Quark 8 being announced

[EricE]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

Quark may not be dead, I like to think of it as undead. It just won't die!

From a printer and designer POV Quark has not delivered the goods when it comes to overall performance, user friendliness, and final output to PDF. I was at a launch event for Quark 7 and was not impressed. They talked about the new features but not once mentioned how it related to output or PDF. As with any product, it's the end result that matters most. Quark still maintains that the faux font styles boxes are useful, IMHO is the bane of desktop design. The High Resolution Preview is a joke and inaccurate when it comes to precision.

Personally, when InDesign 2.0 was released I cut the cord on Quark and never looked back.

From a work POV we have to stay current with what our customers use. With our current customer base of 200+ there's probably 3 that use Quark 7. When I get in conversations about upgrades most are migrating to InDesign. So there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Like with any undead, severing the top of the spinal column or massive trauma to the brain are the most effective methods of dispatching.

 

[Joe]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

I'm not any happier with what Quark has become than anyone else but it will serve no one, except Adobe, if Adobe is the only player out there in the page layout arena. Competition is good for users. We, the users, need Quark to pull their head out but I don't see it happening with the release of another version that still can't figure out transparency.

 

[disbellj]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

I haven't posted in a while, actually didn't think I was still a member, but when Quark 8 was announced, I HAD to come back and see what you guys thought of it. I see you all think as highly of it as I do.

I like the comment about Quark being the "undead". It is a nightmare for sure. I mean, for people that say they support print (and they once did), are they just too stupid to see that without PDF-with-live-transparency-being-exported, they might as well close the company down now, as they're cutting their own throats? They just don't f'in get it, do they? Tragic but true.

Cheers.

Don

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

> {quote:title=mattbeals wrote:}{quote}
> Does anyone really care that Quark 8 is announced?

Yes indeed I care. I have to care as we still have a large amount of customers who still use QuarkXPress (although I wouldn't have a problem if they switched to InDesign).

Kind regards,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing

 

[Tech]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

I care about Quark 8 as well...

1) There will always be happy Quark designers/users...

2) Most designers still can't tell the difference between flattened and live-layers/transparency PDF. To them it's not how a job gets printed as long as it's done.. which means all of you unhappy folks with Quark

3) Designers will do what they can to get a product printed but I have yet to meet one that is willing to bend over backward to re-learn what they know and comfortable with to please someone downstream

We actually don't favor either Quark or Indy, but we do need to cover all file formats we receive from designers... including Quark.

 

[ThinkBlackInk]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

And as of today, according to email that landed in my inbox, XPress 8 is available.

 

[pcmodem]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

Such a shame!

 

[almaink]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

Still no unflattened PDF export in version 8. I asked over on Quarks forums about this important feature and was told it will be included in a future release. No idea when that is tho. Without it any job that has transparent objects will cost the designer more money in prepress time.

 

[jimlin]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

Ugh!!!! I worked in Quark 3 and 4 for years and got by. The company I worked for wouldn't jump to Quark 5, and Quark's lack of customer service and acting like they were the industry standard and didn't have to serve the customers' needs just alienated us more and more. We could no longer buy Quark 4 when we added people, feared version 5, and therefore made the jump to InDesign. I worked happily in InDesign CS and CS2 until I switched jobs, and had to go back to Quark.

The reason were dependent on Quark as a company is AutoPage, Power Math, and now XPress Math. However, Quark 7 never got an XPress Math update, thus keeping us stuck in Quark 6.5. I can only assume that Quark is not interested in developing updates to XPress Math as they are already releasing Quark 8 and never updated XPress Math for version7!

Is there anyone out there developing any kind of long-document automation like AutoPage for InDesign?

Edited by: jimlin on Aug 1, 2008 1:40 PM

 

[Al Ferrari]

Re: Quark 8 being announced

>Is there anyone out there developing any kind of long-document automation like AutoPage for InDesign?

Have you tried asking this question in the Adobe InDesign Mac and Windows forums?

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.ee6b330/

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.ee6b33c

Al

Edited by: Al Ferrari on Aug 1, 2008 11:58 PM