Summary of Quark comparison responses

["Cowley, Martha - Broomfield, CO" <Martha -dot- Cowley -at- CEXP -dot- COM>]

Hi Techwr-l Listees.
Last week I requested information regarding comparison of Quark Xpress
with other tools such
as FrameMaker, Pagemaker, etc. My question was: I need some information
on Quark Express and how it compares to other publishing packages such
as Framemaker, Corel Ventura, and PageMaker. I am a digest reader and
need some quick information as I must submit my final budge proposal to
the big heads by tomorrow. Please respond off list to
martha -dot- cowley -at- cexp -dot- com -dot-  I will post a summary of responses received.

This is the situation: We are working with a vendor to produce
self-directed training guides for a proprietary software. The vendor has
recommended Quark Express for PC. I have never used Quark. I know it was
originally developed for the Mac platform and is the tool of choice
among many Mac shops. I know nothing about their PC version and it's
compatibility with the Microsoft world which is our Corporate choice. I
need to be able to have users in different geographical locations be
able to print these documents. Does Quark support this or must they all
have Quark installed to print the documents? Is there a "viewer" they
can use to print the documents.
**********************
With that in mind, the responses have been interesting. The most
prominent complaint is that unless the user has Quark, they can't print
it unless we first convert it to a either an EPS (encrypted post script)
file for their specific print driver, or get an Adobe Acrobat plug-in
for converting them to .PDF files as that option is not bundled with the
most recent release (QuarkXpress 4.0).

One of the writers mentioned that Quark does not support tables, heavy
cross referencing and other "technical document" features. There were
also concerns voiced about the cost of Quark Xpress compared to other
market products for features and value.

It seems that Quark Xpress is an excellent tool for doing a document
design that relies heavily on graphic oriented features, but that
another tool would be required to make that document available to our
users, and because we will have text intensive documents, this may not
be the tool for the job.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request. The responses are too
large to include, but if you would like a list of them, please send me
an e-mail and I will send them to you.
Thanks again to all who responded,
Martha
martha -dot- cowley -at- cexp -dot- com