[godzookie2k]

OF HELL.

So I come from primarily an interactive/motion graphics background. Not to say that I haven't done print, I've done quite a bit. Just not in a LONG time. Anyways, job security being threatened by company close out I jumped ship from my past employment and, feeling the itch for print again took a position offered to me by a magazine for an Ad designer position. Pay cut not so hot, but work environment seemed better the people are nicer, and I get much more creative freedom. I started early last week, bright eyed and bushy tailed. By 1pm on my first day I remembered my fond, cuddly, BITTER, BITTER HADRED for that spawn of satan named Quark. Goddamn I forgot how much I hate this program. geeeearrrrgh. A week later I'm finally beginning to grow that eleventh finger required to do Quarks rediculously retarded keyboard shortcuts and am slowly beginning to become numb to its constant stabs with a rusty screwdriver to my eyes. Grrr........(again)

However, returning to print is good. As opposed to web, where during the design process you spend your time working on the actual *final product* with print there is no better feeling than getting a case of the actual magazines or brochures or whatever back from the printer and seeing your work in something like....tangible and stuff. Ahhh so nice.

Ok, sorry, I just wanted to rant.

(this melodramatic rant of doomination was brought to you by Nick)

[MikeM32]

And what would you use as opposed to Quark for print? Being in the Print business also there simply is no alternative. Typography is an art-form not just secretarial dribble to support someones illustration or image. The type on the page you layout is just as imprtant (if nor moreso) than the "rest of it". Remember the basics of design and you'll be fine.

Welcome back to Quark, glad you could join the rest of us who can design in a real typography program with now output problems. I'll leave the output problems for the InDesign staff at Adobe to figure out.

I've been working on the production end of graphics since I started 5 yrs ago, and I can't stress enough how essential Quark is to the success of the print campaign. When we get something like an InDesign or (shudeering the thought) PAGEMAKER We sometimes struggle or just toss our cookies.

This has been a public service announcement from the people that have to deal with 'The designers" file formats.....

As for the (so called) keyboard shortcut problems you are facing, I just don't see it. I understand Quarks keyboard shortcust better than any Adobe products. Here's a great example of a "conundrum"; In InDesign "Z" = the zoom tool, now imagine you just drew a text box and you wanted to "Z" zoom in on it. Suddenly you're typing the letter "Z" all over your text box. WTF?!??! I find that VERY VERY VERY Annoying.

In Quark you draw a text box and if you want to Zoom in you use the Control key. Much better results, and very easy to remember (for me anyway). It just seems they shouldn't be confusing one option with another.

Oh yeah, and InDesign has lots of output problems on the service bureau end. If we can't RIP your file, then there's problems for you.

KTHANKSBYETHEEND

Mike

[ 05-18-2002: Message edited by: MikeM32 ]

[art_director]

been using quark now for over ten years and have a love hate relationship with the app. not being a production person i evaluate quark based on it's ability to help my design work flow. up to quark v.5 there had been many bumps in the road. users like myself have sent feature requests (ie. multiple undos, etc) to quark for many, many years only to have them fall on deaf ears.

then came quark v.5....

i can say with a straight face that i now HATE quark. v.5 is a terrible app that shouldn't called a beta much less be sold for $900. among it's issues:

- when v.5 is running it will cause your computer to stall and lag EVERY ten minutes; quark says you turning off apple talk fixes the issue -- not a suitable work around for most

- not ready for os x; runs in classic but looks like crap and crashes frequently

- having guides on and working with picture boxes makes v.5 crash

- web tools / functionality are a joke, besides, quark's market is not web, it's print. they should have spent that time enhancing the print side of the app rather than that ****

- converting files from v.4 causes crashes and corrupts files

- printing issues, printing issues, printing issues


up till this "upgrade" i was a quark supporter. with all these issues and the fact that it took quark five years to put out this horrible excuse for an app i have started to hate the app. i'm even evaluating indesign as a replacement.

mike's comments are well-heard but my understanding is that indesign 2 is much better than the first shot at it. one of my primary color houses is even switching over rather than purchasing quark v.5. they've had adobe out training people and soon they'll take the plunge. if quark doesn't get it together soon i'll be doing the same...[/LIST]

[Griggsy]

Originally posted by art_director:
<STRONG>then came quark v.5....</STRONG>

Man after just going back to print (hateful) after years doing 3d and web, getting back to grips with 4 and it's joys and foibles (nice way of saying it's the most idiosyncratic app out there, mind it's quick!)was nice, don't evn tell me about 5, I remember when 4 came out, the studio I was with at the time stuck with 3 for a year just to be on the safe side, can't see me switching to 5 unless large bullet firing implement placed by my head.

MikeM32<STRONG>Oh yeah, and InDesign has lots of output problems on the service bureau end. If we can't RIP your file, then there's problems for you.</STRONG>

Indesign really that bad what if you output the whole thing to print ready PDF, tried that and worked!

[SunSeeker]

MikeM32

As for the (so called) keyboard shortcut problems you are facing, I just don't see it. I understand Quarks keyboard shortcust better than any Adobe products. Here's a great example of a "conundrum"; In InDesign "Z" = the zoom tool, now imagine you just drew a text box and you wanted to "Z" zoom in on it. Suddenly you're typing the letter "Z" all over your text box. WTF?!??! I find that VERY VERY VERY Annoying.

In Quark you draw a text box and if you want to Zoom in you use the Control key. Much better results, and very easy to remember (for me anyway). It just seems they shouldn't be confusing one option with another.

Simple. Dont use 'Z' to change to the zoom tool while in a text box, It Doesn't Work.

In InDesign you draw a text box and if you want to Zoom in you use the Command key and Space Bar. Much better results, and very easy to remember (for me anyway). It just seems they shouldn't be confusing one option with another. Thats why it makes sense to use most of the same shortcuts that have existed in Photoshop (does anyone not use Photoshop?) for years

As for output problems, is Quark immune?

[godzookie2k]

Originally posted by SunSeeker:
<STRONG>As for output problems, is Quark immune?</STRONG>

Damn, you know a printer that'll output InDesign files?

Nick

[godzookie2k]

Originally posted by MikeM32:
<STRONG>And what would you use as opposed to Quark for print? Being in the Print business also there simply is no alternative. Typography is an art-form not just secretarial dribble to support someones ill&lt;snip&gt;</STRONG>

see, thats my gripe, there *is* no alternative. InDesign is great and its comin' with tha' thunduh' but I know for a fact that my studio won't be switching over any time soon, nor do I think many other design studios/publications will be switching over very soon either. So I'm stuck being *forced* to do my typography with a crappy program simply because it *works*. Ok, crappy is a bad adjective. QuarkXpress 4 does what it does well *enough* to be the standard. But it could be so so so so so so much better. But Quark as a company is so absolutely ass faced about everything.

Example. Everyone and their mother was *****ing and moaning about how Quark 5 was taking forever and a year to show up. Quark claimed its because they were testing it on every variation of mac ever created (or something) now it finally ships, (I've heard, no first hand) that its a pile of crap with minimum updates and maximum bugs and once again we are all forced to hold our dicks and continue using Quark 4. 3 more years from now Quark'll no doubt release a Xpress 5.1 that'll still suck and eventually 5.1.3 will come a few years later and it'll actually work. Maybe sometime by the end of the millenium Quark 5.5 will ship and we'll actually get X compatibility but to be honest I aint holding my breath.

I've finally resorted to using Illustrator to do any and all titling and exporting EPS's because I can do it so much faster than sitting in Xpress beating my head against a wall looking at jaggy type and pixelated pictures simultaneously trying to make my type and image go hand in hand when I have incomplete visual information.

Quark is vital, I aint arguing that. But DAMN is it a pain in my ass. For freelance work I'll probably start investigating InDesign as an option (though the lack of printers in my area accepting ID files might affect the potential) but at work I know I'll be stuck in Xpress hell for god knows how long.

[ 05-19-2002: Message edited by: godzookie2k ]

[mitchell_pgh]

MacDesign Magazine is using InDesign only, and they seem to be doing OK... Other then the fact that they had a type issue on the front of one of their covers (he he he)...

[Cemetery Man]

If a printer isn't willing to buy InDesign (or any other program they don't have) the second they get a file made with it, they are a very poor printing company. In my opinion, they should be on top of things enough to know that the number of people using InDesign is growing and they should have the program before they get a job using it. The likleyhood of the later is slim, I'm sure, but if a printing company isn't willing to stay on top of things then they deserve a loss of customers, a bad reputation and whatever else bad decision making leads to.

[jholmes]

I've always thought Quark was designed by production people for production people. They aren't worried about if you can work a design in it - they just want it to rip without choking the imagesetter.

I can't tell you how many times I've been working a concept and had to come to a complete stop in the creative process to try and figure out which sixty three keys you have to press to get Quark to give you the dialog box you need. The only thing I ever liked in Quark was the Alien.

Say what you will about Pagemaker but back when Quark first came out I could not understand why in PM to get all of you typographic controls you hit Command T. As in Type. In Quark it was a series of boxes initiated by shift command D. Very intuitive.

Al this for just $900? Golly what a deal.

[MacMerc.com]

Speaking as one of those production people, I'd have to refute any allegations that Quark came from us or was made for us. It is just as cumbersome and unintuitive at the production end as it is for the folks in the creative department. It's a piece of crap but it just happens to be an industry standard piece of crap. I say will all stop using it. Use InDesign, PageMaker, Illustrator, Freehand, Canvas ...hell, use MS Publish but lets de-throne this tyrant and move on!

[Theodour]

So, how do you keep inDesign from giving you 8 billion spaces when using this method?
In Illustrator, the space bar is disabled when you press the command key first, but inDesign gives me annoying spaces despite the command key being pressed.

Just for the record, if Quark did come out with a X version of XPress, I would probably get it (if I wasn't broke, anyway)

Originally posted by SunSeeker:
<STRONG>

Simple. Dont use 'Z' to change to the zoom tool while in a text box, It Doesn't Work.

In InDesign you draw a text box and if you want to Zoom in you use the Command key and Space Bar. Much better results, and very easy to remember (for me anyway). It just seems they shouldn't be confusing one option with another. Thats why it makes sense to use most of the same shortcuts that have existed in Photoshop (does anyone not use Photoshop?) for years

As for output problems, is Quark immune?</STRONG>

[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: Theodour ]

[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: Theodour ]

[zilmer]

Originally posted by MacMerc.com:
<STRONG>Speaking as one of those production people, I'd have to refute any allegations that Quark came from us or was made for us. It is just as cumbersome and unintuitive at the production end as it is for the folks in the creative department. It's a piece of crap but it just happens to be an industry standard piece of crap. I say will all stop using it. Use InDesign, PageMaker, Illustrator, Freehand, Canvas ...hell, use MS Publish but lets de-throne this tyrant and move on!</STRONG>

Well, I wouldn't be SO radical, but I do think it is absolutely possible to make a 10-page catalogue or something similar in Freehand. Nowadays. And I do believe InDesign will take over plenty of Quark users since the current output file to newspapers and printhouses is basically PDF-only (at least where I work). And InDesign can handle it absolutely without any problems.

So what the hell. Quark was an industry standard and if it will not be it tomorrow... so what the hell? It's time to move on. I've heard about the loads of bugs in v. 5 as well and I do think the reports about them are persuasive enough for our company to avoid buying Quark for quite some time. If they can't keep up with the changes the users are asking for and make a decent product � too bad. We'll find another way.

[godzookie2k]

Originally posted by MacMerc.com:
<STRONG>Speaking as one of those production people, I'd have to refute any allegations that Quark came from us or was made for us.</STRONG>

Oh suuuuuuurrreee like one of you production people would admit that the key to your grand master plan to drive every designer batty enough to understand yall is Quark.

Originally posted by Cemetery Man:
<STRONG>If a printer isn't willing to buy InDesign (or any other program they don't have) the second they get a file made with it, they are a very poor printing company.</STRONG>

There's theory...and then there's practice. Theory...Practice. Theory...Practice. I've heard of more than enough instances in my area at least, of designers having a hard time finding places that'll take indesign files that I don't think that there can be THAT many bad printers in this area. Not to say that its a big deal to export to PDF, but still, I think alot of it is just the slow adoption of new software on the part of the production folk. I don't really blame them (much) and I don't know if blanketing all printers who don't take ID files as bad printers is right, but its a very arguable point. I mean, how much time in training and wasted prints (there are no doubt alot of screw ups) should printers waste/risk just to accept a file format that frankly, I don't think is being accepted as widely as we'd all like to think. Flip side is how is a file format supposed to become adopted if no one prints it? Catch-22.

[Mac Guru]

Damn, you know a printer that'll output InDesign files?

Actually yes, the printers that we work with will output InDesign files without a complaint. They PREFER us export to print ready PDF's but in the rare case one of the village idiots sends over an InDesign package we get a call and 9 times out of 10 our prints come back fine, not a hitch. I bought inDesign 1.0 and was DREADFULLY sorry that I did so because that red headed stepchild was SO damned USELESS it wasn't even funny. With the introduction of 2.0 I was leary at first but went ahead and upgraded and let me tell you, Quark is now sitting in a pile of dust in my closet. InDesign just FEELS so much more friendly and nice. You can specify your OWN keyboard commands and it even comes with a Quark keyboard layout that helped SO much. Unless Quark pulls off a miracle and we get a PERFECT OS X application with PERFECT output, they've lost ALL my business from this day forth.

Mac Guru

[SunSeeker]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by Theodour

So, how do you keep inDesign from giving you 8 billion spaces when using this method?
In Illustrator, the space bar is disabled when you press the command key first, but inDesign gives me annoying spaces despite the command key being pressed. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Just works for me, command held down first and then space just like you suggest, maybe you have something conflicting like quickeys or launchbar

As for printers not supporting ID, there are also some, if not many, printers still using Photoshop 4 or even earlier.

These printers are depriving customers of the full advantages of modern colour management.

If they can't afford or be bothered to keep up to date then they don't deserve your business.