IMO Quark just got too big for it's britches. :-)

Seriously the ground that Pagemaker, FrameMaker, and InDesign tried to break and is finally succeeding at is a professional page layout program that is simpler to use and meets the complex demands of high end publishing. Much of what was done manually in Quark is managed automatically in those programs, particularly in reference to font management, image linking, and correct trapping. QuarkXpress at my last check was becoming increasingly complex to successfully use, requiring more training and expertise, and worse yet their updates were costing more and more with each release.

I talked with some old printing comrades earlier this summer, their DTP department is still 90% Mac, and they still prefer Quark because it interfaces well with their Dainipon Screen imagesetting equipment (not traditional Postscript output.)

Our pre-press department uses Indesign, but we find that most print shop are still stuck on Quarks. We usually tell them bluntly to change and upgrade or else.

Some do have InDesign, but mainly use Q. Some have even saved our Indesign files as PDF to open them in Quarkz. Talk about waisting one's time.

When I get a chance to talk to the owner or managers of the printing plant, I tell them squarely that they need to change and adapt - not us, and that Q is not a great program. Of course, we're on PCs, so that also make a type of political statement...

[edited by: Harry at 1:44 pm (utc) on Sep. 27, 2006]

Harry is moire still an issue with traditional Postscript? What are you using for imagesetting?

Way back when, most Postscript imagesetters were a nightmare to deal with. Any way you sliced it, you would almost always have a moire on output because on the traditional PostScript grid, an accurate 75 or 15 degree halftone for the C or M plate was a mathematical impossibility, the screens or those plates always turned a tad to align to the grid. We fought with swapping color plates and doing tweaks to minimize it, but it was always there.

This is why I set up shop with Screen imagesetters. They took traditional PS files and interpreted them into their proprietary output, which gave perfect 75 and 15 degree halftone screens for M an C.

It's also good to see that PC has caught up in respect to high-end DTP. I was tasked with making PC files work and believe me . . . that was no fun. :-D

Hi,
Before I became a PC fanatic, Quark was the only program that was best for color registration, which I was told and it may still be. I now use InDesign but most printers want the file converted to PDF, some don't have InDesign and others because of the fonts.
Overall I like InDesign but its a little harder to use, compared to Quark. I find that the text wraps, colors, etc. are a bit harder to find. I personally prefer using Quark but realizing that the industry will probably be converting to Adobe products since they bought out Macromedia, so I figured I need to convert before it would be too late.

What do you think?

War

rocknbil, I'm not an In Design expert. And I'm not the one who works with it daily. I'll have to ask the guys. I just bill the clients!

war63, I've been to an Adobe presentation where they were trying to convert Q users. I believe some of the interface issues you mentioned were answered. If I'm not mistaken, there is a Q layout/key map for In Design, so things work like they do in Q.

In our case the desktop publishing business came as a natural outgrowth of our Web business, so by the time we were ready to invest in a solid solution, we of course chose In Design. It wasn't even a debate for us. My designers learned Q in school, but because of practicality, we chose In Design.

I think most of the industry will follow. The way Adobe grabed our business, there's no room for Q. Adobe was right there when we had to built the DTP department from scratch. They sandwiched InDesign with their other products, and offered us the chance to stay on our PCs and not invest in Macs. Q never even heard of us, or even attempted to reach to companies like ours.

This is an offer a company like ours could not pass. We were Web folks coming into a DTP setting. Not the other way around. In Design fits exactly in our business and workflow, without forcing us to go Mac.

Both Apple and Q will keep losing new customers because they cannot adapt to our needs. The lifestyle marketing saying that Mac users are special also doesn't work with us.

I believe that our outputs makes us special. Not the tools we use. And I certainly don't need Apple to make me feel special. I'd rather let my customers tell me we're special, than a supplier.

Also one has to remember that it is, and always has been, Adbobe Postscript that has standardized DTP output with Encapsulated PostScript. :-) It's like they gave the world years to develop front-end apps, then finally said "fer cryin' out loud, I'll do it myself . . . "

Our department (graphic designers) switched to Creative Suite 2 from Quark last year. I am a web developer but prefer indesign, I found Quark very limiting in some aspects where indesign does a much better job for some specific needs. I was very surprised to learn there was no table feature in Quark, or was I mistaken?

There is a table feature. Quark just likes to hide their goodies ;) There's an import table function too, it operates with tab or comma delimited tables. I think you can import .xls files as well.