1. Grant on February 6, 2005 11:36 AM writes...

Well, I do use both from time to time; however, I find InDesign much easier to deal with. It seems to give me less problems overall...especially when creating pdfs.....most my printing for school has to be done from pdfs, and quark hates pdfs, while InDesign seems to not mind it at all....as well as allowing you to create outlines much easier....I don't really have much more to say....I just can't stand QuarkExpress 6, and love InDesign.

2. I. on February 6, 2005 12:59 PM writes...

For freelance design I always use InDesign if I can get away with it, but I have to use Quark 4 on OS X at my day job. Every other computer in my office runs OS 9, except the boss's new laptop. That laptop also has our sole copy of Quark 6, but we only use it when we have to work on a file that was built by somebody else. The rest of the time, the boss works in Quark 4. The only other upgrade she was forced to get was Suitcase, because the old version wouldn't work in X.

We're a small company, and we can't afford to buy all those upgrades of hardware (most of our gear is ancient), software, and XTensions (minor stuff--nothing like QPS), so I'm sure nobody else will switch until they absolutely have to. The boss is excited about the Mac Mini, though, so there's a glimmer of hope. In the meantime, Quark 4 still crashes on me at least once a day, but since the rest of the system stays stable now, I'm not losing half as much time to rebooting and troubleshooting. So while keeping Quark 4 on OS X seems like a perverse way to upgrade, your designers _will_ be a bit happier and more efficient.

At my last job, I did all my work in InDesign, since nobody seemed to care, and I never had any output problems. None of our printers accepted native InDesign files, but it didn't matter; I just sent PDFs.

I find InDesign vastly better for typesetting books than Quark 4, or what I've seen of Quark 6, but most designers don't grasp the benefits until they've used it for a while, and it's very hard to get them to give it a serious try when there's stupid Quark 4, which they've been using for years. Sure, it crashes all the time, but they're used to it.

3. Gil on February 6, 2005 01:11 PM writes...

I'm a graphic designer and used to work in a small design studio. Our studio, like everyone else, faced this exact same dilemma over a year ago. In the end we decided to go with InDesign and OS X.

First we were able to purchase licenses for InDesign version 2 (CS was already out) which is a Carbon app and can run in either OS9 or OSX. This way no one had to make the dual leap of going InD and OSX at the same time. And as we got newer Macs that only had OSX people didn't have to learn any new apps.

During this transition period, everyone quickly fell in love with InD and the frequency anyone had to go back to Quark faded just as quickly. The ones who had newer Macs and did have to run Quark in Classic found it very frustrating. If you think OSX font management is screwy, trying to manage fonts in Classic from OSX is a nightmare. We tried both Suitcase and Font Agent Pro which purport to support Classic font management. However, the results with either were very inconsistent with Font Agent Pro just slightly better. Some designers resorted to managing their fonts manually through the Classic font folder. And that's just fonts. The next most annoying issue was screen redraw abnormalities. Certain elements like guides, boxes or text would disappear and reappear. I found a freeware Quark XT that kind of helped . Even accepting all of these Quark quirks, the general instability made using Quark in Classic unusable at times.

Once everyone was on board with InDesign we then upgraded anyone to OSX who didn't have it yet. And then at this time we also upgraded everyone to Adobe CS. That was last September and the studio has been very happy ever since. Not only have people forgotten about Quark, everyone's enjoyment of OSX has been increased as well since no one ever has to deal with Classic. In terms of dealing with other suppliers, I can't think of a time that supplying InDesign (either 2.0 or CS) was ever a problem, even when we began making the switch over a year ago. After going through all of the bumps and bruises, the only thing I'm sorry about is not making the leap a bit earlier and a bit more aggressively so our complete transition was sooner.

For the increasingly rare times they need Quark, we have one older G4 that is setup to dual boot. That way when they run Quark, it'll be running in OS9 and NEVER within Classic.

I've left the studio since then and work for myself and I'm glad to say I'm completely Quark-free and this has never been an issue. The few times I've had to deal with a client's legacy Quark files, InDesign has opened them fine with only the expected type reflow but this wasn't a problem since most of the text was being changed anyways.

Hope this helps.

4. Richard Earney on February 6, 2005 01:24 PM writes...

I made the InDesign switch as soon as possible. Occasionally have had to use QXP 4 and 6 and just hate it! Fortunately my main client now accepts InDesign - huge sigh of relief!!

Font Management is a problem, Extensis's recent upgrade to Suitcase means you seem to need 2 licences in a Fast User Switching environment on one computer which is just too stupid for words. If any good rivals come out Extensis will lose my business!

5. PXLated on February 6, 2005 01:42 PM writes...

I can understand where a large publisher might have some workflow issues that make it difficult to switch but the integration between all the Adobe apps is just incredible and saves so much time that I haven't looked back. I'll be perfectly happy if I never have to fire up Quark again. And the PDF creation is just so slick and easy. Have had absolutely no problems with printers or service bureaus with InDesign either.

6. Chris Basnight on February 6, 2005 01:52 PM writes...

I own and operate a small graphic design/prepress firm in North Carolina. We use Indesign because of it's ability to produce rock solid .pdf files. For font management, we use Font Agent Pro. I think you may be asking the wrong question. It's not about which product is better, it's about which product can produce a good .pdf. In that department, Indesign wins hands down.

The conversion to .pdf workflows has been in the works for years. Some of the RIP in use today actually use some flavor of .pdf as the file format that moves throughout their systems, Agfa's Apogee and Nexus to name a few. Few newspapers in our region want to deal with native files so our ad work has been mostly delivered in .pdf for quite some time. Xpress has always been a bit weak in .pdf creation. Remember the .pdf xtension that caused Xpress to unexpectedly quit at random?

The only real issues we've had with our conversion to Indesign, is reassuring our print vendors that a .pdf workflow is indeed possible. Our approach has been to send test files for both process and spot color work prior to sending a "live" job and communicating with their prepress people. Once we've demonstrated to staff that our .pdf files work, they really don't give a hoot WHAT software we use to get there.

As for font management, we chose Font Agent Pro after using Font Reserve for a couple of years. FAP's sorting options are much improved recently, and it's built-in font repair and evaluation capabilities have kept us from installing corrupt or questionable fonts on several occasions.

We still have a copy of Xpress 6 to handle the output of files we receive in Xpress 5 or 6, but a groan goes up when we have to resort to using it. After using Indesign it seems clunky and outdated.

We recently assisted one of our vendors with the transistion from Classic to OSX. They, like you, were convinced that nothing was better than Xpress 4. Once we set up their workstations and showed their production people some of the cool production oriented features in Indesign (ability to preview separations, ink aliasing, ink limit previews, etc.) they were sold.

Good luck with the transistion!

7. Chris on February 6, 2005 03:03 PM writes...

Hmm. Interesting. I'm a designer whose been using Quark for quite a while now. this includes the latest 6.5 for OS X. True, I almost switched to InDesign, when 6 finally came along. Before that, I used 4 in Classic/9 on my dual-boot G4 — which was a real hassle. Now, I'd say that my Quark 6.5 on 10.3.7 is slightly better than 4 on OS9 was. I know that may not seem like much, but I've really grown to love OS X, and Quark does what I need it to do (still). I do have InDesign and have fiddled around with it, but still wouldn't change. No real font issues to speak of; I get along fine with Font Book and You Control Fonts. I have Suitcase X1, but now I'm not sure why, since the other two apps really handle all I need (and I have over 250 fonts active). Quark 6.5 interacts smoothly with Photoshop or any other app, through the Badia OpenNow extension; it has good rez on the images I place in the boxes; Collect for Output works better than ever. When my jobs go to the printer, I have had no (I mean zero) complaints about how my files are received.

My criterion is this: if the application I work with becomes secondary to the work I'm creating…then things are going well.

Frankly, I don't know what the fuss is all about, and why Quark is getting such a bad rap/rep. I know their customer interface sucked in the past, but they are so proactive and friendly now — they seem like a new company.

Just some feedback from someone who still likes Quark (ver. 6.5 in OS X 10.3.7, on a G4 dual 1.25, that is).

Good luck, whatever you do.

8. Tyler on February 6, 2005 03:36 PM writes...

When we're talking about font management problems, I don't think we need talk about quark or indesign....the font managment programs just seem to have a lot of problems wether I'm using quark or indesign. I prefere using InDesign..it's just a more enjoyible program to use, and works better with the adobe programs, makes better pdfs....and just looks like more time was put into the actual design of the program. My school used suitcase about 6 months ago, and it worked great....now they moved to some other stupid program that has nothing but problems...I can't even remember the name of the program...it's icon is three different colored sphers in a Triangle though...and it is going to be the death of me....

9. Grant on February 6, 2005 07:47 PM writes...

The system you are changing over obviously has some unique issues with the Copy Desk and QPS that are a show stopper for the company, but as regards the more standard issues of fonts and whether to use Quark 6 or Indesign, I don't see those as big issues. Our own experience in a professional networked publishing environment is that we have had almost Zero problems changing from the old Mac OS 9/Quark 4/Suitcase 8 combination to Mac OS 10.3.x Quark 6.1/6.5/Suitcase X1 which occured early last year. We prepared carefully making sure all the pieces of the publishing puzzle were ready for us and then changed over and have not looked back. Performance wise the system is on a par with the older Mac OS 9 setup or faster. Fonts are not as complicated as it may seem at the outset, just follow the guide provided by Apple for professional publishers entitled "Using and Managing Fonts in Mac OS X A Guide for Creative Professionals" it will tell which fonts to replace (dfonts & Truetype) with your tried and tested Type 1 fonts.

As regards Suitcase X1 we have not had a days trouble with it at any stage, I really don't why people make a big fuss about font management in OS X. The only thing I would suggest keeping an eye on with Fonts (as with any file in OS X) is permissions, especially if you have had to copy a font set from another computer or other source, make sure you have the right privileges for the user.

We save our files over a network to a Mac OS X fileserver, so the only initial Quark 6.1 issue we had to work around was that it did not hand saving Quark 4 files the first time to Quark 6 format over the network. The first time you had to save the files to the new format you do it to the desktop of the workstation and then transfer it to the server from the finder and then you can work off the file from the network after that, there is not a problem working with newly created Quark 6 files with this issue. It is to be noted that neither Adobe or Quark officially support working over a network on their files and never have supported it, though many of us have worked over a network for many years without a problem.

Quark vs Indesign, well that is your choice both are very good at what they do and will do the job, as you mentioned there is not an amazingly great feature that tips the scale in favour of either package, its down to preference in the end both have strengths and weaknesses depending on whether you are a designer or a finished artist or a production house repro type person and both have oustanding bugs and issues that have varying degrees of annoyance. You be the judge.

As regards your company going with Quark 4 in classic, I don't know how you can possibly put up with all the screen redraw issues, my testing on that a year ago in classic using all the latest redraw plugins still yielded way to many redraw issues.

If you go with Quark 6.5 I would stronly recommend not using the QuarkVista plug-in it is buggy and makes the system unstable. I haven't tried the Photoshop PS plugin, but as with both of these plugins, I think image editing is best handled in Photoshop anyway.

I hope our experience gives you some insights and things to think about.

10. Tony on February 6, 2005 08:04 PM writes...

" don't know ... why Quark is getting such a bad rap/rep. ...they are so proactive and friendly now — they seem like a new company."

Holy Cow! A 'Kinder, Gentler Quark' - who'da thought that'd ever happen? But what's that they say about a leopard and its spots?

We still use Quark when we have to, and it (v4.11) works very well. Still, it's a little like using Grandpa's old axe compared to InDesign. Can't say there's any problems with either in regard to output, except that InDesign does seem to do pdf much better. Plus the ability to place psd means less mucking around with one psd here and one tiff over there. The optical kerning's pretty cute, too.

Bottom line is that for all the 'quirks' of both apps, InDesign is WAY cheaper to purchase and maintain. Plus even the 2nd biggest software company in the world (with all that big corporation baggage that comes with it) is still better to deal with that a decade of abuse and extortion that Quark subjected its customers to.

XPress is A$2500 here in Australia (it was for years $1100 more than that!) and Creative Suite Premium is A$1700. That's a whole lot of iron for $800 less. Gotta buy Illustrator and Photoshop anyway, and Acrobat thrown in as well is a tough one to argue against. Plus InDesign really does work well. Who remembers when Quark went to v4? That was a real belly laugh, wasn't it? Sorry Quark Inc. - too little, too late.

11. Mike on February 6, 2005 08:34 PM writes...

It's all about the workflow isn't it? The front end to any system is important and in our newsroom with about 14 page designers, 16 copy editors, 50+ reporters gladly switched from QuarkXPress 3.31/QuarkCopyDesk and QPS 1.12 to InDesign CS/InCopy CS feeding a Unisys Hermes publishing system.

Font management per se is not a big problem for us, but running Classic is. We'll need to use that on our G5's for awhile because of Exchange and our ancient archive system. Classic and specifically the Exchange client Outlook 2001 is implicated in much of our problems that affects other applications.

All the page designers were eager to switch to InDesign CS and I was amazed they were able to make the transition so quickly.

Hope you are able to find a solution that works out.

Mike

12. X Pensive on February 7, 2005 06:34 AM writes...

InDesign is the new standard.

One of the big reasons for switching is expense. Quark is extremely expensive, and their software licencing regime is both draconian and horrendously expensive to manage. In fact, one might argue that Quark has, over the course of it's history, made the entire print industry wildly more expensive than it should be.

This is, after all, 1984 technology. If we look at video post-production, for example, we see the cost of an Non Linear Editor drop from hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first half of the ninties, to less than a thousand. Broadcast quality editing, motion graphics, DVD authoring, music studio software - everything has dropped in price as much as 99% in the past 5-10 years. What's so special about print?

Similarly, the print industry has more draconian licensing, which again makes the total cost of ownership very high. Quark is again, the worst offender. They may have changed things recently, but as little as 6 months ago, one had to ask Quark for permission to move an installation from one computer to another! Similarly, in the past few weeks, I've spent about 2 or 3 days trying to get Suitcase Server & clients to work. Extensis introduced a similarly complicated licensing regime, failed to communicate how it worked to it's retailers and users, and failed to design it in such a way that one could distinguish licensing issues from technical issues. As a result, the software is far more expensive to maintain than is reasonable. Without the licensing issues, we'd have been up and running in 15 minutes.

One might think at first that this is the cost of tighter licensing controls. However, if we look outside the print industry, we can find examples of well designed piracy measures that actually *lower* the total cost of ownership. Logic (a primary app for popular music production) is a good example. It uses a dongle(!) which actually works. It's essentially like a USB 'smart card' which contains all your license codes. This means even if I get a new Mac, I still don't need to enter a serial number. In fact, Logic is arguably less hassle to manage than a regular app which requires a serial number on first launch only.

Following on from big outfits like the BBC, The Guardian, Denis Publishing, etc, we switched to InDesign about a week ago. There will be a period in which Quark remains on computers, but it will be trashed as soon as possible. Once that happens, we can delete Classic and improve stability. And then all the efficiencies that come with OS X can kick in for the designer Macs. OS X means set up times for designer Macs drop from 5 hours to 20 minutes; all technical issues can be solved in 30 minutes or less; a dead Mac doesn't mean lost data or more than 30 seconds down time; and so on and so forth.

Ding dong, the witch is dead,
XP

13. billy on February 16, 2005 02:49 AM writes...

Quark is dead, long live InDesign.

I am a production designer and I use both InDesign and Quark everyday. Today I just did a hellish batch job of Quark files from a client. It was very tedious yet zen-like exporting 43 .qxp files in 2hrs. I wish the client sent us InDesign files so that it could've taken a much shorter time but hey, its production work and thats what I'm paid to do. I just wished they sent InDesign.

InDesign can do superior PDF exports with the cmd+e shortcut. On top of that, it offers you the ability to create your own preset profiles. Quark on the other hand, has no short key, no preset actions but it has a lot of tedious unscriptable work just to create a PDFs.

Indesign made exporting as simple as printing a page. Quark somehow missed that analogy, I guess someone didn't get the memo.

pssstt...hey quark, youre dying and you just dont know it.

14. Greg on February 23, 2005 02:43 PM writes...

There is ONE major feature between the two programs that even the most diehard Quark-brainwashed fool cannot dispute.

The cost.

Quark XPress 6.5 as of this writing costs $1,019.00 in a major mail-order catalog. The ENTIRE Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GoLive and Acrobat - FIVE programs) costs $1,140.00

If you were missing a great number of braincells and still wanted to go with Quark XPress, to accomplish your work you'd still have to purchase Photoshop (or a competitor), Illustrator/FreeHand, and Acrobat Pro. Purchased separately, these costs can easily be $1,500.

Of course, that means that if you wanted to run a productive prepress shop, printer, or design studio, you would still likely buy the entire Adobe Creative Suite in order to save on those three programs. Which means you would get InDesign "thrown in". I would argue that everyone in the graphics industry should at least have a copy of this program by now if they are of sound fiscal mind.

Quark continues to offset their huge development costs of all of their failed software ventures by charging more and more for their ONE good product: Quark XPress.

And don't get me started on Quark XPress Passport Edition, which costs $1,895 and comes with a troublesome USB dongle. InDesign has all of its features and MORE at 1/3 the price.

There is no reason to use Quark XPress unless you are tied to a Quark Copydesk system at a major publisher. Any other agency, printer, publisher or prepress house would have to be stubborn, lazy or stupid to continue to use it and pay for the upgrades.

My 0.02