InDesign CS3 and opening Quark files

[balou]

InD-CS did a beautiful job of opening Quark 4 docs.

InD-CS2 and Quark 5-6 docs require you to save the Quark docs back to version 4 in order to open.

Does anyone know if InD-CS3 improved this? Or is Adobe still being dumb and making it harder to convert?

[doubting_thomas]

Does anyone know if InD-CS3 improved this? Or is Adobe still being dumb and making it harder to convert? As far as I know Adobe has nothing to do with this, it's all Quark. After version
4 Quark decided to add Millenium Coding to it's application. This code wasn't made
public. That's the reason starting with version 5 it no longer works.
You could always get a plug-in to convert your documents, but IMO the situation would have to be dire.

[Ned]

After version 4 Quark decided to add Millenium Coding to it's application. This code wasn't made public.

Who do they think they are, Microsoft?

I wonder if they realize that they're just shooting themselves in the foot like that. Everybody wants open-source these days. All the software that's "making it" is open source or somehow adaptable to other applications.

[balou]

OK. That makes more sense.

A freelancing friend was asking as one of her clients was purchased by another larger company and they now have to make the switch. What is this plug-in you speak of?

[frailer]

I THINK this may be the app being alluded to:

www.markzware.com/q2id/

...looked at having to get it at one stage, but luckily never had to. It's in the $300~$400 range, from memory, but don't quote me.

[balou]

Thanks for the info frailer!

[Ned]

Damn, that's a lot of money to pay to open a Quark file in InDesign...

[urstwile]

I use the plug-in regularly at work. It works pretty well, with a few glitches, which once you've figured them out, are completely manageable.

Here are a few that I've encountered:

It seems to default to putting a runaround on the content of image boxes, so you just need to be aware of this and remove the text wrap on the content of image boxes.

It definitely doesn't play nicely with Quark documents that are using Multiple Master fonts, so you have to manually replace them with the correct fonts if you're intending to continue using the same fonts.

Other than that, it's been a worthy investment. We only bought one copy, which is installed on my machine, and in our transition to InDesign from Quark files, it's been well worth the investment, which if I recall correctly, was about $200 bucks. Given the large number of Quark 6.1 docs that we had in existence, it was definitely worth the $200 bucks.

Here's a link (http://www.markzware.com/q2id/store_usa.php) to the software. They've upgraded it to work with version 7 and down.

[frailer]

Yep, about right $$. Our lil' ozziedollah was copping a pounding 'round then. $US200 is not bad for what it does. More bang for buck than TransType, say...:rolleyes:

[balou]

Thanks urstwile! Great info.

[urstwile]

You're welcome Balou. Definitely worth the money if you have a lot of files like this to do. Pays for itself for sure.

[1ooScreamingTrees]

Damn, that's a lot of money to pay to open a Quark file in InDesign...

Haha relatively speaking $199 is pretty cheap - I work in a biodynamics research facility where we use a $10,000 modeling plugin which runs on a $1,000 priced MSC software package.

Makes a whole lot of sense to me!

[balou]

My friend said to thank you all. Her client is upgrading to CS3 and getting the Markzware plug in to begin the official switch to InDesign. Poor, poor Quark.

[urstwile]

Just a word of advice, Balou, make sure she has a hard copy of the Quark file or also has the Quark file open or a PDF of it or something, so she can check for any issues like I mentioned in an earlier post. That's what I do at work, anyway. :)