Quark 6 problems

[ATCook]

I have recently upgraded to Quark 6 and to be honest I am not happy with the upgrade.



1. The activation took about 30 min on a long distance line



2. The ability to click on a picture and see its name, location and edit it is gone (there is a patch for original editing without name and loction). This really slows me down.



3. I have one cover that has a dark color on which a bitmap is placed and colored with an 80 % tint of the cover color. In a Quark 6 created PDF the picture box of the bitmap is filled with white instead of transparent.



Why upgrade when I cannot do elementary jobs with it? Does anyone know if there is a patch in the pipeline?



Seriously considering InDesign 3



Anthony Cook

Anthony Cook

[defjoe]

Anthony,



I have been a quark guy my whole career (8+ years) and now that I need an upgrade (I'm on V5 right now) i have decided, after going to a seminar, that I'm going to skip Quark and put it to rest and go with ID. Far superior program and with the CS version...seeems to have worked out all the minor kinks.



You just helped my decision more. Good luck.

"I will become the most powerful Jedi ever!"

[benjo]

ATCook I found similar problems. About the only thing that Quark 6 does is support for OSX. About the image location and edit thing. I find this feature so useful and when It was gone I was like WTF? I just go to my usage pallet and update images that way, I hate it but it's part of the new robust features in Quark (sense the sarcasm). I think I'll be speaking with my printer today and see if he takes Indesign files. Cause to tell you the truth Quark 6 is not ahead of it's time it's behind.

<img border="0" src= "http://www.cbcamerica.com/images/webshots/benjobanner.jpg">

[Big Perm-dizzle]

what is no one going to welcome this guy ?



i will.....



WELCOME TO THE GDF

[D-Zine]

You guys are REALLY making rethink this whole thing with Quark. I am on v5 now too. Like Joe I have been using Quark forever and do love it but I am wondering should I suck it up and make the switch to ID CS? I need to decide BEFORE I get my magazine in the production stages. I know that I am already going to buy the CS package from Adobe for this...so I might as well educate myself with ID and not even purchase Quark...ya think?? Save myself some money maybe?!

<img border="0" src= "http://coastalcarousel.com/GDF/mataSIG.jpg">



Who says doodling isn't constructive?!

[PrintDriver]

D-Zine, check with your printers before you do. Make sure you can get the same rates and all if using InD.



Also be aware that even if a print vendor is up on InD2.0.2, they may not be up on InD CS. And InD CS is not backwards compatible. At all.



That being said. InD is whupping the pants off Quark6. Does anyone here use Quark to make their webpages? What a waste of programming...



Sorry, Been in a bad mood lately....Been living up to my avatar.<img border="0" src= "smileys/smiley6.gif">

[djtherapy]

I've been using Quark for about 10 years now. I've recently bought ID CS and spent all of last week trying to work out whether it would be worth switching over to it for my print production.

The short answer is no, but that is partially based on the fact that I'm SO used to Quark.

There are some nice features in InDesign - most notably the ability to use transparency. It SHOULD integrate with other Adobe programs better as well, although I found inconsistency in printed output between ID and PS & ILL.

But there are problems. The first and most important is that ID is SOOOOOOOOOO slow! Painfully slow in fact. I can't imagine anyone maintaining their sanity if they had to produce a document with more than a few pages and a some hi-res files on it. I imagine this will get better when I get a G5 though.

Secondly, the preset increments for keyboard modification are mystifying - who wants to be able to increase or decreasing leading by 5 points with cmd-alt-sft-> at the expense of being able to scale up or down by 0.1 pt? Surely what you need is precise control over typographic elements? I know, I know, you can set the prefs to 0.1, then use +alt to give you ±0.5 pt, but it's still a backward way or working and I think shows that ID hasn't been been very well thought through.

The third thing that really gets me is the fact that you don't appear to be able to set text wrap options around an object/image box that has been inserted in text. As soon as you put it into text, the options grey out, and the only text it reflows is that which is either side of the bottom of the image box.

There are more but I won't bore you with them...

For Photoshop and Illustrator users who want to do a bit of DTP work from time to time, then I think InDesign is a great program. But I'm not sure ID is enough to persuade long-term Quark users and people who do most of their work in DTP to ditch Quark just yet.

I will say this - however... I've never been impressed with Quark's corporate attitude, nor the development of their product. Their upgrades have been too slow and their attitude to their customers is at times breathtakingly arrogant. So I won't be sorry if InDesign does prove to be the end of Quark - I just don't think it's quite there yet.

--------

P.S. If you update to Qx6.1 (free from website) then you get back that double-click picture facility (it used to be called subscriber options). Also there is a PDF update which may fix your PDF problem (called PDF.dylib or something).

Post Edited (djtherapy) : 4/1/2004 12:40:08 PM GMT

[PrintDriver]

What operating system you using to run InD?
Cuz mine runs blazing fast on Panther with 1.25dually and a gig of ram.
Love it.
Still looking for that image in text thing. Adobe has a habit of not putting some things in the manual. If I find it I'll pm you.

It's always been an argument of not which program is better but rather, which program you like. I've also had it up to here with Quark's high-hand attitude and charging for Xtenstions that should be included in the package. But I use both at work because all you designers use one or the other.

Specialization is for insects...

R.H.

[LTG]

Did any of you other quark users get a 'Quark customer loyalty award' letter from them last week telling all about their new corporate structure and their renewed dedication to customers (and some supposedly enticing key code discount coupons)?

The letter starts out, 'In the spirit of renewal that accompanies the approach of spring, Quark would like to take this opportunity to rekindle and improve communication with our customers. We want you to know that we have listened to your feedback and have rededicated our efforts to be more responsive to your requests and to provide more information about our products and services.'

...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

They also say they have created an online survey where customers can express their views and opinions... - They sound a little nervous to me.

If it wasn't for the last minute nothing would ever get done.
(When I grow up I want to be just like Keyare! He does excellent work - even when he's trying to not to.)

It's about time. I'm sick of there customer service.

I had purchased Quark 5.0 during the summer of 03 and asked them when 6.0 was comming out. They told me they didn't know. Thank God I was reading Thinksecret cause they had an article about 6.0 beta finishing up. So I waited like 2-3 weeks and 6.0 drops. But did they tell me... noooooo.

On top of that I just reinstalled 6.0 cause I had the latest patch for 6.1 and although it restored that good old double click on an image to update feature it killed my PDF output option and the thing wouldn't make any PDF's.

But I have a work around completely that I figured out at home being that I use Quark 4.1 at home running in classic cause I can't stand OS9. I output an EPS document. Then I open it in Illustrator and export a PDF they have all the same settings that I use in distiller. I was like Oh thank God I figured that one out.

http://www.cbcamerica.com/images/webshots/banner-design.jpg
'Adventure, Excitement, A Jedi craves not these things.'
'Anger...fear...aggression. The dark side of the Force are they.'

[D-Zine]

LTG - ROFLMFAO! I got that letter RIGHT here in front of me...got is last week too! I didn't even read past the first paragraph that you posted bc we all basically know its CRAP right! hahhaa! OMG thats too funny!

http://coastalcarousel.com/GDF/metatag3.jpg

Who says doodling isn't constructive?!

[PrintDriver]

I got the letter too.
ROFL when I read it.
'Here buy our stuff. Now it will only cost you half as much to buy the things that should come free as part of the overpriced software you just bought.'

Specialization is for insects...

R.H.

[nclark]

Simple Answer:::::

If you use any CS Products from Adobe, ID is a must.