I was recently asked by a colleague if I had any experience with Markzware’s ID2Q XTension, which lets you open InDesign files in a little program called QuarkXPress. After having used XPress almost daily from 1988 to 2001, I find that I very rarely get around to launching it these days. But my friend’s question led me to start asking more questions in my head… questions I wanted to ask you, the InDesignSecrets reader (please respond in the comments below):
- If you have used ID2Q, why? What worked and didn’t work? Are you in a bi-layout-platform world, and if so, did you have to later bring the files back to InDesign with Q2ID?
- How much are you using QuarkXPress, and why?
- Are you using (I mean for real work, not just playing with) other page-layout programs, such as the open-source Scribus, or Apple Pages? What do you like or don’t like about them? (I haven’t even gotten close to Scribus, after the installation instructions began with “Install the Xcode developer tools…” Gah!)
I’m not being judgemental about any of these. I know that QuarkXPress, for example, still has plenty of features that InDesign lacks. I definitely don’t want this discussion to devolve into a QX versus ID argument. That’s not my point at all! I just think we can all learn from exploring the alternatives even if we’re all still going to be using InDesign.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on April 4, 2009
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Pages is a pretty nice alternative for most of us with more simple needs, but it obviously doesn’t work on my PC at work.
Have you tried Lucidpress? Definitely more lightweight than InDesign, probably on par with Pages. But it’s online so it works on all of my computers and has the collaboration features a la Google Docs.
I am definitely a fan of Serif PagePlus, a very feature rich dtp program. It has been compared to Quark and in some respects it is just as powerful. I have made a church magazine in PageMaker previously and in my opinion I could just as well have made it in PagePlus. In addition to page layout PagePlus has a pletora of tools which gives a very high price to value ratio.
Please read my complete review on my blog:
https://whuship.com/opinions/index.php/2012/09/review-of-desktop-publishing-program-serif-pageplus-x4
I used Quark 4,1 on Windows 98 to publish to a Lino image setter PPD @ 300, 600 and occasionally 1200 and 2400 resolution. My output was always a .PDF which I later enhanced in Acrobat for disc (and) prepress output.
I discovered Quark was portable and copied the installed Quark directory to XP, Vista and now Windows 7 64 bit where it works better than Vista ever did. I had to try it, having no floppy drive for the install. I just dragged a shortcut from Quark onto the desktop. Now I simply print to the Acrobat .PDF device from Quark then set about embellishing the .PDF in Acrobat 10. Windows 7 is far better than Vista and could be better yet if the programmers at MS would leave function procedure alone.
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Wow! That\’s a rellay neat answer!
used student version of q6 in 2001. worked fine for simple results (paste blocks of text from word processor: shape and position around a large image.)
if indesig ui resembles ps horrifically poor ui, i’d avoid indesign.
haven’t tried scribus, only because don’t yet have need.
sketchup layout2 is sluggish, for arch-e sheet. I also tried ooo3, but fine positioning apparently requires an obscure method (which i suppose I’ll research if/when i need to use…)
btw, the curved corners on this textarea, cause a false “empty line” at top, and the need for a horiz scroll at bottom seems silly..
I just came across this thread. I started with Pagemaker back in 1987 – using a Mac. Then in the early 90’s onto Quark, then switched to InDesign 100% with version 2.
I upgraded Quark as far as version 6.5, and have used Q2ID from Markswarez since then for opening post 6.5 files.
As much as I love InDesign (CS2, CS3 expert), I’m infatuated with Apple’s Pages. And, actually, I use it a lot. It lacks InDesign’s finer controls (nested styles, variables, GREP, libraries.), for sure. But it is intuitive, fast, produces sharable/editable documents, and prints well. I don’t trust it with big production jobs. But for smaller to mid-sized work (posters, reports, ) it does just fine. Right now, I see it as more of a companion to InDesign (InDesign lite) than an alternative or replacement. That said, I haven’t upgraded to CS3, in part, because Pages is doing a good job for me and solid CS3 is there when needed.
I think what stands out for me in Pages is the Styles drawer. It’s a great visual cue to the styles in your document. It’s so easy to use, I’ve taught others to use it. I think another great advantage is that you can have a more fluid workflow in an all Mac or Mac-dominated shop. I can style a draft document, show editors how to maintain styles, clean it up, send it back to them when they inevitably need to make changes, and finalize it without excess reflowing, importing.
Pages use of Captured pages pales in comparison to Master pages. No nested styles is heartbreaking. Complex layering of objects with transparency is not recommended. It’s no replacement. But it does it’s job well.
I only use Quark for the customers that can’t seem to go with the flow and spend a few bucks to use a more up to date program. Quark is new Pagemaker.
Since the 80’s I’ve used about all of the commercial programs. Made the jump to ID1 when it came out and haven’t regretted it. Still have to deal with Quark on occasion. Got my present company to switch to Indesign (II at the time) and was so much more productive it forced our sister company to make the switch. One that worked well and I liked in the early days was Personal Press by Silicon Beach. Generally had always prefered Pagemaker over Quark. Never liked Quark’s interface.
>Then check out Deep Purple on September 15th!
IS this the name for an InDesign Conference in Madrid?
Or a special presentation for the “deep purple” icon InDesign, plus the “light orange” icon Illustrator performing as an opening act, all backed up by “deep blue” Photoshop all-star supergroup?
:-)
(And yes, the Jaguar car TV spot theme they wrote takes me back to late sixties, when the desktop publishing was not even dreamed of)
I have used QuarkXPress since version 3, now on version 8. I have tried ID in the past, and it just could not do what Quark could. But now in version 8 i HATE what they did to the tools. Very inconvenient. So I may have to try ID again.
>I?m a graphic designer in Madrid
Then check out Deep Purple on September 15th!
Moss, or anyone else, do you know of any better ways of integrating the use of LaTeX (etc.) with InDesign, Illustrator, and other CS applications?
I recently embarked on a (very modest) popular science project. As I recall, the least bad way of proceeding (or the one I hated least) was to use LaTeX for equations (etc.), turn its PDFs into outlines using Illustrator, which I was using anyway for diagrams, and then paste everything into InDesign. I felt that quite a bit of nudging and “kerning” (using arrow keys) was required to make it look right.
But there MUST be a better way — mustn’t there? Are there any reference works out there that will tell me how to do it properly? I was stunned by the near-total absence on the web of any real overlap between ID and LaTeX — “never the twain shall meet”!
I?m using some (La)TeX flavours (plain LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX, recently luaLaTeX) in my daily work typesetting a couple of scientific journals like «Laser & Photonics Reviews», «Annalen der Physik», and others. I?m using ID CS2 and QXP 7.3, too, but only for the Covers of those.
Pages still lacks many ID’s features, but dear, it is so pleasant and productive to work with ! Styles management is rock solid, and copy-pasting from Illustrator is a marvel as well.. I won’t enter into the details, but Pages replaces Word and ID on computers around me. Of course my encounters with 50+ pages documents are quite casual… “but I’m not the only one”
Until ID CS4 nearly all of our work was done using Corel Ventura 10. We own and have used Framemaker, Quark, Pagemaker, and earlier versions of ID. None of the programs were as good as Ventura for typesetting long documents (books) nor as economical.
We finally, and reluctantly, dropped Ventura with the release of ID CS4. Ventura still outperforms ID for our work except for stability (Ventura is definitely not stable) and for creating ebooks (they weren’t even on the horizon when Ventura was released).
Although we have done projects in Quark in the past, we stopped accepting Quark work a couple of years ago. Using Quark was simply too costly — everything had to be purchased as an add-in, some costing thousands of dollars. Ventura included everything needed for long-document preparation for $250. ID has come a long way since we last looked at it (CS2) and we now find that it does the job, albeit not as easily as Ventura.
We thought about Scribus but never tried it.
I started in ’91 working with a Mac FX (those were the days; 8 mb RAM and a 20 Gb harddisk), and we used quark 3 (and later 4) every day. I did try Pagemaker and Indesign 1 (the horror!), but for production quark was the best. After quark 4 there seemed not to be much need to get more functions, and Indesign 2 was a lot better, not good enough to make the big step, but still.
When we started going to Mac OSX we did use Indesign more and more, Quark was way too expensive, and Adobe had a good price/quality. After the CS Suite we went all the way and never looked back. We have acquired the Q2ID plugin and use it sometimes, perhaps once a week. I have played around with Quark 8 and I cannot honestly say it is a bad product, it looks good and works nice, but we have made the transition. We now work with CS3 and are happy with it. CS4 is overpriced (I am from Holland) and will not be bought for a while. At this moment Adobe is looking more and more like Quark was ten years ago…
We are a book publisher, one things matter the most, typography accuracy and efficiency, InDesign does both better than any version of Quark.
My work requires daily usage of both Quark 6-7.5 and InDesign CS3 (we have CS1-CS2) fluently as well as offer support for the department staff. Quark is require due to legacy files and a lack of desire to update these files to InDesign by higher ups.
That said, InDesign also have gotten us in some hot waters because Adobe adds so many “lazy” functions for designers to use. One that stands out–spot color and transparency effect is repeating problem. Our printers with latest Adobe print engine obviously have not problem ripping the files correctly, but we never know what to expect until we see actual press proofs.
If given an option, I would rather purchase Q2ID plugin and stop usage of Quark at v7.5. In all honestly, I think we are probably using only about 30-35% of InDesign’s capabilities.
My story is similar to Deb’s earlier… I used Quark Xpress occasionally, mainly versions 4 (which I absolutely loath now), 7 and 8. I used it exclusively when I was in college and shortly afterwards. For a short time I had to use PageMaker 6.5 on occasion (I liked it just barely better than Quark 4 after I started using InDesign).
I got CS and CS2 before leaving college. I was able to quickly redesigned a few projects in ID and learned my way around the program.
My job now I use InDesign, while trying others on occasion… I have wanted to try Scribus, but never got it to install correctly, something about not allowing PostScript or EPS files. I tried downloading their patch or whatever, but to no avail.
1) I have used ID2Q only to test it for a potential crossover from ID for a very picky client. After all that I never ended up using it.
2) I use Quark 6.5 maybe once a month to update a file for my employer.
3) I tried to use Scribus but it wouldn’t install. I’ve used Ventura and PageMaker in late ’80s and Quark since the early ’90s until 2001. I’ve used ID since then and not until last year did I have a need for Quark. While it did work well, I noticed I wasn’t as productive as when I used ID. I convinced my employer to switch over to ID and purchased the CS4 Design suite and have never looked back. With the automation features alone I have made many a tight deadline that I would have just plain missed using Quark.
It seems here in Holland InDesign has quickly gained a lot of ground, with people switching to it from Quark all around me. The only time I’ve received a Quark file was quite a while ago, and that’s when I had to get Q2ID. It worked fine, though I never did look at the file in Quark (since I never used it myself due to the cost), so I don’t know how many of the problems were already in the file and how many were a result of the conversion…
Since upgrading to CS4 and 64-bit Vista I haven’t re-installed Q2ID though, simply because there’s no need. It’s the biggest waste of money to buy unless you know you’ll need it frequently, otherwise ask around and someone with the plugin will be willing to do the conversion for you (perhaps for a small fee).
I was at an old job and was using Quark 4 which I really liked, maybe because it was what I knew. I was deciding between upgrading Quark to completely switching to InDesign. A wise print vendor told me to make the switch because it was what a lot of people were using now. I still can’ t thank him enough. If I didn’t know InDesign, I wouldn’t have been able to get the job I have now. Quark was great back in the day, but the relatively seamless integration between the Creative Suite helps me work so efficiently.
About 6 months ago I left my job and had to set up my own workstation that – SHOCK HORROR – I had to pay for myself out of my own pocket. For the last 10 years I had been using my various employers’ copies of Quark and InDesign.
I had a very difficult choice as whether I should by CS4 OR Quark. In the end, I had no choice other than to buy both when work started coming my way that was supplied in both formats. The Q2ID plug-in was considered, but I thought that there may be problems with it not converting everything properly, and one would need a copy of Quark anyway so that you have a point of reference if something looked wacky with the converted file.
I must say, I do rather like Quark 8. It seems faster when navigating around a document and as someone that uses ‘Mr. Spanky’ (The Hand Tool), this feels important. InDesign sometimes is a bit sluggish moving the page around and moving from page to page. I’ve also rather taken to Quark’s new interface.
I also like knocking up the odd quick and dirty web page from Quark.
But there are still those ‘Quarkisms’ that pop up and annoy eg. importing PSDs seems to work only some of the time and can cause big crashes. Quark’s colour management is confusingly implemented.
I would say that 95% of the time when starting a new project I launch InDesign; bizarrely, sometimes I find myself launching Quark purely because I have used it for a while and I fear it is getting lonely.
But I think a bigger problem than Quark vs InDesign is the lack of ability to reliably backsave in either application. This caused big problems when people were using Quark 6 as many people didn’t bother upgrading to version 5 and for a long time there were two kinds of Quark user – the OS9-based Quark 4 user and the OS X-based Quark 6.0 user that couldn’t swap files unless they know one of the eleven people that bought Quark 5.0
At work we use Quark 7 for pretty much everything at the moment. We got hold of InDesign CS3 late last year, and I?ve done a lot of experimenting with it.
Love the long-document features in InDesign that simply aren?t there in Quark. Things like Master Page inheritance, being able to lock down master page elements so that they don?t get messed with, footnotes, auto bullets, nested styles, GREP!!! It all points to us using InDesign in the long term.
I?ve used Scribus on Linux, and it?s pretty good considering its developers basically work on it part-time. Not a patch on Quark/InDesign, yet, though.
I?m into automation. I?ve done a lot in stuff in LaTeX over the years and, despite the pitfalls already mentioned, I wish modern DTP software could do even half the stuff you can do with LaTeX. But it?s certainly not for everyone.
Ultimately my team?s skillset will determine what software we use.
I use Quark and InDesign daily. InDesign CS4 is simply sublime, Quark 8 works well, but I’m not a big fan of the clunky child like tool icons.
I also have to use older versions, InDesign CS1 is where Quark 8 is now in my humble opinion, Quark 6.5 is really horrible to use once you have gotten used to using these newer versions of both of these apps, the text rendering is awful. It works, but it isn’t a pleasant experience.
InDesign CS1 on a Tiger Mac PPC is cool to use, on a Leopard Intel Mac it is a flaming pain, very crash prone, and the latest 3.0.1 update never takes properly, so you can’t open INX files from CS2.
Upshot, both programs do the job, but InDesign is simply more in tune with me. Quark used to be, I used to be a big fan, but even though there are times when it may be quicker to do it in Quark, I now find that I would rather work on it in InDesign if time allows.
I tried to write an article on replacing indesign with scribus. I created a very involved document in indesign, styalistically, which would become the base for my article, which I would then layout in scribus.I found very quickly the scribus was not up to the task of complex document creation. While I believe it would be fine for simple documents, it lacks the power and polish of Quark or Indesign. of quark and indesign, I far prefer indesign. For the record, I weekly publish a 48p newspaper and do a lot of freelance stuff.
Interesting question, David. I work at a small newspaper and we have recently started suggesting Scribus to our small business advertisers that make their own ads. The PDFs they generate are impressively solid and it’s nice not having people send us Publisher files (very few of them are going to spring for InDesign). I can’t claim to know my way around it like I do InDesign, but I’d far rather spend my time with Scribus than in Quark.
One cool, kind of wacky Scribus preference is a manually calibrated screen resolution that involves putting a ruler up against your monitor and adjusting a slider until it lines up with their ruler. This makes it so that the 100% zoom level is pixel to pixel. It works pretty well.
Also, there is a Mac installer app, it’s just not in an obvious place. The link is: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=125235
I learned Quark from 2000 – 2005 as it was used both in work and in college (where I went on block-release from work). That’s what we used. It was in 2005 I left the job to pursue other ventures and I wound up in job that needed technical books converted from Ventura to InDesign.
In using Ventura I found it really unstable, but other than that it was a good typesetting program. It had lots of features that InDesign didn’t have in CS2.
It was around the time that I really needed running heads to be automated and paragraph numbering to be automated that InDesign CS3 came out. I begged to get CS3 update and they bought it in.
Coming from a Quark background into Ventura then to InDesign I had core concepts already built into my working day. I basically taught myself InDesign (ok I had a lot of help from the very guys and gals here at InDesign Secrets and from Michael Murphy at theindesigner.com)
I don’t rate one page layout over the other. I’ve just learned and used what I’ve needed to because the job needed it. If I got a new job tomorrow they may be using Quark, or ventura, or Xara or Scribus or whatever, and I think I’d just go into that job and do what was needed using those apps.
As I said earlier I know the core concepts of page layout and typography, using styles and things like that. I just know that I would be gutted to not use InDesign in future work.
The one thing I would say is if you’re using software find the experts (like I did :) ) and stay current with whatever you’re using.
I’ve been on this blog post since I started using InDesign back in 2005/2006 and it’s been the most valuable source I could imagine. You you to stay current. You have to stay up-to-date and you have to learn something everyday. And this is what David and Anne-Marie and the other bloggers here do, they keep you current. I learn something new every single time a post goes up on the blog.
I used to use FrameMaker, and thought very highly of it, until Adobe — disgracefully — discontinued the Mac version. I then switched to InDesign and have appreciated the gradual improvements, though I still yearn for FrameMaker.
As I said in another post, InDesign’s terrible fault is that it handles footnotes and especially endnotes so badly. I bought Pages hoping that it might offer a credible alternative to Word and perhaps bridge the gap between Word and a full-blown page layout program (I hoped it would be a grown-up’s version of Publisher). I’ve been disappointed, finding it hard to use, though I must say I haven’t explored it fully.
Word’s Track Changes, facility with references and built-in keyboard shortcuts remain the aspects to beat if you’re an editor. I can’t find a layout program that is better than InDesign.
Pages is nice for creating newsletter templates that clients will eventually want to edit in Word.
[1] Never used ID2Q or Q2ID. Never really needed it as we are an in-house production department that uses ID (except for the boss who still uses Ventura) and generally insist on ID when we send work out. We had one contractor who used XPress for a while before switching to ID; he supplied us with print-ready and postable PDFs so we had no need to convert his files.
[2] No longer use XPress. Used it some between 1995 and 2000. Mainly used PM in late ’80s and early ’90s, Framemaker until Adobe dropped support for the Mac. Moved to ID exclusively at version 2.
[3] No.
I’ve used Quark for about a dozen years and InDesign for the last five. Publishing houses (my clients) refused to switch at first but only one major publisher in Montreal is still using Quark exclusively as far as I know. I’ve stopped using QXP at version 6.5, so I’m in no position to judge which one is better at this time (I own versions 7 and 8 but haven’t used them yet); I’m still missing some features from QXP, linked cells in tables being at the top of my list, but I don’t intend to go back as long as I can choose wich software to work with. I’ve never been asked to use any other layout programs (except PageMaker when dinosaurs were still around). I do own the Q2ID plugin but I don’t intend to buy the ID2Q one.
I have been using Quark since the days of it’s introduction a couple decades ago, back when I took my first tutorial on the program using an old Mac Classic II. I have been migrating slowly toward InDesign over the past few years though since some of the features in the program left Quark trying to catch up. But I still have problems locating certain tasks in InDesign that I know like the back of my hand in Quark.
Also, When ID first came out, it required 96 MB of RAM, which was huge back then. Now it’s a drop in the bucket!
I am sure I will make the full transition at some point, but at times, I have old projects that were done in Quark and it is simply more cost effective to make modifications in Quark rather than redesign it in InDesign, with or without a plug in.
I preferred Quark for my own work until CS1 came out, that’s when I feel INDD became a complete app. I HATED versions 1 and 2 of INDD.
As a multilingual typesetter though, I use what my clients send me.
INDD is hands down the best software to use if you plan to localize your documents.
Quark’s greed (hundreds of dollars extra for hyphenation files and dictionaries in Passport? no unicode/opentype CJK until version7, and even then, poorly?) really hurt them.
I agree that (so far) the TeX family are indispensable for technical documents, but TeX seems to be supported by a cult of evangelists who never tell you about the “dark side” of TeX: problematic fonts and font-installation, unreliable PDF-production, nightmarishly geeky “help” that scares the s*** out of anyone who doesn’t have a degree in maths AND sociology, the overall impression of a squadron of “open source” nuts and bolts flying in loose formation…
I would pay a considerable sum of money (at non-European prices) for a single clean-and-simple LaTeX package that was properly integrated with other real publishing applications. I trust that Adobe are “on” to this project.
I also use TeX using TeXnicCenter as my IDE. I think its the only way to go for technical documents.
Besides ID, I use XeLaTeX for some of my typesetting work. I can reach the same nuance of ID with XeLaTeX, and I can automatate much of the job. For example, adding margin-side numbering for a translation can be a time-consumming task in ID, but in XeLaTeX is quite straightforward.
Usually the *TeX system (TeX, LaTeX, XeTeX, XeLaTeX, ConText, etc.) has been regarded by publishers only as useful tool —sometimes indispensable— for math or technical typsetting. And I see why you didn’t count it amongst your applications—but bear in mind that many a fine typesetter use it exclusively in his or her work.
I have to use Quark occasionally when a client sends us Quark files. I used it exclusively when I worked at a newspaper. It didn’t take me long to learn InDesign when I changed jobs. I never looked back. I use Pages to open Word documents, but I never really liked word processing programs for design work. I have wanted to try Scribus, but never got it installed.
Nice to see you give Scribus a mention, rather than dismissing it just because it is not a commercial product. I’ve used it a little, and while it is not as good as InDesign, I would recommend it over Quark 6 (haven’t used the more recent versions).
I use QuarkXPress 8.0 because my boss makes me.
I’m a graphic designer in Madrid and I use to love Quark, but when InDesign was relaease, I realize how easier was and how well programmed, thinking in designers.
Now, I don’t enjoy working on Quark because I find myself comparing it to InDesign all the time, little twiks, small details that are better. And the preview, for god sake.
(sorry for my english, I’m out of practice).
¡Encantada de leeros!