QuarkXPress 8: Sleek Interface, Better Typography

One thing is important, If you work in daily/weekly newspapers you can NOT finish fast anything with Indesgn. For me, I can not imagine how to finish a page A3 in 5 minutes in indesign. In quark 4 or 5 i can. I'm talking about speed. Indesgn is for retired persons, looks pretty and has drop shadow. I'm shure Quark is ugly, but always wait for my next move. Who uses both programs, know what I mean!

I am a student intern at a company that runs a small publisher. They switched to InDesign two years ago after using Quark forever. The big problem is reprints. The old files are in Quark and the users want the books to be identical. While we do not have to retype the books, we have to go through them page by page and line by line realigning illustrations and text. Since I studied both Quark and InDesign, I have been do this tedious job. Any suggestions will be welcome.

Oh yeah, CTRL-CMD-OPTION-SHIFT-RIGHT BRACKET FTW!!!!

Quark did not lose because of it's bass-ackwards software development, it was because they could not make the leap to OS X. anyone remember Quark 5? Exactly. One thing Quark does well is drive up the prices of used G3 & G4 Machines on ebay. Because a lot of places still rock OS 9 + Quark 4. For basic page layout, this is more than sufficient. If you need drop shadow and transparency, then get Indesign.
In fact, I think designers became accustomed to their strange shortcuts and un-intuitive menus, so much so that "knowing Quark" was not the same as "knowing pagemaker/indesign." There was a certain elitism associated with it.
I say good riddens to bad rubbish.

See-saw effect with Quark and InDesign.

Quark had crappy software but when it worked, it worked. And designers still have files and print bureaus still take them.
InDesign (PDF monopoly) has gotten better and gathered more converts from Quack, er Quark. PDF workflows are getting more ... complicated.

If it works, use it. But don't upgrade because THEY tell you to. And Eff ADobe for their "18-month" dupe the user Upgrade Cycle. People should just stop upgrading and stick it to them for their bloated apps.

Rant over. Warm beer. Sorry.

The comment about competition is interesting. It's very true that InDesign exists and is as good as it is because Quark was so embedded, and so the only way to compete is to make a truly 'Best of Breed' application. Photoshop largely competes against itself, and perhaps the same is true of Illustrator; those apps are now seeing niche competitors (such as Pixelmator, or Open Source applications). But with Quark becoming irrelevant, the need for Adobe to invest in improving InDesign even better starts to drop.

Can anyone remember the fiasco of when Quark offered to buy out Adobe? That was purely to force Adobe to release InDesign too early, and to cause it to fail. I suspect that pride became a big driver in InDesign development after that episode...

I am forced to work on Quark 4.1 on OS 9 for contract work I do, and it's for a large independent weekly in Cleveland. It is beyond words to describe that particular hell.

Even the sales reps want us to get on InDesign (and OS X, and off of G3 Macs, etc.). I realize the budget isn't huge, but this is going on 10 years. Sheesh!

Everybody wants it, it's just convincing the suits to cough up the cash. Wish I knew a way that would speak to them.

If it wasn't for this situation, I would be happily rid of all traces of Quark from my life, and it wouldn't be a moment too soon.

"A lot of you guys must not work for giant publishing companies. Believe me a lot of them still use quark."

And a lot don't. Employee at a large US book publisher here, Quark-free for about five years now. Basically, we saw the writing on the wall once InDesign hit 2.0 and became pretty nice, while Quark was still busy spending a few years NOT releasing an OS X version. No friction from any of our dozens of vendors--all of them were more than happy to dump Quark as well.

And I still remember the very first thing the Quark rep said when we went to the local release/info event for Quark 6: "Our biggest new feature: 99 undos!" That was literally the first thing she talked about when she took the stage. I almost got up and walked out right then.

Many of you may not remember but back in the day, when ID came out. It was touted as the "Quark Killer" I remember rolling my eyes, because at that point Quark dominated the industry. Today of course the roles have reversed, but having said that I'm all for competition however Quark is going to have to do better in order to improve their market share. Right now Adobe has lock in and unless Quark provides compelling features they will be relegated to where they are.

I cringe whenever I have to open one of my legacy Quark files. I loathe that program. InDesign (As stated elsewhere here) is not perfect, but the user experience is leaps and bounds ahead of Quark. I have advanced in InDesign at 4 times the rate I would have in Quark. I don't care how many times Quark changes their logo, they are still the same, cumbersome software underneath. The best thing about Quark was that Robot / Alien easter egg. I used Quark daily for 10 years, then in '04 switched to InDesign. I will never go back.