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Subject:Re: InDesign vs. Quark From:"David Neeley" <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:23:27 -0500
In this discussion, I think one aspect that has been overlooked
somewhat is the reason that InDesign has been taking over the field
from Quark--which is, itself, one reason for going with InDesign, I
think.
At one point, you may remember that Quark had no serious competition
in professional-level layout. Adobe had purchased Pagemaker, but that
was never truly as functional as Quark.
Quark, however, was quirky and its support was, to put it mildly,
lacking. The attitude the Quark people displayed was one of rather
pronounced arrogance, in fact, which angered the customer base.
Adobe started with a clean sheet of paper and designed InDesign to
become a "Quark Killer". Version 1 and then 1.5 were not up to the
job, but clearly were moving in that direction. Then, beginning with
version 2.0, they began to make serious inroads into the Quark
customer base.
Of course, Adobe already had a huge leg up with its Photoshop customer base.
Meanwhile, Quark seemed to be caught napping for far too long.
Features that had been requested by customers for years were still
lacking. It was only after InDesign became the application of choice
for many former Quark shops that they truly woke up and began to
become competitive. However, in my opinion, once the major customers
went through the pain and expense of conversion they were not likely
to go back without substantial reason.
I have used both for years, but today I would not use Quark if I had a
choice. For any new projects in which there are no existing files and
no already-purchased software, I would go with InDesign without
question.
It also seems rather clear that Frame will be moving to a code base
built on the InDesign engine. (I have pointed out before that Bruce
Chizen, Adobe CEO, said as much in a public interview several years
ago). Whether this will be by maintaining it as a separate product or
by continuing to fold long, complex doc features into InDesign itself
remains to be seen. I suspect the latter will be the case, though.
As for a "highly styled" 500 page technical document created in either
program, though, I think the lack of many of Frame's capabilities in
that realm will cause a great deal of work that should be unnecessary
with Frame--although the typographic and graphic-handling tricks of
InDesign should indeed make it a striking product. I just wouldn't
want to maintain it.
David
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