QuarkXpress 7 will be more open

I gave up on Quark soon after version 5 came out. Adobe picked up the ball that Quark managed to fumble and is still running. It's sad that only now Quark realizes how badly they screwed up when the rest of us knew 4 years ago.

This was an ongoing debate between me and the in-house designer, back when I was a
trained chimp
production specialist: he was a Quark man, I preferred Pagemaker. It started out as purely a matter of personal preference and what we were used to, but he started to question his loyalties when Quark started acting outright evil: really poor customer service, and a serial port hardware key that rendered the software unusable when we upgraded to G3s. InDesign was the end to the debate, as we both agreed it was the best of both worlds.

I work as a pre-press monkey during the day and freelance at night, and Quark still offers me a very solid, technically sound base to work from. Alot of this stems from the direct reflection of print-processes within the layout management, and as one user has pointed out, options like Transparencies (which can be achieved with some clever file-formatting and practical knowledge of how a press or digital printer works) are nice to be able to work with, but a right pain when you want to translate them to PostScript data for digital or negative work. I'll buy Quark to use, and download InDesign - for those clients who walk through the door without a PDF version of their Adobe documents.

When I was in the market for DTP software a couple of years back I knew that it either had to be Quark or InDesign. I checked with a few local printers and they could accept files in either format, so I knew I had no issues there. I then read on the web the problems people (especially in the UK) were having with Quark activation and the price differential and I plumped for InDesign. Never had a issue with my local printers accepting files and work and have really grown to like with InDesign. I wonder if I ought to get to know Quark, but I can never see the point... When I was much younger, PageMaker was always the industry standard (remember that) but was beaten by Quark, maybe it's InDesign time...

Quark is still in business?

I still prefer Quark and its largely because of transparencies. I work in a pre-press department and the number two headache (after fonts) has become transparency. Its nice for Adobe to offer desingers new features, but if they are problematic for RIPs, they aren't really good features. Things have improved a lot in recent months, but still Adobe has caused me a lot of aggravation.

The establishment of Quark in the "biz" is there, but with pdf workflows taking over the industry I find nobody cares or even asks what design apps or even platform we use. Apple/PC/Adobe/Quark/Macromedia/etc ... I don't think it matters much anymore. I think Quark was ahead of it's time with version 4, but took something like 8 or 9 years to come out with 5. And I don't know much about their organization nowadays but back then they were ... how do I say this nicely ... JERKS! ... to deal with.

I switched to InDesign when I bought the "Design Collection" bundle a few years back. I was an avid Quark user until that point but really liked what I saw in InDesign. I've had my frustrations with it since but I think Adobe has worked hard to deliver on the promise of creating the "Quark Killer". I know Quark had a one-time solid fan base and maybe they still do but I wont be buying a copy anytime soon.

The issue of QuarkXPress or InDesign and me and many others has little to do with preference and more to do with clients needs. Like it or not, most print houses and publications still use QuarkXPress. And the while the concept of switching over to InDesign is painfully appealing, it's not really as easy as one would think in many situations. It's along the same lines as the Avid versus Final Cut Pro debate. It's not so much an issue of what is better, it's an issue of what people need and use.

I'm still on Quark 4.