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Subject:QuarkExpress or Pagemaker? From:"Jennifer O Neill" <jennifer -dot- oneill -at- village -dot- uunet -dot- be> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 4 Dec 2000 21:04:45 +0100
My company is going to outsource a user manual to an agency that specialises
in advertising. We want a good looking manual, in colour, that's easy to
use. It'll be translated into several languages. It'll have less than 30
pages and have a TOC and index. We produced out first colour manual in-house
recently using Pagemaker. We don't have time to do this manual ourselves.
My question concerns Quark. The agency uses it and my collegue is keen we
do the manual in it. I'm cautious as I don't see what advantages it has over
Pagemaker. He's our Advertising Publisher who designs all our leaflets and
his section is currently moving from Pagemaker to Quark. For manuals we use
Word and Pagemaker. Unlike leaflets, the files for manuals move around
between many people for reviews, reuse & translation. Consequently all our
sales offices and factories have Word and Pagemaker. Only the 2 people who
do leaflets have Quark. He says we need to do it in Quark as this software
is the publishing industry standard.
We print all manuals in pdf format so does it matter if we use Quark or not?
It's only our second colour manual so I don't know if this is why Quark is
better to use over Pagemaker. When it comes to translation, Pagemaker and
Quark are both expensive to work from. However, manuals are maintained by
the factory who manufacturers the product and no factory has Quark and I
just don't see them getting it; Pagemaker is working fine for them & Quark
is expensive to buy. True Pagemaker is fading out to be replaced by
InDesign. The content of the manual will be fairly stable so (fingers
crossed) there won't be too much maintenance, but it will be maintenance
across many languages. The TOC and index must be automatically generated, no
manual work. I receive manuals from all over the world to adapt them for the
multilingual market. I now have to deal with 5 different graphic packages.
My heart sinks to have another software package for manuals.
Manuals aren't marketing leaflets. What advantages does Quark have over Page
maker? Am I right to be cautious?
Cheers,
jen
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