Tune In To Quark Sweepstakes

6 thoughts on “Tune In To Quark Sweepstakes”

1. 

   Bill 25 April 2005

   Yupp! They should help their friend(APPLE) sell some iPods. Ofcourse Quark does­nt need to dis­trib­ute iPods for their adver­tise­ment, bcuase 7.0 is going to be a big bang.Start of a new era.Competition wud b com­plete­ly erased.

2. 

   Samuel John Klein 26 April 2005

   I hear a lot of heat about XPress 7.0 and buzz about New Worldbreaking Features In The Offing, but I see very lit­tle actu­al light. 

   While I am very fond of InDesign (the whole CS) I still have and main­tain a per­son­al Quark seat. It’s ver­sion 6.5. It has much to com­mend it and is a need­ed update from 6.1 (adding QuarkVista and PSD Import, which I high­ly approve of) . 

   >From what I’ve seen of CS2, with things like the Bridge and LiveTrace in Illustrator (astound­ing), if Adobe isn’t inno­vat­ing it’s at least evlov­ing, and evolv­ing, and in the right direc­tion. And we know what they’re com­ing out with-they’ve brought it, pub­licly (there are very illu­mi­nat­ing arti­cles else­where on this site).

   My cranky (and some­what snot­ty) take on the pro-Quark com­ments I have seen is…oh, yeah? What I’ve seen amounts to “Quark works bet­ter for me” (and why should­n’t it? We all work best with the tools we like, and there’s noth­ing wrong with that, but that’s not a rea­son not to check out CS) and “Quark 7.0 is gonna hit it out of the ball­park and take it all to a new lev­el”, with noth­ing to back it up.

   That last one real­ly is start­ing to irri­tate me (I’m still in my cranky state, please bear with me). It’s all well and good to say that XPress 7.0 is going to blow Adobe’s doors off, but is it too much to ask to have this talk walk itself? Me, and this is entire­ly per­son­al, I’m crav­ing screen­shots at least, because I’m firm­ly of the opin­ion that one of XPress’s biggest stum­bling blocks is the inter­face, which has­n’t changed remark­ably in the last 10 or so years. 

   Remember, it’s look and feel. XPress looks great in Aqua, but it feels like XPress 4. (or maybe even 3, I’ve nev­er used that one). I’ve used Adobe InDesign since 2.0, and they refine and pol­ish the inter­face every time out. 

   Moreover, though I’m decid­ed­ly in love with QuarkVista, it’s still a lit­tle flawed. I have a 2‑brain G4, which still rarely breaks a sweat even two years on, and QuarkVista will bring XPress to its knees, dis­pay­ing the beach­ball for some­times 15 sec­onds or more when pro­cess­ing effects and fil­ters. Is QuarkVista finished-or a work in progress?

   Going for­ward, I may have ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to use XPress but as I get more and more con­ver­sant with InDesign I need com­pelling rea­sons to con­sid­er using XPress. Certainly I have con­tributed to this site and have put my pro-InDesign cards on the table, at least I hope, but I’m still XPress-friendly. Regardless of my con­tri­bu­tion to this site, I am a paid, reg­is­tered XPress user, paid for with My Own Good Money. So far, though, I can’t recall hear­ing any­thing except “XPress 7.0 will rule”.

   How? Why?

   Is it too much to ask to put some meat on dem bones?

3. 

   Janes Mann 30 April 2005

   Well said samuel!!!, even i am a strong sup­port­er of XPress, I have been eager­ly wait­ing for 7.0.I had a pre­view of XPress 7.0 & man u r right it do have some won­der­full fea­tures which can change the way pub­lish­ing indus­try works.After 7.0 there will be no com­petion, XPress will rule.

4. 

   Samuel John Klein 1 May 2005

   Followup to Janes Mann:

   Please excuse the imper­ti­nence but your reply to my post­ing is exact­ly the sort of com­men­tary I was crit­i­ciz­ing. To be per­haps a lit­tle blunt (no offense intend­ed) it’s as though you’re respond­ing to some oth­er post, per­haps made by some­one else.

   An exam­ple from your reply:

   have been eager­ly wait­ing for 7.0.I had a pre­view of XPress 7.0 & man u r right it do have some won­der­full fea­tures which can change the way pub­lish­ing indus­try works

   You had a pre­view? Lucky you. You haven’t men­tioned whether or not you’re bound by an NDA so maybe you can fill in the detals of what you saw. Actually, I opined not at all on the mer­its of what­ev­er new fea­tures V7 has-aside from the arti­cle in this mon­th’s X‑Ray Magazine, which has some glimpses of the direc­tion the inter­face is going in (glimpses only-tantalizing, but still) and the OpenType sup­port which *has* been announced, I know noth­ing about V7. 

   What I did com­ment on was QuarkVista (which I very much like despite a cer­tain flaw) and PSD Import (which Adobe has trumped in CS2 but is worth­while for Quark nonethe­less and needful).

   But those two are V6.5 fea­tures, not V7. 

   I’m eager to see more about V7 because, even though I am pro-InDesign, my first was XPress and you always remem­ber your first. I also just like using XPress.

   Returning to your com­ment, the state­ment that V7 has “some won­der­full fea­tures which can change the way pub­lish­ing indus­try works” just leaves me scratch­ing my head. Given that, accord­ing to buzz, the major­i­ty of the installed pre­press work­flows still address Quark, that does­n’t actu­al­ly sound like a very good thing for Quark to go and do. I don’t know about whether or not the pub­lish­ing indus­try needs rede­f­i­n­i­tion; it was there before I came along and will be there long after I am but a con­cept myself.

   If Quark rede­fined the pub­lish­ing indus­try, would­n’t that make a new and more lev­el play­ing field that Quark would just have to stake out all over again? Anyway, from my point of view, it’s not so much about redefin­ing the pub­lish­ing indus­try but putting a tool at my dis­pos­al that lets me con­cen­trate on cre­at­ing and not mak­ing my files tasty for the printer. 

   The last remark, “After 7.0 there will be no com­petion, XPress will rule.” I find a bit con­found­ing. Quark already has, and look where it is now; play­ing catch-up to Adobe. Such is the mag­ic of a competition-free play­ing field. 

   Why, again, will Quark rule?

   Like I said, meat on dem bones. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. I can respect your view as a Quark fan, but if you’re going to tout the same line through­out your posts, I don’t think it’s entire­ly impolitic of me to ask you to pro­vide need­ed illumination.
   

5. 

   SUE BECKLEY 31 August 2005

   i real­ly don’t think i could use this pro­gram myself, but i’m not real­ly tru­ly sure what it does.

6. 

   Bill Kaminski 30 March 2006

   Quark has been around for as long as they have because of the high qual­i­ty that goes into every Quark prod­uct. I know I will nev­er use every Quark prod­uct, but i will have no wor­ry when it comes to using the Quark prod­ucts that I need. I just wish oth­er com­pa­nies prod­ucts were as good as Quark. Look at it this way, with your high stan­dards, it gives every­one else some­thing to shot for. I tried the rest now I am using the best.

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