I've been reading with some interest writers such as David Blatner and Sandee Cohen singing the praises of InDesign while chastising poor, unimaginative QuarkXpress. I suppose over the years Quark has not been its own best champion. Pretty stodgy. Set in its ways. I wish for a better table editor, for instance. Transparency. Fuzzy drop shadows. The next level, perhaps, of typographical controls. It seems this time that InDesign has sped ahead of Quark in every aspect but one. It's a simple one, but one I'm finding it more important with every InDesign job I do:
Quark works.
InDesign (often) doesn't.
What do I mean by "works"? Quark makes plates that can be used on a press to bring my conceptions to reality. Each color, every element, goes its proper way into its proper place, ultimately finding its way into a printed piece that pleases my customers and keeps them coming back. Even more than that, it pleases my boss who continues to make enough money to keep me employed.
InDesign? It makes really pretty pages--on the screen. Its direct export of PDF is usually at odds with the real world of production, often not working at all. Often crashing my platesetter. All of this causes heartburn. This is something I'm not sure reviewers who are comparing InDesign's built-in PDF generation with Quark's Distiller-based feature know about. In my industry (medium-sized printers), Distiller provides the consistent workflow we need for efficiency and profitability. It's possible to use Distiller with InDesign, but it pouts when you do (double-click on a .ps file generated by InDesign and up comes the InDesign program--not, as one would expect, Distiller).
What about OS X? I think Gene Gable's right that this issue is "more emotional than real" (http://www.creativepro.com/files/story_images/feature/18378.html). We in the printing industry are a lot like those Windows NT network guys that want to keep what works and let the newer things prove their worth--and work out their bugs.
Adobe, obviously, is not finished working out its vision for InDesign, but it has its work cut out for it. In heavy-duty ink on paper applications, Quark has nothing to fear from the current generation of InDesign.
Quark vs. InDesign and getting your design on paper
I've been reading with some interest writers such as David Blatner and Sandee Cohen singing the praises of InDesign while chastising poor, unimaginative QuarkXpress. I suppose over the years Quark has not been its own best champion. Pretty stodgy. Set in its ways. I wish for a better table editor, for instance. Transparency. Fuzzy drop shadows. The next level, perhaps, of typographical controls. It seems this time that InDesign has sped ahead of Quark in every aspect but one. It's a simple one, but one I'm finding it more important with every InDesign job I do:
Quark works.
InDesign (often) doesn't.
What do I mean by "works"? Quark makes plates that can be used on a press to bring my conceptions to reality. Each color, every element, goes its proper way into its proper place, ultimately finding its way into a printed piece that pleases my customers and keeps them coming back. Even more than that, it pleases my boss who continues to make enough money to keep me employed.
InDesign? It makes really pretty pages--on the screen. Its direct export of PDF is usually at odds with the real world of production, often not working at all. Often crashing my platesetter. All of this causes heartburn. This is something I'm not sure reviewers who are comparing InDesign's built-in PDF generation with Quark's Distiller-based feature know about. In my industry (medium-sized printers), Distiller provides the consistent workflow we need for efficiency and profitability. It's possible to use Distiller with InDesign, but it pouts when you do (double-click on a .ps file generated by InDesign and up comes the InDesign program--not, as one would expect, Distiller).
What about OS X? I think Gene Gable's right that this issue is "more emotional than real" (http://www.creativepro.com/files/story_images/feature/18378.html). We in the printing industry are a lot like those Windows NT network guys that want to keep what works and let the newer things prove their worth--and work out their bugs.
Adobe, obviously, is not finished working out its vision for InDesign, but it has its work cut out for it. In heavy-duty ink on paper applications, Quark has nothing to fear from the current generation of InDesign.