I use the Q2ID several times a month. But it's definitely not perfect (and it never claims to be).
One is the style sheets and how they come across. If a paragraph style sheet is based on another, come through that way, but without any changes that may have been to it in Quark. For example, my TX style sheet is regular text with a 1p6 paragraph indent. My TXF is based upon that but was changed to no indent. The file converts okay and the paragraphs stay the same so far as indents or no indents, but with a + next to it. If you look at the TXF style sheet it has the 1p6 indent. It's okay if you're just converting a file, but if you flow in new type with those style sheets the TXF will come in indented. One needs to definitely fix all the style sheets after conversion.
Paragraph style sheet kerning is messed up. Although it will convert and the style sheets may say “metric” kerning, if you go into the actual paragraphs they are all 0 kerning. You need to go to each paragraph style and change it to 0 and then change it to metric (or optical if you wish). Then it will take hold.
Master pages come through okay, but because of the way Quark does things, the running heads and folios can be touched on all the actual pages. If you make a change to the master only (i.e., change wording of running head) on the master, it won't effect the actual pages in the book. You need to kill all the running heads individually then reapply the master.
Also–it seems Quark and InDesign measure ascenders a bit differently. I've found that the first baseline of text of a converted document sets down about a point further than it did in Quark.
Oh–you'll probably need to readjust the head margin so the text box starts in the right place. A lot of Quark users set the margin for the top of the running head instead top of text.
Note that when the files convert “single line composer” is automatic, and if you want “paragraph composer,” you will need to change that.
H&Js definitely come thorough as what Quark file was, but you know that. All the line breaks will change.
Art sizes: They won't be exact. Instead of say 88 percent, they may come in 86.984038403 or some weird number like that. I've never had any come in at the right size (even though they were linked/updated in the Quark file).
Sidebars and the like seem to come in okay. I think I had problems with oval boxes, though.
And please don't get me wrong, this plug-in works great. But if the majority of the files that need to be converted are Q4, I'd say to just open them directly through InDesign. You will get the same results as the plug-in. (I've actually found that the files convert better if you open Q4 files directly in ID). But if you have Quark 6, 7, or 8, files than it's worth the money to buy it just in cost savings of having to downsave all the way to Quark 4 (one version at a time) and having to boot into OS9 and stuff.
It's worth the money, but it's just a conversion tool. You still need to do a lot of work no matter how you convert those files. If it's just converting and no new set or new material, then mainly you have tweaking to do. But the more complicated the job the longer it's gonna take to tweak. If your clients are super-picky, then it could be a hassle. If they're not so picky, convert it to ID (with or without the plug-in) and you should be okay.
I do suggest that when you convert the file that you export is an .inx file and then open that. It will clean up any possible corruption or problems that may be lurking in that Quark file.
And to the makers of Q2ID–I hope I didn't come across as bashing your product. I was just giving my honest opinion.
And for those who've ever had corrupt InDesign files. I've used ID2Q and opened corrupt ID files in Quark. I then save it, and bring into InDesign via Q2ID. Works like a charm.
{EDIT: I apologize for the length and if I was ranting}
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