Quark or Adobe?

[unheilig studios]

For those of you who do layout, what is your chosen program; Quark, Adobe, or Something Else?

[Jasper]

Although I haven't ued Quark, I know one advantage it has -- which may be significant to you, depending -- is that objects can be kept in the flow of the main text. So, frex, you can place an image somewhere on a page, and if the text changes, say getting longer, the image will move with the text. Useful if you have a figure to reference. InDesign currently does not do that. If you get everything 100% set ahead of time, and are only doing one version of the document, this is probably not a big deal. But if you expect some changes or are doing a screen and a print version, it might save you a good chunk of time.

[Trevis Martin]

I prefer Adobe's Indesign to Quark.  I find its general usability better.  I also like and have used the open source program Scribus but you may need to run cygwin or something similar to use it on a windows PC.

Trevis

[Matt Gwinn]

I use Adobe pagemaker and it's worked fine for me

Matt

[Rich Ranallo]

For those of you who do layout, what is your chosen program; Quark, Adobe, or Something Else?

I dig Quark, personally. It's the manual transmission to Adobe's automatic; it takes more effort to learn because you have to do EVERYTHING yourself, but it also allows you to do most anything you want. It's not so much a design program as a real-time simulation of a pasteboard.

(yeah, Unheilig. there's no escaping me)

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hmm.

For the same reason, I prefer InDesign; particularly with CS, you can do some very nice, rapid, graceful automation.

[Adam]

Although I haven't ued Quark, I know one advantage it has -- which may be significant to you, depending -- is that objects can be kept in the flow of the main text. So, frex, you can place an image somewhere on a page, and if the text changes, say getting longer, the image will move with the text. Useful if you have a figure to reference. InDesign currently does not do that.

You can do this with InDesign CS [InDesign 3] simply by placing an image within the flow of text -- although you don't have a ton of control over the image with regards to wrap and whatnot. InDesign CS2 [which I haven't had chance to use yet...] has a feature that allows you to anchor an object to a specific part of text, even if that image is not inline with the text.

Cheers,
Adam

[Malcolm Craig]

At the moment I use QuarkExpress, but seriously thinking of changing over to InDesign CS on the advice of many graphic design and layout professionals I've spoken to.

Cheers
Malcolm

[Luke]

Burning Wheel Classic was done in Quark. Burning Wheel Revised and the Monster Burner were done in Indesign. I think the stark difference in quality speaks for itself.

And, what took me three months in Quark -- the layout -- took me about one month in Indesign.

[Eero Tuovinen]

We need more bulk in this discussion. Unheilig: why are you asking? What are your needs? If you're considering buying one of these, it's more important to get a good bargain than which one you get. What's this about?

That said, I use QuarkXpress, but mainly because it's available. The two programs are still close enough in capability to each other that there's no reason to switch over if you're already competent in one. That could change in the future, though. Scribus, on the other hand... if you've not yet invested money and learning time in either Quark or InDesign, I strongly suggest checking it out. It's free, man!

Personally, I'm through and through disgusted with the inflexibility of all layout programs I've met. They're childishly programmed and planned out like it were the '80s - which it is for the Quark architecture, as far as I can see. Macintosh '80s, to boot. The future of layout is, or should be, in modular, open source general solutions utilizing mark-up languages and making sure that if my project needs a feature, it's f***ing available, or I can program it myself. It's contemptible to leave a designer hanging with non-portable, illogically typed data trash called "layout files" you have to build up from scratch if the project specs are changed in a fundamental way.

Sorry, had to say that. Could be because I'm currently doing layout, and remembering how fun it is. Browser bugs have nothing to Quark when it comes to employing experts whose claim to fame is getting flawed programs to work.

[Matt Snyder]

Hi, Tom! Good to see you back in the fray, man!

I recently changed from Quark to InDesign. The advantages ID offers are overwhelming as compared to even more recent versions of Quark. I strongly recommend InDesign as superior.

Quark still does have a handful of superior features. They are, in my experience, very minor advantages that cannot outweigh the ass-kicking, major improvements InDesign offers.

[unheilig studios]

well, i'd like to layout an rpg book.

also though, a graphic novel.

i don't do layout as a matter of artistic integrity, but one of necessity. i do, however, want to produce beautiful books.

does it matter what program you use when it comes to Book Printers? Last time i had a book printed, it did.

[Adam]

Most printers prefer to take PDF files now, but I've sent both native Quark and InDesign files to major printers within the last year without problem.

As always, check with your potential printers first and see what they say, and follow their instructions when preparing files for them.

[Luke]

most printers will accept a PDF nowadays. All printers will accept Quark files. Some printers will accept Indesign native files.

Best bet is to try for the PDF output. Indesign's PDF output is rather nice and straightforward. For Quark, you can't really RIP/print a file that's been exported to pdf. You gotta shoot it through Distiller. These are, of course, vague details of bigger issues.

-L

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I'll just add that Adobe has worked out great for me.  The user manual was easy to read for me and quite helpful. /shrugg I think either will work for ya :)

Peace,

-Troy