Enough Quark bashing. Sheesh.
Believe me, I never thought I would be the person who would come to Quarks defense, but some of the posts Ive read are so ignorant and one-sided that I had to register just to present an alternative view and a little sane perspective.
Im almost always amazed at how everyone just loves to jump on the bandwagon and moan about how much they hate Quark. But with all due respect, I have found about 80% of these posts to be completely bereft of any useful criticism, and a good majority of those appear to come from very green-sounding posters whom I doubt have had much high-impact use of Quark. Quark sucks, and Quark is buggy is about as vague and inflammatory as you can get. How about some tangible examples?
When I first began college in the late 80s, I was fortunate enough to attend a school that was among the first in the country to supply their design department with 10 brand-spanking new Apples loaded with Quark, Illustrator 88 and Photoshop. The only problem? No manuals. We sat in front of those apple boxes day and night learning the programs BY FEEL AND INTUITION ONLY and I can tell you that we all got the hang of the basic Quark skill set a hell of a lot faster than Photoshop and Illustrator. You draw a box, type into it, and move it around. Whats so hard about that? And anyone who wants to get more out of Quark can do so by simply using trial and error or cruising the manual. So to those of you who complain about Quarks user interface, I say you dont know what the hell youre talking about. Quarks user interface works very well.
Since then, Quark has had many challengers. And all of them have discovered the same thing. IT AINT EASY TO MAKE A PAGE LAYOUT PROGRAM. You can talk until youre blue about how wonderful Ill and Pshop are (and I would agree with you), but they do not even approach the complexity and myriad of issues a layout program must contend with. Layout apps are catch-all apps. They have to make nice with every poorly written app, extension and doc someone wants to throw at it to A) import text, B) import images in any of a number of formats, C) manage and manipulate complex Postscript and TrueType font issues, D) manage and manipulate complex color systems and calibration problems, E) handle huge, multi-page docs and master pages, F) create flawlessly rippable files to deliver to vendors who may work on any of a number of varied platforms, etc. The list is endless, and until now, who has developed a product that didnt get its ass handed to them? Canvas? It tried to do too much, ended up doing none of it well, and printers hated it. Pagemaker? Talk about a limited, lame program. By the way, lets not forget this is Adobes second attempt at a Quark killer. Quark was the pioneer, it paved the way. As such, it deserves a modicum of respect. It did the dirty job no one else wanted to tackle. Printers minds are tough to change, so do you think Quark would have become the pervasive, it program for page layout and output if it wasnt reasonably stable and reliable? No way. Let's not exaggerate how awful and terrible Quark is.
As a pressman, production artist, pre-press technician, illustrator, designer and creative director, I have used Quark in almost every facet for which it was intended. And in my 15+ year career of electronic publishing, advertising and print collateral work, I have had a major Quark snafu ONLY ONCE while printing a huge run of 800 page textbooks crammed with text and images, and it was early in the 90s when printers were still learning the ins and outs of ripping massive electronic files. A Quark rep was sent out to our printer the next morning, and we were able to collectively correct the problem at only minimal down-time cost (although any extra cost is too much). But for the most part, Quark has been a stable, reliable trooper for me. I can easily teach it to those who need to know it, and it can do most of what I need it to do.
Having said all that, there are several things I dont like about Quark and that I do agree with many of you about:
1) They are very slow. While I actually appreciate the fact that they dont feel the need to radically alter their palettes and tools just for the sake of doing so (Adobe, Im talking to you), they are painfully slow in responding to customer input, something they could learn a lot from Adobe about.
2) They have become complacent and unjustifiably expensive. The initial purchase cost of the app is bad enough, but $400 updates are inexcusable and shameful. Having no competition has made Quark arrogant and lazy.
3) Quark doesnt bust its butt to play nice with other apps the way it used to. Anyone who has tried to align jagged EPS vector files in Quark knows what I mean. Their solutions to PDF compatibility were cumbersome and slow to occur, unlike Illustrators seamless PDF capabilities.
4) They are far too reliant on third party extensions. Why doesnt Quark simply integrate some of these obvious extensions into the core program? Is it laziness? Conflict of interest? Yes and yes.
I am all for InDesign coming in to shake things up. Quark needs a kick in the arse. But waiting so long to come up with the answer has made it a tough road for Adobe. Design and production professionals are fiercely loyal (thats how Macs have survived!) and if Adobe doesnt address the fact that we all have tons of qxd files and we want a simple solution to their conversion to even consider a switch, it may not happen at all. I was sick enough of Quark's antics and intrigued enough by an all-Adobe architecture to purchase InDesign when it first came out, and conversion was the biggest problem I encountered. I was also none too impressed with the interface, which I found a bit steeper than I would have thought from Adobe, especially considering I know the two other apps so well. I will eventually re-visit the newest upgrade and try it again, but to be quite frank, I dont have the time to give every new kid on the block a go to see if theyd be a worthy app replacement. Ive got enough on my plate mastering HTML and Flash and other NEW programs that allow me to do things I dont already know how to do. And somewhere in there I actually have to get some work done.
I suspect the rumors of Quarks demise are greatly exaggerated. I am in a position to hire design and production professionals. I keep abreast with industry standards, and I have yet to see more than the occasional want ad request for InDesign fluency. My printers havent noticed a tidal wave of interest either. Yet. But it IS growing, and Quark had better see the handwriting on the wall, and with InDesign wisely offering a free non-demo app with the purchase of a new G4, they're doing their marketing-damndest to make it simple.
Its easy to replace a complacent warrior like Quark from the perspective that you know all its weaknesses and strengths and can learn from its mistakes, but its tough from the standpoint that you dont get as long a window to get it right. Both companies will succeed or fail based on how they respond to that simple challenge.
