How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

[zoran]

Good article on Ars Technica about Quark demise.
Love the alien zapping the text box (who remembers alien?) and love the conclusion with warning to Adobe.
How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing | Ars Technica

 

[Possumgal]

Yeah, it's a shame. I'm all for competition in the workplace. Adobe's "we don't care what you want, we're raking in the money" attitude bears out the necessity for a competitor.

I'm one of the few Quark fans left standing. I'm trying to get used to InDesign, but there are things I need to do that Quark does and InDesign does not. InDesign's master pages are useless to me the way I have to set up booklets.

I used to bring out the alien anytime we had visitors in the shop.

 

[BarbWPP]

...

I used to bring out the alien anytime we had visitors in the shop.

Yeah, that was fun. I about freaked the first time I saw it happen (to someone else). Fortunately there was someone around who knew what was going on!

My only known real drawback (other than finances!) to going back to Quark is the, as far as I am aware, continuing absence of a Separations Preview, one of my favorite features of InDesign since the beginning of my consistent use (version 3).

 

[OutSourceD]

Quark treated their customers like excrement, that's one reason they fell from grace.

 

[Glenn McDowall]

Adobe's decision to bundle InDesign with the Creative Suite was IMO the main reason for Quark's demise, a lot of the InDesign features talked about in the article were there with the pre CS version 2.0 and there was very little take up. The Suite effectively gave it away free to anyone who needed to upgrade their Photoshop Illustrator and that included a lot of people needing OSX compatibility. Once you have it in the hands of lots of people, and it works better than Quark, (PDF in PDF out still not great with Quark in 2014), the decision to switch is compelling.
A lot of the talk about it being individually cheaper really wasn't true if you look at long term ownership and much more frequent upgrade cost. Adobe were ahead of the game again, give it cheap or free initially and pay for in-App purchases or upgrades, sound familiar. CC is testing the market again.

 

[cosmo]

I reckon its because quark fleeced people for so long for updates etc, I used to use it years ago and cant stand the sight of it now, also, Indesign is miles ahead now of where quark is, also, the PDF standard is better used in the adobe products than quark is, quack, quack, boom!

 

[almaink]

For design work I always liked Pagemaker, then InDesign, better than Quark for two reasons. First the Transform pallet. Knowing an objects position from any point, not just the upper left conner like Quark, is a must IMO. The second was the print dialog box. Writing postscript from Adobe's apps back in the day was a snap, Quark needed a special extension to do the same thing and even then it didn't always work. BTW we stopped supporting native Quark files at version 8.5.

 

[wonderings]

As mentioned in the article, Quark was really behind in keeping up with Apple and their OS updates. I remember being so frustrated with Quark, dual booting or running classic. It was such a slow app compared to newer OS X native apps. Also combining indesign with the creative suite is what really did it for us. A co worker who was here long before I started was a die hard quark fan, it was my pushing that brought us into indesign which made life so much simpler and faster.

Unfortunately there is no real competitor now to indesign, going to back to quark is just painful and it seems adobe has stop really adding anything useful to indesign in the last 2 or 3 updates other then web stuff which is useless for us.

 

[prepressdork]

One thing I really like is InDesign's live preflight feature. VASTLY superior and extremely easy to use compared to Quark's job ticket/preflight functionality.

Hey Adobe, how about adding auto-correct functionality to your live preflight feature?

 

[gordo]

I think the downfall began when Quark decided to outsource their software to India. This article brings back memories...
The Old Joel on Software Forum - Offshoring Opportunities/the Quark Debacle

Gordo

 

[JustinB]

Sometimes I feel like the last guy still using Quark, but the thought of transitioning over 5,000 quark files to inDesign is terrifying.

 

[Al Ferrari]

You don't have to do them all at once. Start by getting the Makzware plugin, then convert them as the need arises and take notes as you do each one as to what needs fine tuning.

Al

 

[DCurry]

I would rather convert 5,000 Quark files to ID than continue to use Quark as my ongoing layout app.

 

[zevrix]

I think the thought of keeping working with those 5,000 files in Quark is way more terrifying.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

QuarkXpress on a Mac saved me from VenturaPublisher on an Apricot, then Adobe InDesign saved me from QuarkXpress!

There was also an entire industry built around developing third party Xtensions for QuarkXPress.

Then there was my “favourite” feature - the Picture Usage window. There was a Simpons episode where Homer was “remote controlling” the nuclear power plant button using a “dippy bird” (drinking bird toy). Whenever I had to update hundreds of modified images in an Xpress file, I would place a heavy object on the return key and walk away for ten minutes (to force the Xpress Picture Usage window to answer “yes” to each update command, once per image). I remember the first time I was shown to use that particular macro/script, the sheer joy of not having to manually hit return, return, return, return hundreds of times.


Stephen Marsh

 

[toronar]

A not widely known fact:
Since Quark 4 - if you held the Alt-Key while clicking on "Update" the button changes from "Update ..." to just "Update" without the "..." and Quark updates all files without asking for confirmation on every single one.

 

[BarbWPP]

I just had to edit a Quark 8 file on a Mac: spot color in the PROPERLY LINKED/UPDATED eps ! missing from the Quark file, no separations preview on something that has to separate...(*^fg%$^$^&gb!!

 

[almaink]

I just got a whole package of Quark 8.1 files. Each file used drop shadows on images in circles. Everything looked fine when I exported to PDF but after the files ripped a few of the drop shadows turned into waves?
Ive attached two screen shots to show what happened. I fixed the problem by round tripping the exported PDF from Quark through InDesign.

 

[prepressdork]

Almaink, did you export the PDF with native transparency intact?

pd

 

[Possumgal]

Sometimes I feel like the last guy still using Quark, but the thought of transitioning over 5,000 quark files to inDesign is terrifying.

Hey, you're not the last. If you think you're alone, I actually still like Quark. There are some things it will do InDesign will not, especially in regards to master pages. Some jobs I get would take three times as long if I did them in InDesign.