Critical Comparisons
Before we can proceed to analyze the success of XPress 6, we need to compare it with InDesign 2 in the critical areas that are most important to page-layout users. We discussed some of these in the preceding section when we were discussing new XPress 6 features. Here are some other important areas of comparison.
Performance. In earlier published comparisons, one of the complaints frequently made about InDesign was that it ran much slower than XPress. XPress was the “lean and mean” application that could run even on older, slower computers. This may no longer be the case.
The system requirements for InDesign 2 and XPress 6 are now essentially identical: On the Macintosh, each requires a G3 processor, 128 MB of RAM, and Mac OS X 10.2 or later. (InDesign 2 runs in OS 9 and up.) In Windows, the XPress requirements are a computer with Pentium processor and a similar memory configuration, running Windows 2000 or XP. (InDesign 2 runs in Win 98 and later.) On the Mac, where we tested, both applications run much better with a G4 processor and at least 256 MB of memory.
We did some speed tests on a late-beta version and the demo-release version of XPress 6, comparing it with InDesign 2.02 on a few common tasks. The results may be surprising to some: InDesign 2 bests XPress 6 on opening a large file, creating full-resolution previews, scrolling EPS files and creating PDF. XPress is comparable on displaying the full-resolution preview of TIFF files, and is somewhat faster on autoflowing text. Further testing will require a full version of the released product.
Basic features. XPress 6 has now caught up with InDesign on undoing multiple actions. However, as a “dot-0” release, it lacks InDesign 2’s stability. (InDesign 2 has had time for two major updates since its release, plus smaller ones for issues such as long-document performance.) InDesign is also well ahead in crash protection. When InDesign crashes (which is exceedingly rare), it automatically reopens files with almost everything retained, even if the files had not been saved. XPress 6 has an Auto Save feature, but the smallest increment you set it for is five minutes.
XPress 6 lacks a feature for customizing keyboard shortcuts. In contrast, in InDesign there are hundreds of shortcuts that can be added or changed.
Page layout. Quark should have invested some engineering time in updating its basic page-layout features, which are beginning to look antiquated. XPress 6 still supports no form of transparency, except for giving boxes a background of None. InDesign 2 lets you create transparency with an opacity slider and various blending modes, and by applying drop shadows and feathering within the application. It also imports transparency from Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat 5 files.
Unlike XPress, InDesign’s master pages allow parent-child relationships, so you can base a master on another master (analogous to basing a style sheet on another style sheet). InDesign also gives more control over overriding master-page items. While the guides in each application superficially appear to work the same, InDesign’s guides are a good deal more powerful; they act as real page objects that you can position with the Transform palette, place on layers, or copy and paste between layouts. InDesign also has a potent Eyedropper tool that works like Illustrator’s tool of the same name to copy text, color and transparency attributes.
XPress still bests InDesign in a few layout areas. As we describe above, XPress 6’s layer feature is somewhat stronger than InDesign’s. XPress also gives you more control over tool preferences. It lets you create and merge shapes similar to Illustrator’s Pathfinder feature. And it gives you more control over customizing dashes and stripes.
Text and type. Quark has also devoted little time to improvements in its text- and type-handling. Its feature set is almost the same as it was a decade ago. In this area, InDesign surpasses it in almost every respect: InDesign has a multi-line composition system that can greatly reduce the time needed for tweaking line-breaks and hyphenation. It has the best support in the industry for OpenType fonts, which allow the much larger character sets important for fine typography and multilingual communication. InDesign’s Glyphs palette and context menus make it very easy to choose special characters from any font. In contrast, although XPress 6 displays OpenType fonts in Mac OS X, it gives you access only to the operating-system character set. It doesn’t give you access to the layout features of OpenType — fractions, swash characters and so on.
XPress 6 is still a single-language application. When you want to work with more than one language, you must purchase the more expensive Passport edition of the application. InDesign 2 takes a more international approach: Out of the box, it includes 20 dictionaries for 12 languages that are used for spell-checking and hyphenation.
Graphics and color. As we note above, XPress 6 now offers full-resolution preview of both vector and bitmapped graphics, although its implementation is less polished and productive than InDesign’s. Another feature that InDesign offers which isn’t in XPress is support for placing native Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files. In some workflows, this can save both time and disk space without the need of saving intermediate EPS an TIFF files.
In the color arena, each application has its strengths and weaknesses. XPress has better support for spot colors with its multi-ink feature, which InDesign lacks. InDesign can offer color-management interoperability with other Adobe applications (e.g., Photoshop). And its overprint preview is very helpful for service providers in predicting the appearance of printed output.
Long-document support. XPress 6 and InDesign 2 now share similar long-document features. Both have Book palettes for management of multiple documents. InDesign offers some additional features for preflighting and creating PDF files. Both offer support for tables of contents (called lists in XPress) and indexes.
Preflighting and printing. In the area of output, XPress has fallen behind InDesign. While not as good as third-party solutions, InDesign’s Preflight and Package features are much more useful than XPress’s more rudimentary Collect for Output option. InDesign’s redesign of its Print user interface has now bested that of XPress 6. For example, InDesign’s Print preview is always visible, while XPress hides its preview on another tab in the Print dialog box. In InDesign 2, you can change your target printer in one step; in XPress 6, you must click on the Printer button to access the printer through the operating system. InDesign makes it easy to create a PostScript file that is either device-independent or targeted to a particular PPD. The only way to do this in XPress 6 is to change your PDF preferences — but then you lack most printing controls.
This article was last modified on January 11, 2022
This article was first published on July 29, 2003
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
