Quark

[WharfRat]

Quark 10 need a MAC OS "over" 10.608.
Is anyone having success with Mt Lion (10.8) in their PrePress environment?

MSD

 

[Al Ferrari]

Do you really need Quark? I use it only because my main customer's designer uses it. But I have all sorts of problems in exporting pdfs from Q9.5. Half the times it leaves out placed Illustrator logos. Fortunately I also have Q8.12 ,which does not have the problem, on an old slow G4. I am trying to install a second copy of the 8.12 from original CD on to an iMac, but Quark's activation process is screwed up. Their activation tech support is not available on weekends. I am going to try them today.

Al

 

[WharfRat]

I have never found the PDF export reliable in Quark.
I set the preferences to write PostScript when I say export - then Distill.
Seems Quark has always written pretty good PostScript.

MSD

 

[almaink]

What world are you living in WarfRat? Quark always wrote the worst postscript. We even had to use a prepress extension to clean up Quarks postscript when we wrote to PS for Trapwise. Exporting from the newer versions of Quark works very well IF you use the correct information in the output tabs.

 

[Eddie3000]

I'm still a fan off QuarkXpress. I know some people have problems with it but it suits my needs perfectly and it doesn't say Adobe on the box.

However, STAY AWAY from version 10. Of all the FUBARS Quark (the company) have been guilty of in the past this is by for the worst. Because of the new rendering engine it's slow (REALLY SLOW) on even the most up-to-date machines, unstable and some useful features have been removed. Don't even think about using it with multiple monitors.

It's a Turkey that has been released without testing - at least not tested on its core user base.

 

[WharfRat]

What world are you living in WarfRat? Quark always wrote the worst postscript. We even had to use a prepress extension to clean up Quarks postscript when we wrote to PS for Trapwise. Exporting from the newer versions of Quark works very well IF you use the correct information in the output tabs.

------

Funny ... Trapwise needs an extension to work with Quark
so
Quark sucks.
-
We won't get into Quarks font embedding and transparency handling when exporting to its "own" Jaws PDF.

MSD

 

[rich apollo]

Yeah, I remember having to run some extension to be able to specify which separations to output. Quark's blends were always troublesome, too. Brisque had a setting to swap Quark blends with a raster version. Impressed had a startup file for Distiller to rewrite Quark blends as smooth shades.

Life during the PostScript Wars...

 

[chad.trent]

We bought Quark 9. It wouldn't install. Kept getting an error message then the installer would shut down. Nothing we tried worked. Called Quark at least a dozen times, sent probably twice that many emails. They never replied to a single call or email.

Because of that I'll never use Quark again...

 

[EZPower]

Quark 4 was the best. After that it was all down hill. Thank god for Quark to InDesign extensions.

 

[MacTwidget]

Quark 4 was the best. After that it was all down hill. Thank god for Quark to InDesign extensions.

I didn't mind QuarkXPress 6 or 7.
QuarkXpress 5 was AWFUL!!
It really started eroding at version 8.

 

[Al Ferrari]

Don't get me started again on Quark 9. I and a coworker have been having an ongoing problem of it dropping off logos on pdf export over and over again. Sometimes we are able to fix it by re-importing (File/Import, not via Usage/update) the logo just before output. But that does not always work.

This is starting with legacy Q8 files. But the problem does not occur if all of the work in done in Quark 8. Q9x is simply buggy.

Al

 

[Al Ferrari]

Q2ID By Markzware,

Anybody have experience with this? I am seriously considering it for continuing future work with a very large body of Quark files going back some 20 years.

Al

 

[cosmo]

why does quark even exist, cant see the point of anyone using it.

 

[Al Ferrari]

To add serious injury to the insult already suffered from Q9, today I find out that a pdf exported from Q9.x, or even a pdf exported from Q8 for a file that has been exported down to Q8 from Q9, render color differently compared to the pdf exported from Q8 for a file with the exact same content (same image links) but which has never passed trough Q9.x. When the two pdfs are viewed side by side in Acrobat Pro 11, the difference in color if very noticeable, with the Q9.x pdf color lighter by comparison.

Al

 

[Al Ferrari]

I have confirmed this difference in pdf output from Quark 8 files having NO history of Quark 9 compared to output from Quark8 files that have been saved down from Quark 9 by doing hard copy proofs side by side on the same piece of proofing paper (single printing event!). The pdf from the Quark 8 file saved down from Quark 9 prints noticeably lighter than the pdf from the Quark 8 file that has no history of Quark 9. I am talking here of versions of the same document with the exact same high resolution images! Hard to believe, but true.

Al

 

[Shawn]

Hi Al

In doing reprints of a bunch of legacy Quark jobs a while back, we discovered the same sort of issue. We weren't going between Quark 8 and 9, just sticking with 8, but on some files the color values would shift during output, no matter what settings were used.

My, admittedly WAG, explanation was that it was probably related to the original designers use of Job Jackets for that particular batch of files. Could be wrong but that was the only common thread I could come up with. Removing all references to Job Jackets, opening the file and forcing Quark to rebuild it, re-checking color management settings and changing export settings all failed to help.

The only solution we found was to copy and paste the art into a brand new file -- since these were all single page pieces that turned out to be the easiest route.

Shawn

I have confirmed this difference in pdf output from Quark 8 files having NO history of Quark 9 compared to output from Quark8 files that have been saved down from Quark 9 by doing hard copy proofs side by side on the same piece of proofing paper (single printing event!). The pdf from the Quark 8 file saved down from Quark 9 prints noticeably lighter than the pdf from the Quark 8 file that has no history of Quark 9. I am talking here of versions of the same document with the exact same high resolution images! Hard to believe, but true.

Al

 

[Al Ferrari]

Thanks for the feedback Shawn. We also do the copy/paste from the file with the Q9 history to a new Q8 file in Q8. I think that has worked in all cases. Knock on wood.

Al

 

[Al Ferrari]

I wrote too soon. The copy/paste of elements from the file with the Q9 history to a new Q8 file in Q8 is NOT enough to get rid of the washed out look of the exported pdfs from this "clean" file. What does return the full strength color in the pdf for the placed images in the "clean" file is the re-importation of the images done by selecting each one with the Picture Content Tool doing a File > Import of the same image from the original location. This retains the y,y offsets, the x and y scaling, and the rotation if any. Somehow the copy/paste operation from the file with a history of Q9 brings over the corruption as well and does not produce a "clean file".

I need to do more testing, but I predict that the re-importation is the key, and that the copy/paste of elements from the file with the Q9 history to a new Q8 file in Q8 is neither needed nor successful in producing a file that will output full strength pdfs.

Stay tuned...

Al

 

[prepressdork]

While I share many of the opinions here regarding Quark (and would agree that prepress life would be easier without it), the customer dictates what a print service provider will need to support. I have no doubt that Quark's market share has dwindled but for those PSP's out there with customers who still use Quark, we just have to dig in and get the job done (or allow someone else to do it).

If you have the luxury of saying no to your customers, you're one of the lucky ones.

 

[dabob]

In my experience . . . I just received my first quark file in, well I would guess a year at least . . . so that would make maybe 2-3 files in the last 3 years . . . what market share????