Import Quark 5 into Indesign 2 (PC)??

Cowtoon · 03-18-2004, 02:14 AM

Working on a PC.

I'm sure my trainer told me that I could import Quark Express (5.01r0) into Indesign 2.0.2. It's not happening.

Is there a plug-in or something that I need before this can happen.
Please and thanks.

LTG · 03-18-2004, 03:37 AM

I think you have to save it down to Quark v.4.

I just looked it up in my 'InDesign for QuarkXPress Users' book and it says, 'Note that InDesign 2 can open QuarkXPress 3.3 and 4.x documents and templates...QuarkXPress 5 files must be saved backward to QuarkXPress 4 format.'

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.)

Cowtoon · 03-18-2004, 03:49 AM

Thanks ... I'll give that a try now and see if that works. I'll let you know.

Cowtoon · 03-18-2004, 03:53 AM

It's opening and is taking a very long time to process. We'll see how she blows ... Obviously the conversion isn't a simple process. Fingers crossed!

LTG · 03-18-2004, 04:05 AM

It also says,

'When InDesign opens a QuarkXPress file, it must do a file translation into the InDesign format. This is extremely difficult, partly because Quark hasn't made public their secret and preprietary file format information (Adobe had to decode it themselves). Plus, In Design performs a great man page layout functions differently than XPress does, and there are some Xpress features which don't exist at all in InDesign...As with translations between spoken languages, conversions from Quark XPress aren't flawless. It's our experience that InDesign's conversion can get you about 95% of the way there in an 'average' document.'

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.)

LTG · 03-18-2004, 04:07 AM

'All but the most simple XPress documents will likely require some reworking in InDesign. The more design-intensive you pages, the more likely you'll have to do significant cleanup.'

that doesn't sound like fun - 'significant cleanup'!!

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.)

Cowtoon · 03-18-2004, 04:24 AM

Well ... it's working hard. The Indesign screen appears to be frozen, but the Windows Task Manager tells me it's taking up almost 100% of the CPU, so something is going on. It's almost 30 minutes since the conversion started ... and it's still chuggin' awayl It's only using 75 meg of ram but it's tied up all but 3% of the CPU ... left enough for me to check this forum and reply. I hope it completes the conversion before I leave for the day !!! I would have been surprised if it was a perfect conversion - I expected to do some cleanup. I've lived through my share of 'professional' Wordperfect to Word conversions ... and they were anything but perfect, so I can just imagine what's involved with layout software. It's gotta be more complex. This particular document isn't too complex, and will be good practice. I have a bigger project coming up. I'm almost thinking of just redoing it in Indesign rather that trying to work with the conversion. It'll be over 100 pages and that would melt this pc, I think. It has a more complex layout and also uses a lot of styles. Thanks for the heads up.

LTG · 03-18-2004, 04:33 AM

you're welcome - glad I could help

(melted pcs are also a very messy cleanup I imagine

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.)

Cowtoon · 03-18-2004, 05:14 AM

Holy wackers ... it's still chuggin'. It's been 1 hour and 12 min and is still hoggin' the resources.

This file has 6 (8.5 x 11') pages ... each divided into 2 -- > 12 numbered pages. (it's a booklet)
The file is less than 2 meg (however, there are lots of scanned tiff images ... probably greatly compressed) so I guess that translates to a larger file that it reports. What if it was a bigger document. OMG ... my pc really would have melted.

**PrintDriver** · 03-18-2004, 05:43 AM

Wow.
Is that real smoke?
Kidding.
I've done some of those conversions but never had one take that long. And yes, 'significant' can be a misleading word. Most of what I had to clean up could be done easily, it was just a matter of choosing the right stray line (the most common one I see is a bunch of scribbles over the pages that can be removed manually). There is the occasional text issue too(custom kerning doesn't usually hold and word-wrap can go awry) so be careful.

Specialization is for insects...

R.H.