I'm the tech guy for a person who is very good with Quark but is hesitant to get into InDesign. But she knows she has to learn it. But she really needs some reasons to make the switch. What do yuze guys like about InDesign that makes it a pleasure to leave Quark behind?

Honestly, the biggest reason is money-> Indesign is much cheaper than Quark. Second, Quark sat too long on its monopol and refused to bring Quark up to standard again, but with QE7 they may reach the top again... But Indesign has an advantage of taking the leadership on most areas. Speed isn't one of them.

ID does all she needs and more, it can do (nearly) everything and has a tighter integration into Photoshop, Illustrator and other Adobe Products. It is a little slow, but wtf. Quark7 is slow (at least on X) too, so it doesn't really matter. (But don't tell her)

I think the biggest hurdle is throwing all the quark-bound working-mechanics overboard that nearly made it into animal insticts over the years. If she accepts that first, learning ID is a breeze. Does she use Illustrator? If yes, ID is very similar in many areas.

(I'm more of Freehand-guy, but wtf) ...

So, I can't give you real killer reasons to go ID. I don't care anymore, all that counts is the resulting design, at least for me. ID writes PDF very easily, i don't know about QE7.

I've learned ID too, mainly due to job demands, that means working as a freelancing designer. There is no "No, i don't know ID"... I designed some crazy virtual magazines for learning purposes, using master pages, paragraph styles, character styles, graphic styles (really useful feature of ID, for example you can define all kind of styles for lines, boxes, etc.), etc. And it didn't take too long to learn ID.

Another good (and also evil :-)) feature is free configuration of keyboard shortcuts.

ps. other useful stuff: native shadows, transparencies and feather pic-edges. It's questionable if these features are really needed, but shadows and transparencies are useful here and there. I don't know about QE7 regarding shadows and stuff.

That's just the kind of info I was looking for, smithz. Thanks. I think the part that is of particular relevance is:

I think the biggest hurdle is throwing all the quark-bound working-mechanics overboard that nearly made it into animal insticts over the years. If she accepts that first, learning ID is a breeze. Does she use Illustrator? If yes, ID is very similar in many areas.

She doesn't use Illustrator (unless she absolutely has to), and does most of that kind of stuff in Freehand. She bought a copy of InDesign some time back but only now is dealing with it (which I installed tonight – double whammy, getting in to OS X and away from Quark at the same time). She likes a few things about InDesign, but doesn't like messing with her animal instincts that have been built up over the years. So if you were some kind of police sketch-artists, you pretty much just drew her wanted poster. She's already warming up a little because of the number of undos compared to Quark 4. And she likes the way InDesign works so much better with her color printers.

I was a die-hard Quark jock, but now everything is InDesign. It just functions better with Adobe Creative Suite apps. It's easier to prep, print, and make PDFs with.

If you're sending work out to a service bureau, or a printer, it's the way to go now. Quark is pretty much dead. Quark is TRYING to breathe new life into the app, but I'd have to say it's pretty much hopeless at this point. They lost the war. Adobe rolled over them.

Okay, it seems like the ability to easily make pdf's that are also good is a good selling point. I think she's a bit sold already because of how nicely InDesign printed to her non-Postcript Epson printer (I forget which model). With Quark in OS 9 you have to use StylusRip and that whole riggamarole. And I showed her how her Freehand graphics would likely work just fine when placed into InDesign, so she could continue creating a lot of her graphics in Freehand without having to learn anything new. And she might come to appreciate (hopefully) how stable InDesign is compared to Quark. She's forever crashing Quark.

I'm assuming from what I think you guys are saying is that she will have to learn a new "feel" for how to do things, but that that "feel" is still a good one once you get used to it. Part of the "feel" of Freehand, for instance, is something I just could never understand. It seems to me that Freehand made it so bloody hard to select layered object. It would just drive me mad. But she loves Freehand and hates Illustrator (which I think is a far smoother drawing program and makes it much easier to select objects). I guess that "feel" is a highly personal thing at times. But I was trying to manipulate a move a few files in OS X and she heard more than a few four-letter words. The "feel" of OS X's Finder is very poor. It just literally become difficult to select files and to drag them around.

Thanks for all the input, guys.

Crazy, i'm still so used to Quark that i forgot about the "undo"-feature of ID. ...
I'm still using QE4 on a daily basis, err. i should better say my client still uses QE4 and i'm sitting there. When experimenting something in QE4, i duplicate stuff first, move that to the side as a kind of backup and then start to alter things.
So, undo in ID is a nicely working UNDO, compared to QE.
And I forgot about another nice feature of ID: layers.

Crazy, i'm still so used to Quark that i forgot about the "undo"-feature of ID.

I don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that ancient Chinese scribes (at least the ones who worked for the emperor) would get a finger cut off every time they made a typo. Maybe working with only one level of undo tends to make one live a bit closer on the edge and thus one's work will be better.

A junk theory, of course, but there could be an itty bitty element of truth to it at times. In other programs that offer only one level of undo, I've done just as you've done, smithz. I've copied and pasted things off to the side in case I wanted to go back (and just as a visual reference).

Quark doesn't have layers? I didn't know that. Or maybe you mean InDesign's layers are a lot better. I'll pass on the gist of this info to my friend. I think it will have a positive effect. She's a very good designer but doesn't like dicking with new software, especially if what she has is working. And it's not like there hasn't been progress, but I think people such as her help to point out how we all have been so ingrained with this upgrade mentality. But I mean, a pencil is a pencil. A pen is a pen. How much can you really improve something like that? And in a lot of ways I think a layout program is a layout program. If the core basic things are done correctly then all that other stuff is nice, but almost superfluous.

I like that chinese style. Really, i think the limited undo has an effect. In addition i don't know about QE 5,6 and 7, but in QE4 the undo is that crippled, worst: moving guides can't be undone - it's fierce. Eeeek!

quote:

Quark doesn't have layers?

I only know about QE4, which has no layers, but you could add them via 3rd-party extensions, but I was never using those extensions, because extension-bound designs tend to fuck up workflow when you giving layout-files to other ppl/printer/agencies.

but I was never using those extensions, because extension-bound designs tend to fuck up workflow when you giving layout-files to other ppl/printer/agencies.

That makes sense.

but in QE4 the undo is that crippled, worst: moving guides can't be undone - it's fierce. Eeeek!

I'm not sure why such long-standing holes exist in software. The Finder now has one undo, and that's an improvement. But it ought to have several levels.

quote:

I'm not sure why such long-standing holes exist in software. The Finder now has one undo, and that's an improvement. But it ought to have several levels.

I'm pretty sure the reason was lack of competition. Quark dominated the DTP-Market for years and had no real pressure on them to do something about it. Same with Finder, no competition. Can stay mediocre, ppl will buy anyway.

So, hopefully Quark will live on otherwise we would see Adobe getting insanely sloppy.

Can stay mediocre, ppl will buy anyway.

I think your point about Quark hopefully continuing to provide some competition in order to drive innovations is a good one, smithz. And it's not that Apple hasn't put some work into OS X's Finder for the last few years. But I think they've still failed to address some basic issues…just as the Platinum Finder failed to address some basic issues such as the proliferation of open folders (something that Column View and a browser-type Finder solves to a very great extent). But labels are just flat-out unacceptable as currently implemented. It's overkill. And if you have a list (either in the Finder or in an open/save dialog) of files with various labels attached, it's really a carnival of colors so garish that it interferes with the legibility or reading the list itself. Oh well.

It's Quark's own fault, they got lazy, and got their asses whupped.

I think part of the whole issue--and what is going to plague InDesign eventually--is the idea of making programs progressively more feature-rich, without ever really getting them to work right FIRST.

That's why crap gets bloated. I say to these guys: get the program to work first, before you even THINK about adding another feature. If stuff doesn't work right, either fix it or get rid of it before you go off in another direction.

There's gotta be some kind of rule that the release has to be stable, before you trowel on more bullshit. If OSX followed that, we'd have half the happy horseshit, and what we do have would work better.

I say to these guys: get the program to work first, before you even THINK about adding another feature. If stuff doesn't work right, either fix it or get rid of it before you go off in another direction...There's gotta be some kind of rule that the release has to be stable, before you trowel on more bullshit.

I doubt I've ever heard that said better. Just like there used to be a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval (or Underwriters Laboratories), I think we need the equivalent of those things for software. That shrink-wrapped box that you pick up at Best Buy needs to have its own seal of approval to let consumers know that something works right and/or that some upgrade isn't just the troweling on of more bullshit. All sort of little graphics come to mind for that seal, maybe some feature trowels while other feature an over-stuffed 10 pound bag. I have no doubt that thalo or TMO could design the catchy little logo. But seriously, what a great service this would perform for consumers.

I totally agree, we need something like the good housekeeping seal of approval.

The age of the work-in-progress has made it WAY TOO FUCKING EASY for software companies to sell snake oil. You sign away all your rights as a consumer when you agree to their terms. You get absolutely no recourse against the software being total crap, vaporware, imagiware, or suckware.

And who are ya gonna trust for software reviews? Macworld? Puh-leez. They give five mice to developers for just showing up. Apple apologists have infected the industry, and have caused the bar to be set WAY too low. The Mac Faithful aren't as CRITICAL of Apple as they need to be. They end up supporting Apple like it's a fucking CHARITY. They cheer when the stock goes up, then you ask them, uh, but brother, do you OWN any Apple stock? "well, no, but I support them." Eye roll.

Giving Apple free money is not the way to get better products. Apple is addicted to selling to the addicted, like native americans were addicted to friggin' WAMPUM. They just went "ooh, shiny" instead of understanding that Europeans were conning them, foisting trinkety crap on them that cost them half a penny to make, but which they could trade for truly valuable stuff, like LAND.

Apple notoriously charges for its operating system software AS IF it's a fully developed commercial release, when time and again we at thalo.net have told you the truth: it's beta freeware-cum-nextstep, with a slathering of spinning gears eye candy interface developed by a geek aristocracy that thinks regular people are worthless retards. The eye candy is the wampum. Y'all are going "mmmm... shiny" and almost nobody but we here at this web site, look any deeper into the con than that.

That's how cons work, partly. Once people are fooled, it's very tough to get them to face that, because they think it makes them look bad. It's like the Native American Brave who goes home to his wife and she says, "you traded a hectare of our land for WHAT?" and he has to convince her the wampum is truly valuable.

That's what all the Apple apologists sound like to me. They got caught in a deal for worthless nonsense, and now they have to cover that fact up to preserve their dignity.

Apple software, like fast food, is good at one thing: keeping you on the hook, so you'll gobble up more and more voraciously, staying hungry, and not question really how well it's working. Instead, it gives you crap to PLAY WITH, impress your fellow digikids with, so when they ask you, "hey, how does that software WORK?" You can deflect the question with a demonstration of some useless interface element like the slow genie-suck.

Me, I continue to be fed friggin' up with OS X not working. Spotlight KILLS me. Especially in Mail, where I really need it to work. It can't find SQUAT in the text of an email. Crap I KNOW is there. Sometimes I'll have the email open in front of me, I'll see the text string, and then simply try to test spotlight by searching for it. Can't find it. I try rebuilding the mailbox. Sometimes it finds it, sometimes still no. But there's nothing that tells you, hey, hammerhead... spotlight's not working, better rebuild that mailbox! No, instead you have to nursemaid. Like so much of this crap.

You blame yourself, instead of blaming the software, because the software doesn't tell you when it breaks, or is likely to break, anymore.

It hides that fact. It lets you go along la la la la in happy land, while it fails to do what it's supposed to. The burden is on YOU to see that it's fucking up, because it seldom alerts you to that fact, until apps "unexpectedly" quit, or it hard crashes. Very nut-driving.

But also very perfect for making people apologists. When stuff BOMBED or froze, in the legacy, it was the OS telling you that something went wrong. Now, it just keeps going, and doesn't tell you. But you pay for that. You can never trust fully that a command was executed. I'm ALWAYS wondering "did that email go through?" "Did I fuck up a search string because Spotlight couldn't find it?" Did I do something to make GoLive quit? Yeah, use it.

This whole OS puts the user in a position to blame themselves, while the developers sit back and count their money, which is all the proof they need that you're a rube.

Your wampum analogy was brilliant and had me rolling on the floor laughing out loud.

Just FYI, I'm receiving some encouraging words form the last Quark holdout in Washington State. (Well, maybe not...but close.) She's warming to InDesign. And I truly thank you all for the help. It does mean something to be able to get honest opinions about software. Yeah, we all have our like and dislikes, but I don't think anybody here won't admit when something just doesn't work right. And that's very helpful to people who are trying to figure some stuff out. Radical Mac advocacy can just bury people in misinformation and nonsense. So I do thank you all for the adept opinions.

Where's the begging emoticon? Do we have one? Anyway, I own InDesign CS (3.0.1) and I have a couple new files that it won't open that I may need converted. For a nominal fee (I'll take free too, but don't mind reimbursing expenses if need be) who would like to volunteer to open a file, save it in CS 1 format (via the "inx" export method, I would assume) and then email it to me? I'm not sure when this would happen so I'm just checking in now.

Sure, I'll give it a shot. I have ID CS3 (5.0.4)
are the files small enough to email me?

I have access to ID CS4 (6.X.X) if need be.

Cool. Both 3 and 4. I have no idea what version these are. About half of the files open in CS1. The others don't and I don't know what version they are.

About file size, what happens if I send you just the InDesign file and not any of the place tiff and eps files? If you export the file without the placed files, will that break the links? Can I re-link? Or is it a total mess?