So that's it...
No OpenType.
I love InDesign, but almost nobody uses it. I wonder
what this means for OT? Maybe it will just be a file
format without features.

what is with those tiny little screen shots on the XP 6
"first look" page!? are they trying to hide something?
they certainly aren't providing much in the way of
meaningful product info.

regardless, Quark has made it clear that they are
disinterested with customer support, designers, the
Mac, and Unicode. while I admire their unabashed
arrogance, I have completely written them off for future
upgrades. unfortunately, I'm still working with OS 9 and
QXP 4 while I await a full switch to X.

by the end of the year, I will be running OS X and the
full Adobe arsenal (PS, AI, ID, and Acrobat) in their most
recent incarnations. I have always found Adobe to be a
reliable and design-focused company. it is encouraging
to know that they have been extraordinarily successful
as such.

the design community has a fantastic assest in
InDesign. I hope that the majority will begin to
recognize this and support Adobe's diligent efforts.

(is my distaste for Quark clear?)

Has anyone had experience outputting film (or computer-to-plate) from InDesign? Is there anything that I'd need to know? Any glitches or anything? How about outputting from PDF files created by InDesign? How does trapping work with PDF?

Man, I hope more people switch to ID. Although OpenType isn't the most democratic format right now, the upsides of the format are just dandy with me, text-setting hasn't been as much fun in years.
And as Adobe and URW and Lino and some other companies are making the switch to OTF and others, like House and Emigre sloooowly trying their hands at the extended possibilities of that format as well, I think Quark will either include OTF or involuntary give Adobe a marketing bonus.

Quark only survives because people are so used to it. I have worked with both systems and as of ID 1.5 Adobe has far surpassed Quark in my opinion.

Keith, I use InDesign and Acrobat Distiller -- it's a perfect combination Exported PDF works okay (better than any otheer direct-to-PDF-export, the EPS-Export is also nice), but Distiller still is the safest and most flexible way to do it. Since I work with InDesign and on Win-based workstations, I have preferred PDF for well over five years now, when most printersor film-outputters didn't even accept them. Thanks to Computer-to-plate that has changed. PDF is the best way to get your data to the outputter and InDesign+Distiller is a Killer combination.

Many type people seem to love InDesign. Fantastic.
But we're talking about a work flow issue here. Quark
is central to the fabric of publishing almost everywhere
so switching (especially now with native X Quark) is a
big deal. Most people won't bother. But I really hope I'm wrong.

I've only been using InDesign 2.0 since last August. I really love it for all the OpenType features. I've only been using it for small and simple 1-2 page jobs though, so I don't know how well it works for more complex colour stuff.

I have heard that the pretty big Publicis company in France Switched to Indesign.

As John Hudson pointed out ,couple of months ago, Quark guys came a day to Unicode conference to say they will never support this silly Unicode stuff. How stupid how they are! I really don't know how they will manage xml in the future without Unicode.

At my own little user experience, I have used xml import for dictionnary layout in Indesign, it worked correctly (not perfect, but more because the xml wasn't set up correctly and because I lack of experience), mainly a set up of Style sheet, et voil�.

Anyway, as past Adobe Indesign prefered designer two years ago, I'm indeed strongly in favour of Indesign. At everyday level, for fonts, its wonderful tool to test finally complete character sets on booth Mac or Windows with exactly the same file without any problem.

Indesign 1, 1.5, 2 work here on the 9, then on X without problems at all. Just too slow on 9, with the 2 when you launch a print out, no problems on X.

I have done complex layout for my catalog No 3 in 2001, Ambroise specimen same year, Sabon next specimen last year (as "assistant" to Muriel Paris), and some others job with great pleasure.

And, with Indesign, what is great is that you can open roughly all various version of Xpress files when you can't with Xpress itself.

What a pain, when I need to test a font on my old Xpress 3.32 on my old grey G3!

Its clear also, that when you started to use an OT font and all the features (SC, OsF and so on), its quite difficult to comeback to good old PS fonts.

The only critic I have is that the French localization for all typographic features vocabulary is more than a big "MERDE."

I finally downloaded a trial copy of inDesign a couple of months back and I've never opened quark since. Aside from being vastly more intuitive than quark, the type setting and style sheet features are top notch. Also, no more bitmapped fonts. Precise letterspacing and kerning were impossible on screen in Quark because of the terrible display of most T1 fonts. ID does a much better job. Finally, the collect for output features of ID are a thousand times better than Quark, though perhaps a topic of disagreement among type designers. ID actually collects your fonts upon your request. (You do get a dialog box warning you that you may be in violation of copyright by doing so) And if you don't want to send your fonts, you can convert them to outlines. Another ID only feature.

Needless to say, I'm sold. I hate to see the market dominated by a goliath such as adobe, but as long as quark keeps developing such an inferior product, adobe it shall be.

>How can I be sure InD can do
>No one uses InDesign.
I always wonder about designers who are so inflexible that they don't wanna switch to a new, better tool. �I know all the keyboard-shortcuts by heart.� Yeah great -- I always wonder just how innovative these folks are in design with that kinda mindset. ID gets the job done better and faster... everything else is just annoying habits. And while I do not think that some piece of software makes you a better or worse designer, I always wonder that sticking to and by standards is exactly NOT what being a designer is all about. Working with the standard machine -- a mac -- and the standard software -- Quark -- not because its best but because its the standard, well... that doesn't feel good to me. If tomorrow a little firm publishes a good alternative to Photoshop, I'm SO there. I even use Photobrush, a 49-bucks-tool for some stuff the Shop cannot do. I somehow feel weird when I stick stick to the road most traveled. :-).


>everything that Quark can?

It can :-D.

I've been working with ID since 1.0 (which was gruesome, okay). I've done everythin from straight literature books, posters, CD-Booklets, a 300-pages art expo catalogue with massive bells and whistles, the soundscapes brochure with has various special inks, partial varnishing, fold out-pages in different directions and was a HELL of a job that would 've driven me crazy in Quark. I've done a whole f***ing book of 140 pages with Photos in EIGHT hours overnight. I've done a very photoshop-layer-heavy job that profited from the direct integration of photoshop, I've done leporellos and business cards and stationery and even screen design templates... and.. well, you get it... anything, you can imagine.

You can do everything in Indesign.



>>No one will output InDesign files.
Two words: PDF. (Well, one actually. Not even a word, okay...)

And Adobe being a monolith -- yeah, I see that problem. But a) they seem to still be flexible even when they are a monpol. Photoshop is an example of that, imo. And b) Print is only a splinter of what the market will be with interactive screen and online tools being there as well. I'm more concerned with what Macromedia does (or rather, does not) do with Flash because they HAVE the monopol in that area.

I will cast a blind eye to any Quark development in the future. Quark let me down over 5 or 6 years ago and I've been forced to use them because of their stranglehold on the industry, but Adobe InDesign has given me a taste of freedom, and have given page layout the overhaul that Quark has needed since the late 90's.

I'm still learning the finer points of InDesign, but nothing will distract me from it. Adobe has proven its commitment to the design community over and over for years. Plus, Adobe most of the other application I use in my print work. Why switch to another system, another GUI, another product, to hold it all together?

shouldn't we switch the name of this topic to 'Praise InDesign'?

One of the great things about InDesign is that it saves your *ss alot. Although OS9 regulary crashes the hell out of my mac I never lost any work, in almost 3 years.
It is a joy to use.

Last summer, I have encounters some crashes and lost of files with the 9 and Indesign 1.5.2, perhaps, because the files came from a switch, time to time via email between several people? I will never know.

The file who have crashed: when it open again lost some part of the layout, rules and so on, grrr. Very frustratring.

Indeed, this never happened again with the Indesign 2.

I'm all for the name change, though I prefer "Trash Quark." That would be better than "Gladiator Fight," which seems to be the name of other threads I've seen lately on Typophile.

Yes, Doc Protection is a Godsend. I wish all Adobe products were so foolproof, for no one is as foolish as I.

The downside of the file restauration management of ID (which, at least partially was already one of the nicer features of Pagemaker) is that whenever I work in Quark or Freehand I forget that THEY DO NOT HAVE something along those lines. So you experiment more, save less often inbetween, and when it crashes, it's gone for good. No prob with ID, but on Freehand you have no chance of retrieving your designs. FH, even in the MX version, sucks compared to Indesign.
Photoshop could use somthing like this as well, especially as they DO save intermediary files on your harddisk, so restoring them after a crash should be rrrrrelatively simple to program.

... don't forget Illustrator 10, i've lost a lot of work thanx to all its crashiness...

Hmm another plus for InDesign is the 'after-sales-care.' But maybe it's not fair to compare that with quack.

I've been a staunch supporter of Quark for
years. Even through this whole ID verses
Quark debacle I have heard myself saying
many times "I'll never leave Quark it is so
great". In truth, it has been great to me with
few complaints. Most of my work in the past
has been for magazines, annual reports and
long brochure design and production. Quark
has served me well throughout.

At work, I am currently using Quark 5 and OS
9.2. At home, within the last few weeks I have
moved one of my machines over to OSX and ID.

Lord, I have seen the light.

While I am still transitioning into ID (and OS X
for that matter) I am really, and I mean really,
impressed. There are so many more options in ID.
I will never go back and work is like
going back in time.

Quark, I guess it was just one of those
things... one of those crazy flings...

I'll never go to 6.

>> ... don't forget Illustrator 10, i've lost a lot of work thanx to all its crashiness... <<

No doubt!!! I certainly hope Adobe is going to implement some of their cleverness from InDesign 2.0 into Illustrator 11 !!!

> At my job, we often design low budget stuff in two > Pantone spot colors. While Quark can mix those > colors, provide satisfying screen preview and output > those files on film perfectly, InDesign doesn't know > how to handle this, to my disappointment.

Yves. You should send this into Adobe as a wishlist item. This is a really good feature. Hmmm. 1000 pts InDesign v. 1 pt. Quark.

Yeah, that is one big minus. Although I mostly found workarounds with mixing Cyan and Magenta or something and using those channels for the seperations, it would be nice to have fully mixable Pantone spot colours with accurate screen preview.

I also wish that they would include some option to change the size of indivudal spaces, at least the pagewidth -- that would be good for fold-up-pages and Leporellos. ALso, it would be nice to have an option that makes the table borders and cells visible even if you do not have an outline (and the handling of adding outlines to the cells could be a bit easier, imo).

The shift key thing I'm used to from FH, so that never bothered me at all. I also took the time to synchronize my keyboard shortcuts in FH/Shop/ID, which makes life THAT much easier afterwards.
:-D.

�>don't know what you mean precisely
>with 'file restoration',
>but Quark has an automatic back-up feature

ID automatically saves and rebuilds the last change in your files every time you change the page or do some other stuff, very practical stuff. The Quark feature wasn't too reliable, sometimes the backups were too old or didn't open at all.
But mainly I was talking about Freehand, which has no such feature at all -- argh.

One thing... ID has multiple UNDO. At least QXP 4 doesn't have that - and I think that multiple Undo is very important when you just start experimenting with your page design. You can work more freely when you know that the last 100 things you do are always un-doable.