That said, I think Quark is moving in the wrong direction by trying to incorporate "interactivity" into XPress for Flash and web. It should follow Adobe's lead and roll out separate products for these purposes, if for nothing else than to avoid the bloat that these unnecessary things bring to XPress.
Yeah, they already tried that once with Quark 4. What was it called Intermedia or something. Biggest waste of $600 I ever spent.
I hope Quark brings some good competition, but seriously I nor the company I work for will switch to Quark. We went all InDesign and haven't looked back. As lead Applescripter, InDesign is worlds ahead for workflow options (at least last time I looked). Quark will be second fiddle forever now.
QuarkXPress 3.x made me decide to become a web designer. Haha.
I eventually learned InDesign, then was forced kicking and screaming (more like pissing and moaning) to learn QuarkXPress 7. Now I'm back to using InDesign again (CS3) and there's a lot of stuff that I miss about QuarkXPress 7 that seemed more efficient than InDesign.
I'm pretty agnostic at this point. And I see my attitude before as a sign of my immaturity.
Adobe has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Quark has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Competition is a good thing. The industry is growing up, and I hope the design community can grow up too.
I think QuarkXPress 8 is going to be pretty excellent, and I can't wait to check it out.
I thought new software was supposed to start off with '1' in their version name; they can't just jump to '8'.
Although the name vaguely resembles this killer piece of software I used back in 1999 on my Intergraph workstation running Windows NT 4.0. I also vaguely remember the company just letting things go, feature upgrades were far and few between, and then--WHAM!--I was using InDesign 1.0.
InDesign 1.0 was a totally ridiculous - and virtually unusable - piece of software.
And nearly as good as Quark 5 was.
The point is Quark f-ed up. And it didn't help that Fred Ebrahimi was a gigantic idiot, writing checks his development team couldn't possibly cash. (Hehe, I love 'Top Gun'.)
On Mac system InDesign 1.0 demanded unreasonable amount of RAM and crashed all the time (on my B&W G3 of those times) while Quark 5 had "great brave new Fit Box to Picture" command and was more stable than 4.11
It was Quark 6 that was a mess and big mistake. It was a messy behemoth with features it can not properly do (like PDF export). XPress 6.5 was better, but still, frankly, I wish that they just port 4.11 to Mac OS X's Carbon without any extra features (except for multiple Undos/Redos, maybe).
Quark 7? Well, I do have to use it when some German agency sends us qxps from Quark 7 Passport (with several European languages on different layers). And it more or less works. But. Why couldn't this application to load just a bit faster?
Quark 7? Well, I do have to use it when some German agency sends us qxps from Quark 7 Passport (with several European languages on different layers).
That is one thing that inDesign totally sucks at. Once a text box is created it keeps its language preference so after you translate you can't spell check. There is a way to spell check a single text box in another language but not a layer or a document. At least none that I've been able to discover.
That is one thing that inDesign totally sucks at. Once a text box is created it keeps its language preference so after you translate you can't spell check. There is a way to spell check a single text box in another language but not a layer or a document. At least none that I've been able to discover.
Language in InDesign is not a text box attribute. You can have text in a text box that is one language and other text that is another language in that same box.
You change the language using the Character palette: select the text you want and the change the language from the pop-up menu in the Character palette.
InDesign's spell check will use the appropriate dictionary for that language.
Language in InDesign is not a text box attribute. You can have text in a text box that is one language and other text that is another language in that same box.
You change the language using the Character palette: select the text you want and the change the language from the pop-up menu in the Character palette.
InDesign's spell check will use the appropriate dictionary for that language.
You are correct but essentially the problem is that once you draw a text box it has a default character style in the language the document was created in. In order to change the document language you have to change the character styles attribute of every style in the document.
I also use both and have for years, but while the people pointing out Quarks previous nastyness are correct, I think that they are forgetting how bad a product Adobe CS3 is and (more importantly) why.
The two main reasons CS3 sucks are:
- It's basically a "Windows only" product that ignores Mac users and Apple UI conventions
- It's got everything *including* the kitchen sink in it (bloated crap)
If Quark is redesigning XPress to both focus on the single task at hand (Publishing), and trying to make the UI for Mac more intuitive and useable, then that's pretty much exactly what is needed IMO. Adobe's CS suite does so many things it does *none* of them well.
You can't use InDesign without being pummelled to the mat with the needs and quirks of the entire CS suite, especially the ill-advised, virtually useless "online" components. Hell, even with a brand new Mac Pro and 10 Gigs of RAM CS 2 is hardly even useable. I spend the majority of my time "managing" the program, trying to get it to stop downloading optional components in the background, and letting Adobe know for the millionth time that I don't actually give a crap about their online picture resources they want to sell me.
Adobe has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Quark has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems..
But designers generally work in one or the other most of the time, and since it is difficult to master them both, most people end up with a preference. Because we often reuse pieces and parts of documents, it is convenient to standardize on one application. In our case we switched to inDesign for all new documents and only use Quark for revising old qxd files. Lately I've started redoing the old Quark files in inDesign, if they are short documents, and at my own expense just because I prefer inDesign much more now that I've gotten so use to it.
I also use both and have for years, but while the people pointing out Quarks previous nastyness are correct, I think that they are forgetting how bad a product Adobe CS3 is and (more importantly) why.
The two main reasons CS3 sucks are:
- It's basically a "Windows only" product that ignores Mac users and Apple UI conventions
- It's got everything *including* the kitchen sink in it (bloated crap)
If Quark is redesigning XPress to both focus on the single task at hand (Publishing), and trying to make the UI for Mac more intuitive and useable, then that's pretty much exactly what is needed IMO. Adobe's CS suite does so many things it does *none* of them well.
You can't use InDesign without being pummelled to the mat with the needs and quirks of the entire CS suite, especially the ill-advised, virtually useless "online" components. Hell, even with a brand new Mac Pro and 10 Gigs of RAM CS 2 is hardly even useable. I spend the majority of my time "managing" the program, trying to get it to stop downloading optional components in the background, and letting Adobe know for the millionth time that I don't actually give a crap about their online picture resources they want to sell me.
really? i don't have any nagware problems with cs3. i'm not sure what you're doing so differently than i am but i have no idea what you're talking about here. plus, you're complaining about cs2 on a mac pro? it doesn't even run natively on that computer.
After 10 years of Quark, switched to InDesign 2 and have seen nothing but improvement in this app. While Iwasn't thrilled at Adobe's move to the "Suite"-life, InDesign continues to impress me in it's feature set, mature user interface, and evolving user experience.
Reviewing Q8's screenshots certainly reveals their overdue adoption of a palette-based interface, and yet Quark has so many things to catch up on. Their layers operation, for instance, is so poorly thought out as to be near useless. In fact, so much of Quark's operational approach is cut from the 90's graphic apps' cloth that I doubt they will ever be considered a viable alternative to InDesign.
I remember seeing their booth at this year's MacWorld, and it was pretty much empty, if that's a sign of anything.
I love InDesign and the PDF workflow. I could never go back. But I do wish Adobe would address little bugs that seem to run across several versions, and not just implement new features.
Most of the files I work with (catalogs) get revised all the time. It was quite a bit of work converting from Quark to InDesign, and the thought of doing it all again in reverse isn't something I relish.
They're both great programs, though. The only time I use Quark anymore is when I have to auto-add pages, flowing in text files.
You are correct but essentially the problem is that once you draw a text box it has a default character style in the language the document was created in. In order to change the document language you have to change the character styles attribute of every style in the document.
So if you want your document in a certain language, wouldn't you just make sure it has defaulted to the language you need before you go full speed ahead on it, instead of realizing after you're done that you typed it all in the wrong language? Either that, or make good use of style sheets, and it's a quick change depending on how many style sheets you use. I always make sure I set up my documents in InDesign according to the needs of the project, so that any changes and corrections can be made quick and with little effort.
How does QuarkXpress handle languages? Can it only do language on a per-document basis? In that case I would say InDesign has the leg-up.
I had trouble when first switching to InDesign, but now that I understand how it works differently from Quark, it is over all much better - this I can say for sure since I had to go back to Quark at a job for over a year and it was painful. That and in the print shop industry, the separation preview in InDesign is a killer feature.
So if you want your document in a certain language, wouldn't you just make sure it has defaulted to the language you need before you go full speed ahead on it, instead of realizing after you're done that you typed it all in the wrong language?
The discussion was about translation. As in, the document was already made in one language, now you need to make a different language version of it based on that original document without redoing it from scratch, just replacing the text. I don't know these programs, nor do I know the demands of translation, I don't know if there's something that the users aren't realizing.
Comments
That said, I think Quark is moving in the wrong direction by trying to incorporate "interactivity" into XPress for Flash and web. It should follow Adobe's lead and roll out separate products for these purposes, if for nothing else than to avoid the bloat that these unnecessary things bring to XPress.
Yeah, they already tried that once with Quark 4. What was it called Intermedia or something. Biggest waste of $600 I ever spent.
I eventually learned InDesign, then was forced kicking and screaming (more like pissing and moaning) to learn QuarkXPress 7. Now I'm back to using InDesign again (CS3) and there's a lot of stuff that I miss about QuarkXPress 7 that seemed more efficient than InDesign.
I'm pretty agnostic at this point. And I see my attitude before as a sign of my immaturity.
Adobe has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Quark has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Competition is a good thing. The industry is growing up, and I hope the design community can grow up too.
I think QuarkXPress 8 is going to be pretty excellent, and I can't wait to check it out.
I thought new software was supposed to start off with '1' in their version name; they can't just jump to '8'.
Although the name vaguely resembles this killer piece of software I used back in 1999 on my Intergraph workstation running Windows NT 4.0. I also vaguely remember the company just letting things go, feature upgrades were far and few between, and then--WHAM!--I was using InDesign 1.0.
InDesign 1.0 was a totally ridiculous - and virtually unusable - piece of software.
And nearly as good as Quark 5 was.
The point is Quark f-ed up. And it didn't help that Fred Ebrahimi was a gigantic idiot, writing checks his development team couldn't possibly cash. (Hehe, I love 'Top Gun'.)
And nearly as good as Quark 5 was.
On Intergraph workstation? Could be.
On Mac system InDesign 1.0 demanded unreasonable amount of RAM and crashed all the time (on my B&W G3 of those times) while Quark 5 had "great brave new Fit Box to Picture" command and was more stable than 4.11
It was Quark 6 that was a mess and big mistake. It was a messy behemoth with features it can not properly do (like PDF export). XPress 6.5 was better, but still, frankly, I wish that they just port 4.11 to Mac OS X's Carbon without any extra features (except for multiple Undos/Redos, maybe).
Quark 7? Well, I do have to use it when some German agency sends us qxps from Quark 7 Passport (with several European languages on different layers). And it more or less works. But. Why couldn't this application to load just a bit faster?
Quark 7? Well, I do have to use it when some German agency sends us qxps from Quark 7 Passport (with several European languages on different layers).
That is one thing that inDesign totally sucks at. Once a text box is created it keeps its language preference so after you translate you can't spell check. There is a way to spell check a single text box in another language but not a layer or a document. At least none that I've been able to discover.
That is one thing that inDesign totally sucks at. Once a text box is created it keeps its language preference so after you translate you can't spell check. There is a way to spell check a single text box in another language but not a layer or a document. At least none that I've been able to discover.
Language in InDesign is not a text box attribute. You can have text in a text box that is one language and other text that is another language in that same box.
You change the language using the Character palette: select the text you want and the change the language from the pop-up menu in the Character palette.
InDesign's spell check will use the appropriate dictionary for that language.
Language in InDesign is not a text box attribute. You can have text in a text box that is one language and other text that is another language in that same box.
You change the language using the Character palette: select the text you want and the change the language from the pop-up menu in the Character palette.
InDesign's spell check will use the appropriate dictionary for that language.
You are correct but essentially the problem is that once you draw a text box it has a default character style in the language the document was created in. In order to change the document language you have to change the character styles attribute of every style in the document.
The two main reasons CS3 sucks are:
- It's basically a "Windows only" product that ignores Mac users and Apple UI conventions
- It's got everything *including* the kitchen sink in it (bloated crap)
If Quark is redesigning XPress to both focus on the single task at hand (Publishing), and trying to make the UI for Mac more intuitive and useable, then that's pretty much exactly what is needed IMO. Adobe's CS suite does so many things it does *none* of them well.
You can't use InDesign without being pummelled to the mat with the needs and quirks of the entire CS suite, especially the ill-advised, virtually useless "online" components. Hell, even with a brand new Mac Pro and 10 Gigs of RAM CS 2 is hardly even useable. I spend the majority of my time "managing" the program, trying to get it to stop downloading optional components in the background, and letting Adobe know for the millionth time that I don't actually give a crap about their online picture resources they want to sell me.
Yeah, they already tried that once with Quark 4. What was it called Intermedia or something. Biggest waste of $600 I ever spent.
Yeah - QuarkImmedia. One of the worst pieces of software - EVER.
Adobe has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems.
Quark has a great product with some terrific features and a few problems..
But designers generally work in one or the other most of the time, and since it is difficult to master them both, most people end up with a preference. Because we often reuse pieces and parts of documents, it is convenient to standardize on one application. In our case we switched to inDesign for all new documents and only use Quark for revising old qxd files. Lately I've started redoing the old Quark files in inDesign, if they are short documents, and at my own expense just because I prefer inDesign much more now that I've gotten so use to it.
I also use both and have for years, but while the people pointing out Quarks previous nastyness are correct, I think that they are forgetting how bad a product Adobe CS3 is and (more importantly) why.
The two main reasons CS3 sucks are:
- It's basically a "Windows only" product that ignores Mac users and Apple UI conventions
- It's got everything *including* the kitchen sink in it (bloated crap)
If Quark is redesigning XPress to both focus on the single task at hand (Publishing), and trying to make the UI for Mac more intuitive and useable, then that's pretty much exactly what is needed IMO. Adobe's CS suite does so many things it does *none* of them well.
You can't use InDesign without being pummelled to the mat with the needs and quirks of the entire CS suite, especially the ill-advised, virtually useless "online" components. Hell, even with a brand new Mac Pro and 10 Gigs of RAM CS 2 is hardly even useable. I spend the majority of my time "managing" the program, trying to get it to stop downloading optional components in the background, and letting Adobe know for the millionth time that I don't actually give a crap about their online picture resources they want to sell me.
really? i don't have any nagware problems with cs3. i'm not sure what you're doing so differently than i am but i have no idea what you're talking about here. plus, you're complaining about cs2 on a mac pro? it doesn't even run natively on that computer.
Reviewing Q8's screenshots certainly reveals their overdue adoption of a palette-based interface, and yet Quark has so many things to catch up on. Their layers operation, for instance, is so poorly thought out as to be near useless. In fact, so much of Quark's operational approach is cut from the 90's graphic apps' cloth that I doubt they will ever be considered a viable alternative to InDesign.
I love InDesign and the PDF workflow. I could never go back. But I do wish Adobe would address little bugs that seem to run across several versions, and not just implement new features.
They're both great programs, though. The only time I use Quark anymore is when I have to auto-add pages, flowing in text files.
You are correct but essentially the problem is that once you draw a text box it has a default character style in the language the document was created in. In order to change the document language you have to change the character styles attribute of every style in the document.
So if you want your document in a certain language, wouldn't you just make sure it has defaulted to the language you need before you go full speed ahead on it, instead of realizing after you're done that you typed it all in the wrong language? Either that, or make good use of style sheets, and it's a quick change depending on how many style sheets you use. I always make sure I set up my documents in InDesign according to the needs of the project, so that any changes and corrections can be made quick and with little effort.
How does QuarkXpress handle languages? Can it only do language on a per-document basis? In that case I would say InDesign has the leg-up.
I had trouble when first switching to InDesign, but now that I understand how it works differently from Quark, it is over all much better - this I can say for sure since I had to go back to Quark at a job for over a year and it was painful. That and in the print shop industry, the separation preview in InDesign is a killer feature.
So if you want your document in a certain language, wouldn't you just make sure it has defaulted to the language you need before you go full speed ahead on it, instead of realizing after you're done that you typed it all in the wrong language?
The discussion was about translation. As in, the document was already made in one language, now you need to make a different language version of it based on that original document without redoing it from scratch, just replacing the text. I don't know these programs, nor do I know the demands of translation, I don't know if there's something that the users aren't realizing.