QuarkXPress in June? [Archive]

macdong

May 22, 2003, 09:50 PM

Originally posted by julzmon
I think Adobe is waiting to release InDesign 3 untill Quark has their new version out. That way they could steal all the fanfair from Quark. That is if Quark sucks and InDesign is beyond Quark in features and what not.

I think you are right.
Adobe already has the upper hands.
It wouldn't hurt for them to wait after Quark 6 is out.
Then they'll be able to attack directly at Quark's weakness and make more features in the mean time.
Quark is far behind, unless this one is a god-like, they'll lose again.

MM2270

May 22, 2003, 09:52 PM

Sad to say, but I think this rumor is true. Quark currently has a Final Candidate released to the beta testers, and we're in the middle of May, so a June (late) release is definitely possible. And how do I know about the Final Candidate? Because I'm part of the beta testers program. Don't get me wrong now, I hate Quark as much as the rest of us, but at the moment, my graphics department hasn't moved to ID, and I'm still not sure we can or will. So, I'm doing what i can to make QuarkXPress 6 a functional app. As it stands now, there are still some big issues Quark has to fix, like the fact that it doesn't work well with font manager apps such as Font Reserve. Previous releases were REALLY bad, but this FC one is a bit better.

I like ID, but Adobe needs to do more ot make the interface easier and more functional IMO. There's just TOO many palettes you need to have open just to use the basic features. Also, I'd actually, believe it or NOT, like to see some XPress 6 features make their way into ID, like synchronized text, and multiple layouts in a project. Those are nice features, truly they are!

vwcruisn

May 22, 2003, 10:19 PM

Whatever, Quark is lame. But I would like to thank them for taking so long to go to OSX, which made me try out InDesign. I have now seen the light, I might not have if Quark had their ***** together in the 1st place. Thanks Quark!

AD/CD

May 22, 2003, 10:35 PM

Sorry, I really don't understand the great hesitation with ID 2.0. I've personally done six annual reports in InDesign since November.

I will never go back to Xpress. If your in the ad game, and are simply doing single & double page spreads, frankly Illustrator can achieve your needs.

But when it comes to documents with vast amounts of information such as annuals and financials, InDesign is the cats ass. If Adobe implements folders for styles sheets, and advanced table style sheets in 3.0 it will dominate.

I'm sorry if I come off as a shill, but guy's don't wait, make the move, learn the software, the transition is simple.

Your loyalty to Quark and it's outdated software is unwarranted and unfounded.

If your waiting for your film houses and printers to get off their sorry buts, call Adobe, they'll help you find somone that can get the job done.

Cheers,
AC/CD

P-Worm

May 22, 2003, 10:44 PM

It seems there isn't a week that goes by that we don't hear about Quark coming out soon. Why don't they just admit defeat?

P-Worm

Chef Ramen

May 22, 2003, 10:48 PM

its amazing that a company with one product can survive like that...and they charge so much for it too! i bet that in order to make up for lost revenue, theyll have to charge like $1,500 for the new version.

iJed

May 22, 2003, 10:52 PM

I wonder if Quark has got XPress 6.0 looking like a post System 7.0 app yet. From the beta I've seen it still looks like something from the first half of the '90s and lacks basic things like proportional scroll bars. It also does not support proper anti-aliasing on Mac OS X for some reason. In all the time its taken Quark to do the port you would think that they would have redone the graphics display system with Quartz but they don't seem to have! Hopefully the release version will at least fix these basic flaws.

neilt

May 22, 2003, 10:56 PM

Originally posted by AD/CD
Sorry, I really don't understand the great hesitation with ID 2.0. I've personally done six annual reports in InDesign since November.

Well there's your problem man....I will try to explain this to you slowly......November 2002 until May 2003 is only ONE year...

I mean, I could see doing maybe 6 MONTHLY reports........

Man, ID2 must have completely screwed up your Date and Time Preferences

Neil

----sorry..couldn't resist...
:D

beatle888

May 22, 2003, 11:04 PM

quark wasted to much time trying to integrate the print to web tech. i never understood that. who would ever use the same layout for print and web. i dont know. even if quark is a nice product when it comes out i'll still want people to switch to indesign. i dont trust quark anymore. they leave their customers hanging for updates and screws them when they finally come out. actually i guess i should thank quark for not releasing consistant upgrades cause they usually screw things up. can anyone remember the amount of money the industry waisted on rerunning film because of quark 4 bugs? and they charged us $300 for that? :confused: oh and then telling mac users their not interested in us anymore and we should switch to the pc?:confused: whatever.

applemacdude

May 22, 2003, 11:11 PM

who gives a **** about quark anyways...

Macette

May 22, 2003, 11:15 PM

Originally posted by Sonofhaig
I'm just hoping for a price war between the two! :)

Quark's too arrogant for a price war. But when they go into receivorship, I imagine we'll be picking it up in bargain bins all over the place...

Angelus520

May 22, 2003, 11:25 PM

I work in Recruiting and my bosses want me to put my design skills to use as a side project. Two problems: I use a PC at work and the marketing department uses Quark on OS9. I'm going to try to see if I can get InDesign, even if it is the PC version since I doubt they'll spring for a Mac or let me use my TiBook. They'll probably sit me down with PC Quark in the end just so I'm using the same thing as the marketing department.

PC Quark. Could there be anything worse???

mactastic

May 22, 2003, 11:27 PM

YAWN
Bully for the design pro's who haven't been able to migrate completly to OS X yet. It's a much more enjoyable experience.

evoluzione

May 22, 2003, 11:43 PM

what a lot of you fail to realise, is that there are still many programs that will not run in OS X. think of scanners, of output devices, printing/proofing etc etc. OS 9.2 is a lot faster for a lot of things, i'd much rather use Quark in OS 9 than ID2 in OS X. It's far more productive. I've given ID2 a big chance, but, it doesn't do everything I want as easily as Quark does. Now, I'm not defending Quark here, I just can't stand all this crap. If you read the report they put out, you'd see that they actually have more programs than QuarkXPress. And thy do give a somewhat understandable reason as to why they are so late in bringing us Q6.

I am wondering however, what happens when Panther comes out, will we be waiting a year for an optimised version for that????

Quark will survive, there's thousands of studios that still use it. Don't forget, even in these times of changes and fast advancing standards, the print industry can be very very slow to change.

rainman::|:|

May 22, 2003, 11:45 PM

aside from the program's actual functionality, quark as a company deserves to fail miserably because of their inability to adapt to one of the fastest changing industries in the world-- it's purely inexcusable.

i really liked quark. i did. but if i ever need to use anything in that arena, i'd reach for indesign. because i can't support a company that is blatantly neglectful of their entire userbase.

:)
pnw

AD/CD

May 22, 2003, 11:49 PM

Originally posted by neilt
Well there's your problem man....I will try to explain this to you slowly......November 2002 until May 2003 is only ONE year...

I mean, I could see doing maybe 6 MONTHLY reports........

Man, ID2 must have completely screwed up your Date and Time Preferences

Neil

----sorry..couldn't resist...
:D

Neilt

Between November 2002 and May 2003 are 7 months. My firm represents over 40 public companies, of which we do about a third of the Annuals. As I said, I personally did 6 in a period of seven months.

Pretty simple to understand. Did you need be to explain it to you?

Your comment makes no sense.

macboy

May 22, 2003, 11:53 PM

ok..

Quark fans are loyal to Quark.
Adobe fans are loyal to Adobe.
Macromedia fans are loyal to Macromedia.
Apple fans are loyal to Apple

Can't we just live happily together?

neilt

May 22, 2003, 11:54 PM

Originally posted by AD/CD
Neilt

Between November 2002 and May 2003 are 7 months. My firm represents over 40 public companies, of which we do about a third of the Annuals. As I said, I personally did 6 in a period of seven months. Pretty simple to undestand.

Your comment makes no sense.

ad/cd

sorry....i obviously forgot to put the <sarcasam></sarcasm> around my post....
ITS A JOKE...man, I know annual reports can be incredibly boring, but I didn't realize they could destroy your entire sense of humor.

neilt

AD/CD

May 23, 2003, 12:21 AM

One last thing.
Quarterly reports are boring, my in-laws are boring, watching paint dry is boring.

But annuals aren't, think of it as a 40 to 100 page advertising campaign, that has to motivate investors, analaysts, work as marketing and brand comunications tool, and their profit margins are huge! Now that's cool.

neilt

May 23, 2003, 12:25 AM

Originally posted by AD/CD
One last thing.
Quarterly reports are boring, my in-laws are boring, watching paint dry is boring.

what about that crackle paint....that can be kind of cool to watch dry.

neilt

macguiguru

May 23, 2003, 12:30 AM

So. What.

Yo Fred!!! Sell it to Adobe! Go buy an island and let us get on with our lives!!!
Love ya!
Buh Bye.

beatle888

May 23, 2003, 01:28 AM

Originally posted by evoluzione

I am wondering however, what happens when Panther comes out, will we be waiting a year for an optimised version for that????

porting from os9 to osx is not the same as needing to update your software for panther.

beatle888

May 23, 2003, 01:31 AM

bites tongue

usersince86

May 23, 2003, 01:34 AM

TWO WORDS:

TOO LATE.

niar

May 23, 2003, 02:30 AM

Is there possibility to mix spot colors in future version of InDesign? I don't want to use Quark for only this purpose anymore..

I'd like to see a cheaper, stripped-down version of Quark to use as a utility, helping people to switch their work to InDesign. Imagine the splash screen: "There is more to Xpress than QuarkLight". It would be nice to customers who had left already... :)

idkew

May 23, 2003, 06:28 AM

i don´t think there will be a price war. adobe´s is already more competitively priced than quark´s, and adobe actually offers upgrade pricing. now don´t get me wrong, i would love a drop in price, but these are professional tools which are very price inelastic. people will be buying them no matter how much they cost, to a point. it is simply the cost of doing business.

i also hope/agree id 3 is sitting and being tested away in wait of quark X. it could be a huge coup if adobe simeltaneously released id3 with qaurk X. offer upgrades from quark to adobe. price id3 under quark, use your huge cash reserve to advertise the hell out of id3, something i doubt quark has the cash for.

if you think about it, releasing quark X might be the beginning of the end of quark. another stab at the already bleeding company. i am for seeing adobe strike the fatal blow. a company such as quark does not deserve to be in business in a consumer driven economy.

Sonofhaig

May 23, 2003, 09:12 AM

Originally posted by Macette
Quark's too arrogant for a price war. But when they go into receivorship, I imagine we'll be picking it up in bargain bins all over the place...

You just may be right. I've dealt with thier customer service. Nasty!

beatle888

May 23, 2003, 10:58 AM

Originally posted by niar
Is there possibility to mix spot colors in future version of InDesign? I don't want to use Quark for only this purpose anymore..

I'd like to see a cheaper, stripped-down version of Quark to use as a utility, helping people to switch their work to InDesign. Imagine the splash screen: "There is more to Xpress than QuarkLight". It would be nice to customers who had left already... :)

yes, but if your using a percentage other than 100% of overlapping color you need to assign a cmy or k screen angle to the pantone colors. indesign has a wonderful option under the view menu lets you preview overprints. which you can not do in quark. actually i think this feature is a first. ive only seen it in indesign.

AD/CD

May 23, 2003, 11:12 AM

Just a word of caution on the mixing pantones. PMS colours are by nature opaque, process colours are semi-transparent. Depending on your reasons for mixing pantones, you may be better of doing a channel mixture in Phostoshop rather then in ID - you'll get a better colour representation IMO.

evoluzione

May 23, 2003, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by beatle888
porting from os9 to osx is not the same as needing to update your software for panther.

oh i know that, never said it was the same....it will need some tweaking however, right?

mrsebastian

May 23, 2003, 01:02 PM

you wanna bet! no respectable printer is going to lose the business, because they're too stubborn to pay for id. so, all of you that have had that problem, tell them that they can take themselves and their quark and walk off a short pier.

we had this problem with one of our printers... "no we can't take indesign files and no, we are not going to" was the reply i got, when i asked if they could handle id files. politely i asked if he was willing to lose our business over a few hundred dollar program? stubborn as that sorry bastard is, he said "yes". well it's been about 9 months and every other day we get a phone call or something in the mail pleading for our business again. see what he didn't think about is that over the course of a year we'd do about $90,000 worth of printing with him. we have replaced him in our "printer" list with someone that happily accepts indesign and has a whole lot less attitude.

the future

May 23, 2003, 01:35 PM

All you Indesign fans / Quark haters should ask yourselves what Adobe will do with the price of their product once Quark would be out of business and they have no competition anymore. My guess is they would double it in no time. I really don't think that it would be healthy for Apple and everyone in the print/design field to be completely in the hands of one company.

AD/CD

May 23, 2003, 01:50 PM

I would would happily pay double for a superior product. Think of it this way, its a small investment for a product that can help generate so much income. It's truly a small price to pay.

zarathustra

May 23, 2003, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by niar
Is there possibility to mix spot colors in future version of InDesign? I don't want to use Quark for only this purpose anymore..

As a beta tester of InDesign and talking often to Quark/InDesign users, that is the weirdest request I have heard...

True you might be able to mix two spot colors in Quark, but in ID, you can lay tints of spot colors on each other and control the overprint of each - and preview it live. It's a much more elegant solution than hard mixing of two colors (and no tints). Oh yeah, and If you don't mind printing mud, you can "mix" as many spot colors in InDesign as your printer can handle

Having signed an NDA with Adobe, I wish I could comment on upcoming releases, but as such, i can only say (confidently), Quark is too little, too late. The new OSX version will help the transition of hardcore Quark users, but on a feature/price ratio, ID wins hands down.

beatle888

May 23, 2003, 04:44 PM

Originally posted by evoluzione
oh i know that, never said it was the same....it will need some tweaking however, right?

i really dont think so. supposedly 32bit apps can run with the 64bit chip. but im really not that knowledable about it. someone wanna answer that?

the question:
will quark or any 32bit app have to be optimized for the new (hope) 64bit chip?

i remember reading here that it wasnt necessary...32bit code can run fine on a 64bit chip.

ad/cd, channel mixer will take the (for instance) two channels assigned to pms colors and mix the value, the only thing it can do is subtract from a value of 100%. it would be the same in any app. photoshop cant mix the two colors any differently than indesign would. you can only choose a value between 0% and 100% and you can accomplish that in indesign or quark for that matter.

AidenShaw

May 23, 2003, 05:03 PM

Originally posted by beatle888
the question:
will quark or any 32bit app have to be optimized for the new (hope) 64bit chip?

i remember reading here that it wasnt necessary...32bit code can run fine on a 64bit chip.

Several answers.... ;)

IBM claims that the PPC970 will run 32-bit code fine, and even 32-bit operating systems with very minor changes. (Not surprising, since the operating system usually needs some minor changes for every new chip, motherboard or other widget.)

Answer1: No, 32-bit applications won't need to be optimized to run on the 970, and Panther won't even need to support 64-bit.

If Panther does support partial or full 64-bit addressing, then we can assume that it supports a 32-bit mode for 32-bit applications. The alternative means that no existing applications will run on Panther on a 970, somewhat limiting its appeal.

Answer2: No, 32-bit applications won't need to be optimized to run on 64-bit Panther on a 970. They won't pick up any benefits from 64-bit, but they'll run as they always have.

The 970 chip has more functional units and parallelism than the G4. which means that compilers can generate code sequences that can exploit the extra power of the chip. The code should execute correctly on PPC chips (with allowance for AltiVec, of course). It is likely that an instruction sequence that runs the fastest on a 970 is not the same as the sequence that runs the fastest on a G4 - although both sequences will run correctly on both chips.

Answer3: Yes, 32-bit applications can sometimes be optimized by simply recompiling the code with a compiler that understands how to generate the fastest PPC970 code sequences. That might make them run a bit slower on the G4, but manufacturers usually optimize for the fastest systems.

If a 32-bit application is to really exploit 64-bits, it will take serious modifications and testing. For most applications, however, there's little benefit from 64-bit - so this is a moot point.

Answer4: Yes, applications will need modifications (from modest to extensive) and testing to optimize for 64-bit addressing.

bousozoku

May 24, 2003, 05:54 PM

Originally posted by rblum22
There is no way Quark 6 is ready for June. Based on nothing but past Quark history, I'd be surprised to see it before September.

It's a shame that Quark has to do so little to maintain it's stranglehold over the DTP market. InDesign is a much better product.

There's currently an upgrade promotion to XPress version 5 with a free upgrade to version 6 (or full version 5 and $100 off version 6), which ends 30 June. It would seem they believe that they will release the new version shortly after that.

Freg3000

May 24, 2003, 06:05 PM

Originally posted by bousozoku
There's currently an upgrade promotion to XPress version 5 with a free upgrade to version 6 (or full version 5 and $100 off version 6), which ends 30 June. It would seem they believe that they will release the new version shortly after that.

Yeah, the almighty dollar is very telling. They wouldn't do this if Xpress 6 wasn't coming until much later this year. Quark wouldn't care-let a few people buy version 5.0 for the full price and then make them buy version 6.0 for the full price again. Double the money.

This makes me believe it will be avaiable very soon, not a second (day, week, month, year.....) too late

dominick

May 24, 2003, 08:39 PM

here's a duct tape & bailing wire solution for printing an in design file through quark. create everything in indesign, turn the whole mess into a big eps file & either drop it into an older version of quark once your sure its perfect. or make it a pdf which if a printer can handle will print great. ps quark is the most user belligerant program other than windows xp. those bastards @ quark are WORSE THAN M$!!!!!

Genie

May 25, 2003, 02:47 PM

I usually use an old version of Quark to do my album covers, and it is a bit buggy in OSX.
Should I switch to InDesign?
I really like the layer effects in Photoshop and I miss them when I have to use the bare-bones text in Quark.:)

ds9er16

May 26, 2003, 04:58 AM

Like people have been noting, Quark has simply taken too long to come out for OS X.

The scenario reminds me of the Adobe Premier 6 disaster. The program was so horrible that people left it and got comfortable with Avid or Pinnacle. Once Adobe released 6.5, it was pretty much too late. People got into the comfort zone of whatever program they switched to.

Alright, so this isn't exactly the same situation, but its close enough. Since Quark has taken so long to come out, businesses will be in that "Comfort Zone" with whatever program they are using now, namely InDesign. Employees will be knowledgable with the interface of InDesign 3 when it comes out too. The time period has just been too long for the situation to be salvaged at all. I really doubt that Quark 6 will take off at all seeing that its just now barely coming out for Jag when Panther is just around the corner. If Adobe is smart, they'll wait for the release of Panther and boast better stability and performance with Panther, but still compatible with Jag while it seems that all Quark will be able to do is virtually nothing.

idkew

May 26, 2003, 12:08 PM

Originally posted by the future
All you Indesign fans / Quark haters should ask yourselves what Adobe will do with the price of their product once Quark would be out of business and they have no competition anymore. My guess is they would double it in no time. I really don't think that it would be healthy for Apple and everyone in the print/design field to be completely in the hands of one company.

you mean like it has been until very recently with id coming on the design scene?

it is not our fault quark did not try to stay a leader in its field. it is not our job to buy an inferior product to keep competition up. what is seems you want is people to continue to purchase a poor product in order to keep some guise of competition in the market.

if adobe upps their price- oh well. that just makes the market more interesting to someone with a great id killing idea.