iQue... that help the production of papers and such.

Will Quark even last long enough to counter Adobe's blow? My guess , if Adobe plays its cards correctly, is no.

if adobe can speed it's app up and that quark to indesign feature works
like it should....quarks not going to have a chance....quark doesnt seem
interested for some reason compared to adobe...abobe will eat them alive
but i do think it will take about one more year for people to start changing
in the masses.

hopefully.




YES i kept reading through these posts and god it's sooooo true
100% of us sane fnckers HATE QUARK. The one's who don't are
the 100% of the insane @ssholes that should go live on another
planet.

God why am I acting like this......I usually am pretty peaceful.
I just really HATE QUARK.

 

[bombensington]

what makes me scared about reading these posts...

my college requires us to take TWO classes on quark - we are not allowed to submit any projects in indesign in these classes, which imo is much better, i personally think quark is not worth it for me.

im scared that i will be very unprepared once i get out into the "real world." ouch.

 

[RogueLdr]

Wow, where to start?

Originally posted by iN8 -
This is all I've been waiting for. My only reason for booting into 9 is Xpress.
Soon I will put my final nail in OS 9's coffin.

I currently work as a system administrator for a newspaper, but spent two years in their production department, and know that they had held at 4.11 in Quark until an OS X version came available, but they have been actively eyeing InDesign.

Originally posted by MacRumorsSkeptic -
Who cares?! We should all do ourselves a favor and leave Quark behind along with OS9. InDesign is far superior!

Our design department has already gone to InDesign 2 as it is a part of our database based publishing system, but they are, at this point, on Windows to accomodate the System's developers and their slow work on OS X coding.

Originally posted by serke -
Although designed for the newspaper industry MultiAd Creator is a viable alternative to Quark and InDesign.

Most of the news designers I have spoken to say that they look at Creator with a sort of disdain due to its advertising slant. I will say that I know it to be a powerful program in its own right, just not really set up to handle all the needs of modern print designers.

Originally posted by gopher -
Tell that to 80% of the newspaper publishers in this country that use QuarkXpress and have their work saved in that format. And then when they attempt to migrate over to InDesign they lose data. Until Quark for X or a decent translator to InDesign from Quark is released no newspaper editor worth his salt will switch to Mac OS X. And then all those plugins need to be recompiled.

The switch to ID 2 seems to be a one time effort that more than a few editors are willing to let their subordinates undertake for the greater integration with the other Adobe apps. Although I will agree with you that if it were the editors that had to do the conversion themselves, there would be a much greater resistance to ID 2.

Originally posted by iH8Quark -
As for anyone not liking InDesign...I'm REALLY at a loss.

I have to agree with you that InDesign is far superior to Quark as far as any designer is concerned. But while many may argue that Quark is the better or more accessible app, keep in mind that when something goes wrong, it is up to the Tech Support of the company to help remedy the problem. From a tech point of view, InDesign wins here as well. Quark is notoriously slow to respond to queries from customers. It is almost as though they don't realize that they are now the second best design app on the market.

Originally posted by idkew -
Apple is on the verge of controlling the entire print process. Apple computers running the layout software, Apple servers divvying out graphics and texts. The only thing that apple has no hand in is the actual printing of the paper.

As much as I wish this were the case, my company recently went to a new cutting edge final step in the production process. Of the six options available to us, only one was Apple based and that worked only in OS 9, which we felt to be a dead end as far as learning curve was concerned. (it would be silly to learn a new bit of OS 9 software at this point).

Holy S***,
sorry for the huge post, just felt that there was alot to address,

RL

 

[sinner-g]

InDesign vs. Quark

So for all the InDesign folks...is InDesign really all its cracked up to be? Are printers using it a lot? Has anybody used the XML capability and able to comment on it?

thanks.

in regards to Quark...I've never minded the program but hate the long development times and poor customer service. Let's all move on if InDesign is really that great!

 

[jammer]

Enough Quark bashing. Sheesh.

Believe me, I never thought I would be the person who would come to Quark’s defense, but some of the posts I’ve read are so ignorant and one-sided that I had to register just to present an alternative view and a little sane perspective.

I’m almost always amazed at how everyone just loves to jump on the bandwagon and moan about how much they hate Quark. But with all due respect, I have found about 80% of these posts to be completely bereft of any useful criticism, and a good majority of those appear to come from very green-sounding posters whom I doubt have had much high-impact use of Quark. “Quark sucks,” and “Quark is buggy” is about as vague and inflammatory as you can get. How about some tangible examples?

When I first began college in the late 80’s, I was fortunate enough to attend a school that was among the first in the country to supply their design department with 10 brand-spanking new Apples loaded with Quark, Illustrator 88 and Photoshop. The only problem? No manuals. We sat in front of those apple boxes day and night learning the programs BY FEEL AND INTUITION ONLY and I can tell you that we all got the hang of the basic Quark skill set a hell of a lot faster than Photoshop and Illustrator. You draw a box, type into it, and move it around. What’s so hard about that? And anyone who wants to get more out of Quark can do so by simply using trial and error or cruising the manual. So to those of you who complain about Quark’s user interface, I say you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Quark’s user interface works very well.

Since then, Quark has had many challengers. And all of them have discovered the same thing. IT AIN’T EASY TO MAKE A PAGE LAYOUT PROGRAM. You can talk until you’re blue about how wonderful Ill and Pshop are (and I would agree with you), but they do not even approach the complexity and myriad of issues a layout program must contend with. Layout apps are catch-all apps. They have to make nice with every poorly written app, extension and doc someone wants to throw at it to A) import text, B) import images in any of a number of formats, C) manage and manipulate complex Postscript and TrueType font issues, D) manage and manipulate complex color systems and calibration problems, E) handle huge, multi-page docs and master pages, F) create flawlessly rippable files to deliver to vendors who may work on any of a number of varied platforms, etc. The list is endless, and until now, who has developed a product that didn’t get its ass handed to them? Canvas? It tried to do too much, ended up doing none of it well, and printers hated it. Pagemaker? Talk about a limited, lame program. By the way, let’s not forget this is Adobe’s second attempt at a “Quark killer.” Quark was the pioneer, it paved the way. As such, it deserves a modicum of respect. It did the dirty job no one else wanted to tackle. Printers’ minds are tough to change, so do you think Quark would have become the pervasive, “it” program for page layout and output if it wasn’t reasonably stable and reliable? No way. Let's not exaggerate how awful and terrible Quark is.

As a pressman, production artist, pre-press technician, illustrator, designer and creative director, I have used Quark in almost every facet for which it was intended. And in my 15+ year career of electronic publishing, advertising and print collateral work, I have had a major Quark snafu ONLY ONCE while printing a huge run of 800 page textbooks crammed with text and images, and it was early in the 90’s when printers were still learning the ins and outs of ripping massive electronic files. A Quark rep was sent out to our printer the next morning, and we were able to collectively correct the problem at only minimal down-time cost (although any extra cost is too much). But for the most part, Quark has been a stable, reliable trooper for me. I can easily teach it to those who need to know it, and it can do most of what I need it to do.

Having said all that, there are several things I don’t like about Quark and that I do agree with many of you about:
1) They are very slow. While I actually appreciate the fact that they don’t feel the need to radically alter their palettes and tools just for the sake of doing so (Adobe, I’m talking to you), they are painfully slow in responding to customer input, something they could learn a lot from Adobe about.
2) They have become complacent and unjustifiably expensive. The initial purchase cost of the app is bad enough, but $400 updates are inexcusable and shameful. Having no competition has made Quark arrogant and lazy.
3) Quark doesn’t bust its butt to play nice with other apps the way it used to. Anyone who has tried to align jagged EPS vector files in Quark knows what I mean. Their solutions to PDF compatibility were cumbersome and slow to occur, unlike Illustrator’s seamless PDF capabilities.
4) They are far too reliant on third party extensions. Why doesn’t Quark simply integrate some of these obvious extensions into the core program? Is it laziness? Conflict of interest? Yes and yes.

I am all for InDesign coming in to shake things up. Quark needs a kick in the arse. But waiting so long to come up with “the answer” has made it a tough road for Adobe. Design and production professionals are fiercely loyal (that’s how Macs have survived!) and if Adobe doesn’t address the fact that we all have tons of qxd files and we want a simple solution to their conversion to even consider a switch, it may not happen at all. I was sick enough of Quark's antics and intrigued enough by an all-Adobe architecture to purchase InDesign when it first came out, and conversion was the biggest problem I encountered. I was also none too impressed with the interface, which I found a bit steeper than I would have thought from Adobe, especially considering I know the two other apps so well. I will eventually re-visit the newest upgrade and try it again, but to be quite frank, I don’t have the time to give every new kid on the block a go to see if they’d be a worthy app replacement. I’ve got enough on my plate mastering HTML and Flash and other NEW programs that allow me to do things I don’t already know how to do. And somewhere in there I actually have to get some work done.

I suspect the rumors of Quark’s demise are greatly exaggerated. I am in a position to hire design and production professionals. I keep abreast with industry standards, and I have yet to see more than the occasional want ad request for InDesign fluency. My printers haven’t noticed a tidal wave of interest either. Yet. But it IS growing, and Quark had better see the handwriting on the wall, and with InDesign wisely offering a free non-demo app with the purchase of a new G4, they're doing their marketing-damndest to make it simple.

It’s easy to replace a complacent warrior like Quark from the perspective that you know all its weaknesses and strengths and can learn from its mistakes, but it’s tough from the standpoint that you don’t get as long a window to get it right. Both companies will succeed or fail based on how they respond to that simple challenge.

 

[neilt]

I Agree

I have used Quark since 91. All of my college research papers were written in Quark. I dated a graphic designer during college, and the only apps that would handle multiple pages of text on my Mac were teachtext and Xpress. Needless to say I had the best typeset history papers on campus.
The fact that I knew quark landed me my first job out of college doing ad layout and design for a small newspaper. At the time, no one in the area knew quark and the paper had just switched over to Xpress and copydesk for their pagination system. When I saw the ad in the paper looking for someone with experience with Quark, I went and applied. When the manager looked at my resume and saw I was a history major, she made me do some sample layouts to prove I knew the program.

Quark is wonderfully easy to pick up the basics. Like it was stated above, text goes in a text box, pictures in a picture box. You can move and resize the boxes anyway you want. Simple, elegant and efficient. Sure the pallets may look outdated, but who the hell cares what the palletes look like, IT IS YOUR DESIGN THAT MATTERS!

I can't stand that Adobe changes the interface of their programs with every release. I am a full time Technician now, and don't do much design anymore. But when I need to do something quick for one of the scientists here, I know I can get exactly what I want from Quark running in classic faster than in Illustrator in 10.

Quark is slow to update, but i thing the fact that they can go so long between updates proves just how solid the program is.

 

[Pauls]

I'm reluctant to enter the InDesign v Quark debate, but I have been investigating the pros and cons of switching since Adobe published their first whitepapers on the new killer app. Our studio has been a long-time Quark user and I'm not going to bag something that's held up the graphic design industry for so long.

We are an inhouse publishing & design house for a health NGO so our budget is strict. We purchased 8 copies of Indesign 1 with Adobe's intro offer which was less than a fifth of the current selling price. Despite all of the advantages of Indesign, the trial failed. The other designers, though agreeing to trial it, gave it less than a couple of days and said it was no good. (personally I thought v1 was a great start by Adobe and used it on a range of books reports and brochures).

I have since spent time investigating/evaluating the worth of Indesign in this Industry. My first observation after reading discussions and talking to professionals at trade shows and my own staff was that everyone who didn't like Indesign couldn't give me a list of reasons why—except for: the interface is clumsy, it's too slow, or we won't be compatible with the industry if we switch.

What became apparent to me is that people's opinions were based on someone elses, I couldn't find any real first hand opinions, which mean't that no-one had tried the program seriously, and their objections to Indesign were ill informed. Really, the bottom line is an apathetic attitude to change. I have since been more aware that the print industry as a whole is having trouble coping with technological change on a broader scale. This first happened when dtp became the standard and pre-press houses found themselves out of business as quick turnover bureaus became common. Now the internet is causing a slump in the print industry, many print houses are struggling to find relevance in wired world. Quark now has competition, and is finding itself falling behind fast. It released a classic version upgrade when everyone else was pumping out OSX upgrades—it is the sluggish nature of the print industry which has kept it alive for now. Print/design/publishing companies that do want change are switching to Indesign or they're going to PC. Everone else is sitting on their hands.

I own a copy of Indesign 2 with OSX. I have a fully functioning OSX design machine, with Adobe Design Collection, Freehand 10, Suitcase 10, Filemaker for workflow and I'm trialling Office X. The whole system is very stable and the integration of all the elements is so seamless and effortless—it's a real quantum leap.

What's my point? I'm only half way through the Indesign manual, but already I have a significant range of tools and techniques to improve productivity significantly and to venture into new design areas not previously possible with Quark. But it won't be a rational argument that changes opinion, there are plenty of designers who are quite happy to sit on Quark and OS9 till they retire. If Quark isn't able to keep up, it won't die fast—more likely it will just fade slowly.

I've decided to run both. I'll get my productivity gains and avoid the mass resignations.

 

[GraphicUmp]

I work in a medium-sized print shop.

I HATE Quark!

I only use it when I absolutely have to because some moron designer brought in a job designed in Quark.

I use InDesign for ALL in-house work, even for clients whose stuff done prior to me was in Quark. I'm better and faster at InDesign (and I hated InDesign 1 - it was horrible) than I am at Quark and I've been using Quark since 1992. I used PageMaker (I started on PM4) rather than Quark until ID2 came out.

 

[creativeczar]

Apples to apples

I have heard many criticize InDesign on this forum. I'd like to know how many have tried both programs, taken the time to convert Quark to InDesign, learned the tool inside and out and still go back to Quark. Printers and the lack of time to learn the program are the only stumbling blocks to switching to Quark. I must admit they are big stumbling blocks for many. I am fortunate enough to have found two printers, high-end and low-end, that can handle InDesign. PDF is definitely an option. Many publications can now handle just a Press PDF and never even know what you used to create the file.

 

[medazinol]

I run a company that provides Mac, UNIX and Windows support to a variety of business sectors and print/publishing is certainly one of them.

I'll never argue that the de facto program for the industry is Quark however from a technicians aspect that program is terrible to support.

We've had innumerable Quark crashes where its eaten the drive boot sectors requiring a complete wipe and reinstall. This is particularly after a rather large print job.

Some of our clients don't want or can't upgrade to 4 because of custom coding of some extensions. Version 3 doesn't like drive partitions bigger than 4 gigs so we have to partition ALL new Macs to be less than 4 gigs so that Quark won't complain. This is just stupid.

The list goes on and on. Quark 5 makes me laugh. That should have been called 4.2, after what 5 years and they added support for the apearance manager? OS 9 is dead Quark, too bad, so sad. They wasted all their time adding web authoring stuff instead of creating a carbon version.

Meanwhile Adobe keeps plugging away at InDesign. I agree, version 1 was bad but I saw potential in that program and kept telling my customers this is going to good very soon, you watch. Version 2 is extremely good. I use it all the time, since I dumped OS 9 some time ago, I refuse to run any Classic apps.

When I visit clients I always take the time to fire up version 2 and do some demos of the smoother workflow, integration of the other apps and colour management. That's usually enough to get them excited.

The biggest problem however is the stick in the mud syndrome. Of all of our clients, the publishers/designers are the slowest to adopt new technology. The main reason I've discovered is most of them are not technically savvy. They only know enough to fire up the machine, do basic troubleshooting and work in Quark. Otherwise they are lost. They don't understand the benefits of OS X until someone like me takes the time to do specific demos of the stability and particularly the automatic memory management.

Most of my demos have been gleaned from Apple and Adobe engineering demos that are geared to show the features/benefits of the products. Using this I've been able to convert some of the smaller shops. But again, most of them don't have the time to learn InDesign, I end up doing the training (not complaining, I make money doing it).

Anyhow, I have a feeling that the upcoming version of Quark for OS X is not going to be earth shattering. They'll end up charging an arm and a leg for the upgrade when all they will add is really just Carbon compatibility. If you doubt this, look at their track record for releases. I have tons of clients telling me of Quark calling them up and asking why they haven't upgraded to 5 yet. I've instructed them what to say!
In any event, the winds of change are in the air but its a very slow process but there will be a time when InDesign is respected and more prevalent.

 

[e-coli]

Re: I Agree

Originally posted by neilt
Sure the pallets may look outdated, but who the hell cares what the palletes look like, IT IS YOUR DESIGN THAT MATTERS!

yes, I agree. too bad you can't set proper typography in Quark. I can't set punctuation outside the margin. I can't properly align justified margins, either. Also too bad that inserting the proper ligatures renders the spell check unuseable. Also too bad that there's little to no alpha channel support for imported graphics. Also too bad I have to use clipping paths (which are an archaic, outdated recipe for disaster). Also too bad imported EPS artwork looks like pixel crap, making it impossible to exactly line it up with anything (including a clipping path). Also too bad there's no support for a thin space or half space. Also too bad there's no "Undo" (which abso-f*cking-lutely drives me insane). Too bad I have to manually turn off the maddening "runaround" option for each tool every single time I open the program. Also too bad type looks like garbage on screen. Also too bad color matching in Quark is a joke. And too bad there's no OpenType support at all in Quark. Also too bad there's no layout grid view (except baseline grid). I could go on and on for pages about all the ways in which Quark makes my job harder, and my design worse.

death to Quark. i can't see how anybody sees the merit in that program...unless you're just a production or pre-press person and not a serious designer.

 

[jammer]

Some intelligent discussion, please.

Ugggh. Do you guys realize how rude and immature you sound? "JUST a production person?" "Moron designer?" When I hear "InDesign is far superior" and "I hate Quark," and I don't hear any specific examples stated as to why, I am more likely to not believe you because you sound like a person with an ax to grind as opposed to an open-minded, fair-hearted person I thought the Mac community was mostly composed of. None of you plead your case very well by using negative absolutes and snobbish rhetoric. I usually find that the stone-throwers are usually those most frustrated and plagued by their own inadequacies. Do you post to convey a legitimate argument or do you just like to name-call and read your own tripe? I had to tolerate this Design v. Production nonsense for years as a pre-pressman and then later as a designer, but I thought people had grown up by now. Shame on you.

I certainly have heard enough intelligent comments in this thread (if you wade through a lot of this chest-thumping crap) to make me give InDesign another shot. I did like the level of control that I had over type in the program and I'm anxious to try it again now. Most of us seem to agree that the first iteration was not too special and I have to say that I think Adobe dropped the ball here. They REALLY needed to get it right the first time to kill Quark and they didn't. ID was in production and development for years, how much more time did they need? They all know what we hate about Quark and all they had to do was give it to us and make sure we could EASILY convert our old files. And they didn't do it. That's not just my opinion, but the opinion of everyone I've talked to, on both sides of the job, in the last few months.

The bottom line is that Adobe failed to capture everyone's imagination of what a true Quark-killer could be, because I'll tell you, every serious colleague I know in the graphics industry DID give Adobe a try with the low intro app cost. Why? Because they were intrigued at the idea of all the apps speaking fluently and seamlessly to each other, and they liked the idea of greater type control that the program promised and that Adobe is legendary for.

I personally DID try ID in more than just a cursory fashion, and so did most people I know in the industry. I don't see the point in blasting a product I haven't tried and anyone who abuses this forum by doing so should kick his own ass. So don't blame it on "technologically unsavvy" users or "moron designers." Blame Adobe. They have no one to point at but themselves for the slow move to ID. Is it going to be the end of the world if you have to run Q in classic until next spring? No. You'll live. Quark WILL catch up, albeit slowly, and we'll probably have both apps for the next several years until one of them can really pull away and deliver the goods.

 

[sinner-g]

I for one...

Well I'm switching from Quark to InDesign. I haven't yet installed version 2 however all of the designers that I have spoken with that have made the switch have been very pleased. Also there are a few print houses in the Phoenix area which have also begun vigorously promoting the switch because they feel InDesign is significantly better.

As a Quark user for many years, both as a lowly (previously implied) pre-press and production person and as a designer (serious and award winning)...professions which I might add are both equally challenging with their own mutually exclusive creative outlets...and as a lowly pre-press person I did encounter many the moron designer : )...anyway i run on.

For the previous post...I think that the explanations of why most designers don't appreciate Quark have been pretty explicit...as they have been for years...horrible type control. Why is there no hanging punctuation? This issue is largely overlooked because as a profession, type treatment has been sacrificed somewhat in the name of productivity, and because the tool we use to lay out pages doesn't support it. Well with InDesign that has changed...as a designer, pre-press production guy, and now (did I mention) someone who is almost exclusively an interactive designer fellow... I solute InDesign...and it supports XML too, natively! Well from an interactive standpoint that his pretty huge so bye bye Quark. I'll miss putting that white background in all my picture boxes just so my images will print correctly!

 

[macboy]

OUTLOOK for OS X

You can use Apple's Email app in OS X to pick up your exchange email...

It works ok...

MacBoy

 

[GraphicUmp]

Quark 6...

...pushed off to March.

And yes, I did say moron designers. There are many people who call themselves "designers" who can barely use a computer but think they can design a 3 color piece that will print on a press and look as good as it did on their monitor. And I see many of them and have to spend 3 hours fixing their piece so it will look good printed.

When I get a piece in InDesign, I usually don't have to spend 3 minutes before I send it to the imagesetter.

 

[e-coli]

Re: Some intelligent discussion, please.

Originally posted by jammer
Ugggh. Do you guys realize how rude and immature you sound? "JUST a production person?"

sorry. didn't mean it that way. i apologize. good call, it did sound a bit demeaning.

When I hear "InDesign is far superior" and "I hate Quark," and I don't hear any specific examples stated as to why, I am more likely to not believe you because you sound like a person with an ax to grind as opposed to an open-minded, fair-hearted person I thought the Mac community was mostly composed of.

uhhh....if this was directed at me...maybe you missed my extremely extensive list of reasons why Quark is a rediculously archaic product. I'm of the opinion that if you spend $1000 on a program, you should be able to do things "properly". Not being able to set proper type in a typesetting app is just inexcusable to me. For this reason alone, I can't figure out why people continue to clutch this product. But there are so many other reasons why Quark should be killed off, or greatly improved.

Case in point:

About a year ago, I started my own studio. I'm used to having an outside company that proofs documents for errors, and is liable for any mistakes. In a big agency, that's your safetly buffer. In a small studio, you don't have that. So...I was completing a 64 page investor relations book for a Fortune company. The text went through round after round of edits, and we were sent back text (in Word format) with the new content revisions. The text edits were not redlined. So instead of reflowing and redesigning the entire document, we copied and pasted the text in to specific points. Just to be safe, we then spell-checked the document at the end of the process. We found out that inserting the proper ligatures resulted in a failure of the spell-check. That was the first time. The second time, we found that if you had the wrong tool selected when you did the spell check (such as the boxdrawing tool instead of the type tool), the spell check came back with a message stating "no errors", when in reality it never checked the document!! The job had to be reprinted because of an error that wasn't picked up by Quark; that SHOULD have been picked up by Quark. Luckily, our business liability insurance coverd it, but the reprint cost was staggering.

I have disliked that product intensely since that project. I'm sure you can see why. And it's the people that keep clinging to it that won't let the product die and be replaced by a much better product that works properly. I know that's just the way it works, but bugs and sloppy program design like Quark could end up costing a company millions of dollars.

 

[jammer]

GraphicUmp you still don't get it. Same tired production argument. But thanks e-coli, sinner-g and the rest of you for providing insight and intelligent reasons for hating or tolerating Quark and InDesign. E-coli, bummer dude. Ouch. I just ran spell-check on a Quark doc today and it ignored smart quotes, double spaces, option-dash correx, etc. I can run a find/change on a doc twice and it will find a new one it missed the previous pass. How the hell does that happen? That really DOES irk me. But a word to the wise from one small Chicago agency to another, make your client sign off on all proofs. Or hire a proofreader. If you're on your own that's too much burden for one set of eyes. And no, you were the most specific poster, my comments were not aimed at you. Scan the thread quickly and you'll see the several knuckleheads I'm refferring to.

But seriously, until InDesign can make a cool little martian guy come out and zap your picture box into oblivion when you hit the right combination of keys, they will always live in Quark's shadow!

 

[freedom]

Finally

Jammer, you´re the slammer…
The same goes for e-coli (stomach-problems?! )
and sinner-g. Finally some people on this forum that
seem to have some experience to back up their
arguments. This forum needs intelligent posters…
I have been thinking of switching to ID2 but
without the time to really study it I still go with Quark.
Yes, Quark has many flaws, but after working with it
for a couple of years you learn how to avoid/bypass
many problems. Personally I always go through my
documents manually for spellchecking etc.
And I always find minor/huge errors. Well that´s life!?!
If you proof read submitted texts before pasting them
you should be quite safe. Same goes for images.
Take it through PS or AI, save it so that it works
with your printers´and that´s it! Or isn´t it?
Well it works for me.
OK, some might say that my "method" takes a lot of
precious time. You´re damn right, but it saves me from
doing the job over again.
As a professional you can actually have both Quark & ID.
Just choose what program fits what job the best, right?!
And how many of the "I HATE QUARK"-ers are professionals?
[roast me slowly with some thyme and garlic ]

 

[GraphicUmp]

We have had to reprint 3 four-color print jobs in the last 6 months thanks to Quark. One was a spell-check problem; again, Quark claimed there were no errors but didn't actually check the job. One was a trap/overprint problem that reverted after I changed and saved and output lasers to check on a light table. One was a runaround problem - Quark turned it back on after I turned it off and saved and output lasers. So the films were wrong. The final checker didn't catch them & they went on press. It gets expensive. THAT'S why I hate Quark.

Thanks for calling me unprofessional and childish, however; I really appreciate the criticism. I've been doing this for seven years; both for myself and for larger companies. I have never had these problems with either PageMaker or InDesign. Period.

 

[freedom]

Poor sod…

GraphicUmp, I never said that you are unprofessional.
I was relating to earlier posters. You use quark everyday,
don´t you? Wether you like it or not. You are using
it in your profession, ie you´re a professional user.
Didn´t mean to bust you.
Hope it worked out, and that you have an external
graphic designer to blame.
I´ve heard from a lot of printers that they´ve had
problems with quark as well. So remember,
you are not alone…
/Freedom

 

[nemo]

Letter from Quark Customer Service

Here's a letter I received from Quark today trying to justify why they are not OSX native yet. Basically, it's OSX's fault though they don't as specific as I'd like. For example, what are the features missing from OSX that would require me to spend more money for output?!? They never say. Maybe we should all call them! Read on.

nemo


Hello, The reason we are not OS X native yet, is because we were waiting for
apple to release a version of OS X that would most of our major printers
needs. It would be foolish of us to release a program that major print
providers can't use. Our customers aren't going to buy a new $500,000 print
device just because their Mac won't support it. Now that apple has released
Jaguar we are working on a version that should be 10.2 native, But probably
will not run 10.1 because it is a bad OS. Also Watch out for InDesign. Call
your printer and ask them if they can handle level three PostScript files.
Chances are they can't and if you send them something in InDesign, it will
come back looking nothing like you wanted it to.

Even though Quark has a very close working relationship with Apple, core
development of QuarkXPress 5.0 was complete before Mac OS X code was ready to handle large, professional level print jobs. To make QuarkXPress 5.0
native to Mac OS X would have required re-engineering what we had already
completed to handle such high resolution print jobs, thereby delaying the
release of QuarkXPress 5.0, which many customers were very anxious to get.

Mac OS X is not widely adopted yet, and Quark believes that the publishing
industry will upgrade slowly, for a variety of reasons. OS X will only run
on a G4 or newer computer. Drivers for many devices such as scanners, and
image setters are not yet available, and some may never be, so you may need to invest in other new hardware when you upgrade. Frankly, some of the features missing from OS X will require you to spend more money on output, since you won't be able to use your media wisely. We're working closely to ensure that those features get implemented in future versions of the operating system, so you can have a stable and fully functional work
environment. QuarkXPress 5.0 is native to OS 9 and is compliant with OS X,
which means we can currently serve all our customers. We'll ship a Mac OS X
native version of QuarkXPress when we're confident that you'll be able to
use it productively and reliably in your workflow.

Thank You Customer Service 800-676-4575

 

[GraphicUmp]

Fortunately, we had signatures from the clients (thank God - my boss would NOT have been happy with me if we hadn't). So we reprinted at (discounted) cost those three instances, which is lucky for us (but the pressman still hates me). In the previous 6 months, we had to reprint at our cost twice and customers' cost 4 times thanks to Quark.

Yes, I use it every day at work, whether or not I like it. I set nothing in Quark; I only use it for files that come in the door.

Oh - and my imagesetter can handle Postscript Level Three files.

 

[Apple][Forever]

Re: Letter from Quark Customer Service

Originally posted by nemo
OS X will only run on a G4 or newer computer.

Damn. Looks like I am going to have to uninstall 10.2 from my B&W G3.

 

[GraphicUmp]

C'mon - I'll have to uninstall 10.2 from my Beige G3 desktop!

 

[jammer]

Don't blame Quark

GraphicUmp, you had to reprint 6 jobs in 6 months at a medium-sized print shop? How can you stay in business? I know huge shops that don't incur that many reprints in an entire year. It would appear that your shop really needs to reevaluate its proofing process because the current one doesn't seem to be working very well. You know, Quark has been out now for almost two decades, so why aren't you more aware of all its pitfalls and foibles by now? I run spell check on my files, too, but I know Quark's dictionary (which can be appended, you know) is not the deepest and that for one reason or another it will sometimes miss double spaces, misspellings, smart quotes, etc., so I don't solely depend on it. You need HUMANS to proof it, especially for things like grammar, which no program has yet been able to accurately proof for. This has been true since publishing began, and if your clients or you don't want to pay for the added expense of proofreading, or for competent initial data entry to begin with, then you both are creating a recipe for trouble. Don't blame Quark.

Also, I have never in my experience known Quark to just "revert" a runaround or a trap setting for any reason other than A) a sudden crash, or B) operator error. These same things can happen in InDesign or any other program too. Sounds like the "moron designers" might have some company.

Things like seamless integration, type control and XML support are reasons to switch to InDesign, but not spellcheck problems and human error.