Digital Output On Quark vs. InDesign

In a very well balanced article Digital Output magazine weighs in on QuarkXPress vs. Adobe InDesign. Though nothing new to Quark vs. InDesign readers, the article is an interesting read if you ignore the occassional factual flaw (for example: at one point a source is quoted has having “spent a couple of years ‘playing with’ InDesign,” though she first acquired it with Adobe Creative Suite—released 11 months ago as of this writing).

On the InDesign perspective:

“I think what ‘killed’ Quark was the delay in getting Quark 6 out,” said Matt Beals, director of production and manufacturing for Paizo Publishing LLC. “Once it was here, many people looked at it and said, “What the heck is this?” The 6.1 update seemed to fix some things. “Features like transparency, superior typographical controls, PDF export, stricter adherence to specification, scripting, plug-ins and XML support are what really set InDesign apart. But the biggest factor, I think, was who was on OS X first. And that was Adobe.”

And, on the Quark perspective:

[C.D. Vann, owner of Soho Graphics & Design in Milwaukee] agrees that there may be some benefit to being able to work simultaneously in image-management software like Photoshop and a layout application like InDesign, but �that little bit of a feature is not a strong enough incentive to give up Quark,� she says. �For me, it�s not so much a matter of whether one application is better than the other. It�s a matter of my level of comfort with the Quark interface. And choosing to leave Quark and all I know and feel comfortable with � for, what I like to call, �a second of laziness,� when I click out of Quark and go into Photoshop for an image edit � well, it�s just not something I�m willing to do.�

Vann uses QuarkXPress 6.0, and says that creating PDFs in this version is just as simple as it is in InDesign: �You can make a PDF from Quark, too. They started that with Quark 4.0. � It�s just a matter of making sure your distiller options are set correctly. In version 5, it was even easier, and now, in 6.0, it�s just a matter of hitting �File,� �Export to PDF.� It�s no big deal, and pretty much exactly like making a PDF in InDesign. I never have to leave Quark to change or set my output settings.�