QuarkXpress...

[kdw75]

We have thousands of old files created in Quark that we use day in and day out, but it is only used for old files and new typesetting done by a specific employee. Our biggest clients send in file in Indesign and that is what I have used for decades. I decided to load Quark 2023 on my machine as I frequently had to wait for our typesetter to get me old files and I wanted to be able to edit them as well. I must say that after not using it since Quark 10, I am impressed with the responsiveness compared to Indesign. I also like the perpetual license model. Using it makes me sad that they didn't stay innovative and remain the top DTP software maker. I am anxious to see if they still have comparability issues with PDFs and files produced by Photoshop and Illustrator.

I remember as a young man seeing a demo of Quark back in 1988 down in Kansas City. My mom who was our typesetter was using an Itek Quadritek Photo Typesetting System, which we still have under plastic in the basement. We were blown away with being able to see the entire document you were typesetting without any pasteup necessary. We purchased it immediately with an L-300 imagesetter and a couple of Macs. Those were the days.

 

[zoran]

Does it still have little alien robot, easter egg when you press Cmd+Shift+Opt+K, from what I remember?

 

[gregbatch]

I thought I was in heaven with a Digitek and a preview screen that would actually display a whole page. It took a couple of minutes to rasterize the page on screen.

 

[maas]

from 1999,

Quark XPress Easter Egg - New Bigger Alien to Delete Old Alien (v4.0)​

1. Draw a box in center of screen.
2. Leave plenty of room on both sides for action.
3. Press Shift-Option-Command-K to get original alien.
4. Repeat above sequence at least 5 times.
5. The new alien appears randomly, usually after 5-12 tries.

 

[Gregg]

The thing I miss most about Quark was the ability to Export Separations to PDF. I know people will jump down my throat and say that's not neccessary, but it is/was for our co-edition workflow.

Now we just instruct co-eds to turn off the Art Layer, leaving their Text Layer on in ID and just export their PDF. It works fine, unless there is a Spot Channel in the art file which has text knocking out of it.

 

[kdw75]

We started out with QuarkXpress, Illustrator, and Colorstudio. I remember Photoshop being a cheaper alternative to Colorstudio that some of our clients would use. I spent many hours after school and in the evenings scanning, color correcting, and creating artwork in Colorstudio.

 

[Magnus59]

We started out with QuarkXpress, Illustrator, and Colorstudio. I remember Photoshop being a cheaper alternative to Colorstudio that some of our clients would use. I spent many hours after school and in the evenings scanning, color correcting, and creating artwork in Colorstudio.

I used Ventura Publisher on GEM for many years before I even heard of Quark Xpress or Aldus Pagebreaker

 

[kdw75]

Ahhh yes. We stumbled upon a copy of that back in the day and played with it a little. If memory serves it was geared more towards books. My cousin worked at TWA and they had given him a few copies of it for some reason and we installed one, but never did more than play around with it. I remember lots of floppies.

One thing I have found about QuarkXpress that is clearly inferior to InDesign is the Step and Repeat feature lacking a preview ability.