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My ears are ringing! ;-) Yes, I hope everyone finds my DesignGeek
Resources page (for Quark, InDesign, etc.) at my senecadesign.com web
site helpful. I maintain them for my training clients, mostly, but of
course anyone can click over and browse around.
I normally lurk on this list, but this thread pulled me in ... I've
been using Quark for 16 years and InDesign for 4; currently I'm
working on multiple projects in both apps (latest version of each).
Though I think even the briefest visit to my site will tell you which
program I prefer these days. If not, maybe my blog and podcast at
indesignsecrets.com will clue you in ... heh.
So I thought it best to stay out of the conversation, but couldn't
resist replying to just a couple nuggets.
At 10:24 AM -0500 6/11/07, Pinkham, Jim wrote:
>Quark also does a decent job of bringing
>in Word documents, including formatted tabular material, without a lot
>of bumps.
I find InDesign to be a LOT more powerful and flexible than XPress
when it comes to working with Word files. I don't want to bore with
details, but thought a visual demonstration might suffice; look at
these 2 screenshots of each program's "Word import options," one from
QXP 7.2, the other from InDesign CS2 (same in CS3):
At 12:39 PM +0530 6/12/07, Raj Machhan wrote:
>This is very useful. I think Quark can handle documents having 500 pages or
>more, because it is used extensively for book publishing. However, I cannot
>say the same for InDesign
Off the top of my head I know these book publishers have moved to
InDesign in the past few years: Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Scott
Foresman, O'Reilly ... I'm positive there's many more. Magazine
publishers using ID include Conde Nast, Hearst, lots of others ...
maybe it's my line of work but I seldom encounter Quark-using
publishers. There are no published figures showing market share that
I know of, but my sense as someone with deep experience in both
camps, and in the front-end (end users) and back-end (printers,
prepress), is that it's about 50/50 at this point.
The problem with the Quark share of the market, as they well know, is
that users are sticking to older versions. They're pushing hard to
move people to v7, which offers a good number of useful features.
The advice to download both program's tryouts and give them a spin
was sound, imo. I would also suggest that you inquire at your
client's, your freelancers, and your vendors to see which program
would be most compatible with their workflow.
These days, I think most successful industry professionals can use
either program, when needed. And if you write a lot of technical
documentation (which I don't), Framemaker as well, of course.
DesignGeek Central: Tips and Tricks for the Digital Designer http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/
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