Quark Opinions Cross The Pond

Not only am I the top two hits on Google for “Quark Sucks”, but my opin­ions on the Quark-InDesign war are being quot­ed and ref­er­enced all over the place. My posts have been cit­ed on sev­er­al blogs, and I’ve even had cor­re­spon­dance from Adobe employ­ees and for­mer Quark employ­ees send me cor­re­spon­dance regard­ing my editorials.

The lat­est ref­er­ence impress­es me a lit­tle. It’s from Alex Singleton, an aclaimed and high-profile ana­lyst with Britain’s Adam Smith Institute, a pub­lic pol­i­cy think-tank.

Quark vs Indesign:

“

Here’s an inter­est­ing blog on how Quark is giv­ing the DTP mar­ket to Adobe:

“Never before have I wit­nessed a com­pa­ny so cre­ative­ly adver­tis­ing the supe­ri­or­i­ty of a prod­uct or com­pa­ny as I have Quark, Inc.‘s efforts toward pro­mot­ing InDesign and Adobe.”

It’s well worth read­ing the full blog piece. Since it was writ­ten, Quark did final­ly release a Mac OS X native ver­sion of XPress–version 6. But because InDesign is just such a bet­ter prod­uct, I can’t help think­ing that Quark 6 was too lit­tle, too late. 

”

I believe, Alex, that Quark has always been a too-little, too-late com­pa­ny. Until recent­ly, how­ev­er, they were the only choice avail­able for pro­fes­sion­al grade desk­top lay­out. Now that there’s real com­pe­ti­tion, Quark’s foibles and delayed action are no longer being tolerated.

11 thoughts on “Quark Opinions Cross The Pond”

  3. Anonymous

    Hello,

    I’m mak­ing the choice NOW for my lit­tle pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny whether to buy ID or Quark. The design­ers would love to have ID. If we choose ID, what indepth ques­tions should I ask my print­ers to get them to think about the issues upfront B4 we are about to go to press?

    Any com­ments would be v much appreciated.

    Yelyah

  4. Pariah Burke

    Hi, Yelyah.

    First, you need to real­ize that print­ers are resis­tant to change. They’ve had to use Quark for a very long time. For the, Quark works, so the pre­vail­ing men­tal­i­ty is: If it works, why fix it? When design­ers get more cre­ative pow­er and free­dom, it makes print­ers’ jobs hard­er. It forces them to upgrade hard­ware and soft­ware they’re try­ing to hold onto as long as possible.

    You’ll like­ly hear com­plaints from your print­ers. Don’t heed them. Make the deci­sion that works for you, your design­ers, and your future. Quark is dying–more through the efforts of Quark’s man­age­ment than Adobe’s InDesign. Think about your invest­ment in terms of train­ing and over­head for the next five years. Your print­ers will adapt to the deci­sions you make, rather than you adapt­ing your busi­ness to their don’t-change attitude.

    Being by ask­ing about their RIPs: What lev­el of PostScript is sup­port­ed? Both IND and QRK can use PostScript 1–3, but the work is much hard­er for your design­ers if the RIP does­n’t do PS 3.

    Ask if the RIP(s) han­dle true Adobe PostScript, or if they’re opti­mized for Quark PostScript. Quark out­puts “dirty” PostScript, and RIPs opti­mized to work with it have trou­ble with the real thing.

    Ask what file for­mats the RIP can han­dle. Avoid EPS. If the print­ers are worth their salt, their RIPs han­dle PDFs. If so, then they need­n’t have InDesign on hand; your peo­ple can send InDesign-exported PDFs to the print­er for output.

    Still, you should get your print­ers to pur­chase a copy of InDesign so they can work with your IND files and pack­ages when needed.

    If you choose InDesign, teach your design­ers to work with the con­cerns of the print­ers. Teach the design­ers to use the Separations and Overprint pre­views in InDesign CS. Have them proof before send­ing to press. This will save your print­ers many headaches, and make them more will­ing to work with you and InDesign.

  5. Yelyah

    Hey, thanks for get­ting back to me. ’tis real­ly help­ful. Your site is great for info on this debate that I did­n’t know was going on until 2weeks ago! Will have a chat to the print­ers and let you know.

    Cheers from NZ.

  7. Dan Margard, Stockholm Sweden

    I just got Indesign CS and Quark 6.1.

    Indesign is just a far bet­ter, much more mod­ern prod­uct. Quark is not much bet­ter since 3.3 for 10 years ago.

    Too lit­tle, too late. Sure true.

    Indesign rules!

  8. Lertie

    Oh man, I was prac­ti­cal­ly in tears when I found your site on google while search­ing des­per­ate­ly for a solu­tion to Quark crash­ing. Now I’m in tears from laugh­ing so hard at these Quark rants. I hear you ALL! Quark is the epit­o­me of suckage. 

    I have switched to InDesign but every now and then a client insists on Quark–and I’m almost to the pont of refus­ing to use Quark even for them. Quark has a pathet­ic app that now won’t even open a doc I spend hours on today. They have NO cus­tomer sup­port worth try­ing and their prices and updates are a joke. 

    To the com­pa­nies and print­ers who are “stuck” with Quark… get unstuck–NOW. Bite the bul­let, fork over some extra $ to Adobe and you will be much bet­ter off–it’ll save you mon­ey in the long run by not hav­ing to pay Quark’s extor­tion lev­el prices, lost hours and morale from cre­ative staff mem­bers suf­fer­ing with crash­es and bugs, etc. But more impor­tant­ly, ID WORKS!

    Thanks for a spot to rant, Pariah… let me know when you round up a posse to go pum­mel the already half-dead corpse of Quark.

  9. Pariah Burke

    Dan, you feel so strong­ly you said it twice? ;-)

    Lertie:

    “Thanks for a spot to rant, Pariah… let me know when you round up a posse to go pum­mel the already half-dead corpse of Quark.”

    My plea­sure! Hmm. If we’re going to round a up a posse, we ought to do it soon. If we wait too long, we’ll have to trav­el all the way to India.

  10. Chuck

    OK, while we’re cel­e­brat­ing (or look­ing for­ward to) the death of Quark, is there reli­able 3rd par­ty tech sup­port for Quark avail­able? So, in the mean­while, we don’t have to give them our money…

  11. Pariah Burke

    Not that I’m aware of, Chuck. Wouldn’t it be nice, though?

    There is the QuarkXPress Mailing List, a decade-old e‑mail list of (most­ly) pro­fes­sion­al Quark users. Many tech­ni­cal ques­tions get answered there.

Comments are closed.