Page Layout Software

[LeftBrain Artist]

Our design firm made the switch to OS X last spring, at which time we also had to decide what the Page Layout program of choice was going to be. After careful consideration and much debate and research, InDesign CS was chosen over Quark 6. Of necessity, one copy of Quark 6 was obtained in the event we received files of those type to edit, lucky me, I inherited this copy. I also have InDesign CS installed on my system, and the other 5 designers here are using InDesign on a daily basis. I can honestly say that both programs are fine pieces of software, but like all software, are far from perfect. After all, it wouldn't do the software developers any good to make their product work like a champ, what reason then would there be for us to buy future versions of their software. Several of our more important clients have recently requested that we furnish them Quark versions of our files so that other competitive design firms or print shops overseas can alter them. Ha ha ha. I'll get right on that. I'm as much of a corporate whore as the next guy, but this is ridiculous. In this situation I am actually heartened by the foresight of the developers of InDesign CS to make a program which has no backwards capability - oh thats right, it was an 'accident' that will be addressed on the next version of InDesign. Now, converting the files will be a time consuming costly process since entire catalogs may have to be recreated from scratch in Quark. Why the fools of corporate America would rather have me consider this option when I've told them the cost of buying InDesign is a far cheaper solution is beyond me, but bless their hearts, they're the ones putting food on my TV tray, so what they ask for, I deliver.

I really hope for the sake of professional designers that Adobe does not address the issue of backwards capability in future versions of InDesign. It will make us more money. Questions, comments, thoughts?

[Keyare]

Your avatar is huge.

Some folks would find it a blessing, some a curse. Backwards compatibility that is, not Sherlock McSquirrel.

If someone asked me to take ID files and turn them into Quark files so that some overseas guys could use them, I would suggest that it would be far cheaper to furnish the overseas folks with a squeeky new copy of Adobe CS. Unless I was eating off a TV tray :)

[PrintDriver]

Don't look for backward compatibility in the next version of CS.
The CS package uses an entirely new type engine. Even Illy CS is not backward compatible to earlier versions when it comes to text. Whether this is for a good reason or not, it does make life difficult sometimes (and I'm not sure I believe Adobe's answer for why they did this).

I think getting stuff printed overseas sucks (maybe cuz I see a lot of it creeping into the large format arena). All I can say is 'you get what you pay for' (and I say this because I see the results of it more and more in large format. Yech. But I'll install it...I gotta eat too...).

Key, can you send ID overseas? I thought it was part of the license not to export it. Might be part of the problem with the translation issue to Quark there.

PD is a grande format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

[Keyare]

Heck I don't know. I guess you'd have to order an international version and 'InChinese' - hey it exists!

[LeftBrain Artist]

You know what they say, big avatar ... large file size.

Yeah, we initially recommended that 1001 Llamas Printing purchase InDesign (if bought with the entire suite, its a really good deal), but evidently they cant or wont upgrade yet. They had me estimate recreating a 48 page catalog in Quark instead, which is far higher that the cost of InDesign, whatever. Aside from my rant, I suppose my real question is if anyone knows a way to convert an InDesign CS file to Quark 6, 5, or 4. So far the only way I've found to do this is to start over from scratch in Quark. Export text from Indd as .rtf - place images and .rtf file/s into Quark, recreate all tables and graphics in Quark, etc. What's key here is to make a conversion that results in a fully editable file.

As far as the type engine goes, its my understanding that open type is the wave of the future so to speak, as such Adobe CS was optimized to work with open type fonts. Building in the ability to work with other fonts (namely Postscript!) seems to have been a secondary concern which has resulted in some of the bugs we currently experience with Adobe software. Its my impression that this is Adobe's way of nudging us in the direction of purchasing Font Folio open Type edition. We don't yet have the font folio open Type edition, so our selection of open type faces is rather poor. Can anyone out there tell me if I'm correct in assuming that files which solely use open Type Fonts are less problematic than those which use truetype, postscript, or combinations of the 3?

[foggynotion]

personally if one of our other centres wanted one of our indesign files redisgned in quark, i'd send them a pdf, the packaged id document, and any .psd and or .ai if there are any, and say have fun! /DesktopModules/dotNetBB/emoticons/biggrin.gif

let the people sing their stories and their songs and the music of their native land</font>