In Design or Quark Xpress

[sibikb]

We ( Newspaper publication ) are planning to move from pagemaker software to in design or quark software .Kindly give your opinion about both .which is good by considering its features and price concern. we the newspaper printing publication having 7 branches in different locations. So please tell me about normal workflow softwares require for newspaper industry.

[Greg_Firestone]

Hi sibikb,

I hate to answer a question with more questions but I have a few ...

Are you looking for a individual copies of a layout application for your editorial departments or are you eventually planning on a editorial system which includes/integrates with the layout apps?

If you're only looking at individual copies of Quark or InDesign, it comes down to a direct comparison between the two applications. I'd recommend taking advantage of the trial periods and letting your editorial staff play with them. Both apps contain many bells and whistles but pay attention the the features which are actually used for your work. For example, I doubt you'll be exporting flash websites from either app. Each app will have a learning curve. If more users are familiar with app X over app Y, it might make a difference as well.

If you are looking at a editorial system (outside of Quark's and Adobe's), talk to the vendors you are looking at. Most integrate with both applications though some may lean more towards one versus the other for best compatibility with their system. If you are looking at an company-wide editorial solution where all editorial departments use a common solution, you'll want to focus just as much attention to the editorial solution as you do to layout app used.

It's hard to go by price alone. The retail price between Quark and InDesign is differ by about $100 USD. If you're buying volume, you'll get a better price. But there is more to it than just the cost of the software. If one app requires more training, your training costs will go up. If your computers need hardware/software upgrades to run one versus the other, your costs will increase.

So I think I've succeeded in responding to your post but not answering your question.

Greg

[Colorblind]

Wow, great post to comment on today. We had one of our customer's ad published in today's edition of one daily newspaper in my area and noticed that almost a full line of 16pt text went missing. Knowing I supplied CMYK only PDFX/1a to this newspaper, I wanted to know why it happened. The rep told me they reproduced the problem on their side. Turn out that part of their workflow, at layout stage, is to place supplied PDFs in Quark and that's where it happened. I've "refried" PDFs trouble free in InDesign in the past but would be very scared to do the same in Quark...

[Joe]

I also work at a newspaper and many advertisers supply ads as PDF files. If you've ever experienced trying to place a PDF that contains any kind of transparency into Quark the answer is clear. INDESIGN!!! You will have nightmares trying to use PDF's with Quark.

[ericmadsen]

Quark is far less intuitive, particularly for those with a PageMaker background. Quark is buggier than InDesign, is more crash-prone, has issues with recognizing certain fonts that load fine into the OS and are recognized by all other apps, omits Trim Box information in Postscript created using the Print dialog (even if you include crop marks), features a buggy and sometimes broken PDF Export function that creates bloated PDFs... I could go on but don't want to rant. Quark yields substantially larger PDF filesizes compared with InDesign-created PDFs (or even InDesign-"refried" Quark PDFs) with identical actual content. This true even if you distill Postscript created with Quark's "Export" function, which in turn is a workaround for known issues with its "Print to Postscript" function that Quark has acknowledged for years but hasn't fixed.

Without my having ever made this recommendation to any Quark user, I've been watching my clients upgrade one by one from Quark to InDesign. That both exist drives innovation, but I've yet to witness anyone switch from InDesign to Quark.

It's a personal choice, but having had years' of experience in both, I cannot stress enough that I think you'll be happier with InDesign.

[DCurry]

Anyone who would purposely choose Quark over InDesign today is in for a lot of headaches down the road. Both will do the job, but ID will do it better, faster and more reliably.

[dabob]

InDesign . . . . . hands down

[brent]

I am amazed that they are actually using Pagemaker still!

[Joe]

I am amazed that they are actually using Pagemaker still!

I have several customers still using PageMaker 6.5. We require them to send PDF's though as there is no room in the quoted prices for us to have to deal with PageMaker.

[ericmadsen]

I know the feeling! Is it me, or did PageMaker run faster and deliver more reliable output a decade ago?!?

At the time, some people called it 'RageMaker'. I just thought: "get over it guys, at least it's not QuarkXPress".