Comments on: Quark: 'No Comment'

by: FruibeFramb

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:07:00 +0000

Hey, just i just wanted to remind, tha global I4oTuFskPCc4 is near.

by: HomoMoogs

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:23:40 +0000

Hi people

As newly registered user i just wanted to say hello to everyone else who uses this site B-)

by: someone who knows

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:59:07 +0000

they’re firing again… though not that britally this time.. its a new HR policy - implied firing… all those ppl who dont get a 1 yr contract letter are implicitly fired..

by: Mjenius

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:58:30 +0000

Adobe’s new pricing in Europe is probably not helping either.

by: budimir

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:27:17 +0000

i like working in Quark, i now they have problems to compete with adobe but they have to be patiente and not to pay attention on graphic issues like inDesign but on my oppinion on speed, stability, simplicity …

greetings from Europe

by: Puboisher

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:27:14 +0000

The war is over?

How about ScribusVsIndesign.com? How long will it be before Scribus has more users than Quark?

by: Thomas Ledermann

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:57:21 +0000

Just as i would say, i switched to InDesign with Version 1.5. Shure was buggy that time, but improved so much. Quark was still good in that time and still has some functions InDesign is missing… But there are so many things way better in InDesign.

Someone got a list of the differences between those two?
That be nice…

by: Andrei

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:48:13 +0000

I’m using Quark for about 9 years now. It’s been getting better and better with every version, and at the time it was launched, I thought the 7.0 version was truly revolutionary. But now I chose to switch to InDesign. By the words of Schiavone, “that war is over”. That’s it.

by: Keshav Singh

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:19:28 +0000

I had an opportunity to work on the development of Quark XPress in
India starting version 5 and can vouch for huge amount of hard work which had gone into the development during last few years.
Though there were a number of difficulties which had to be overcome the development process had started stabilising by the time version 7.0 was completed.
Observing the intensity of exchanges and the emotional outpourings I can’t help but hope for early stabilisation and timely release of impoved versions

by: Andrew Smith

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:46:00 +0000

Reading through the first half of the article, I really felt that his answers were like something that the PR department would write.

Kudos to PB for seeing through them all. A great and interesting read.

by: Mjenius

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:53:55 +0000

Asking hard questions is part of being a journalist. If Quark is really uncomfortable with these questions, they should really think twice about going public. Journalists and investors will be relentless. Once they go public it’ll be much tougher to BS, because that’ll just make them look either stupid, dishonest or both. I wish they’d go public just to see their financial. Seems like Ray knows what he’s doing, but they really need to work on their PR.

by: Anne-Marie

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:34:16 +0000

Hey there Pariah, very interesting reporting. Thank you!

A couple things … have you been to the Quark Forums lately? Seen all the higher-ups and VPs listed by name as the moderators of the forums and actually participating, helping, asking for sample problem child files etc. from the users who post there? I thought of that when Ray said “if there’s a customer problem, we pull in everyone to help.” It’s heartening to see, I tell you. Adobe staff help out on the Adobe forums, but on their own time, and coverage is spotty. They make it clear they’re User to User forums. There is no other way to talk to an Adobe official other than paying for the tech support call. So the free 800-number support plus the responsive, authoritative forum support is really great to see.

The other thing … you were talking about Quark moving to some sort of a hosted solution. I think just about every software developer and their grandmother is doing the same thing. Starting with Web 2.0 goodness like Google’s spreadsheet and word processing programs, to Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements built into photo sharing sites, to Microsoft Office Live … if Quark *weren’t* planning on moving at least some offerings in that direction, I’d be surprised. Or I guess I should say, I wouldn’t be surprised; but you say/surmise they are, so to me that’s a sign at least some people over there are in touch with industry trends.

I don’t think you’ve been frozen out of Quark. Maybe they just want a break. ;-)

by: Back in the game

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:09:57 +0000

Since I have been back in the design community - with the ability to use, teach and speak about ALL the products that are out there. It took me less than 1 week to completely get my skills back up to speed at expert level in InDesign CS3. I have fallen in love with Bridge and the simplicity of the suite. I still teach and present QXP because I have expert level skills - but the demand is very low. My eyes are open wide, as I am in touch in InDesign users and not just Xpress users, as I had been for the past 3.5 years. I am finding people are asking me to teach/present InDesign 90% more than QuarkXPress.

And this is because the ramp to move to InDesign has been steady throughout the past 5 years. It has not declined in the least - and Quark knows this, and has addressed it with the future plan for the direction of the company. I found out last week that one of the few major US publishing giants that is still using QXP (ver 4) - has decided to move to InDesign, but has not told Quark yet. I know because they were in a class that I taught on Transitioning to InDesign.

It is sad because I truly supported every effort the company made to reach out to the Quark community - however, I think the boat was missing during the old administration days. I applaud Quark for recognizing what they have to do to make the company viable once again, which means changing the strategy and vision. Quark will survive - whether it’s product line changes, whether or not the company is sold or becomes a public entity is yet to be seen.

The PM team at Quark is great - and they know what they are/were up against and realize the changes that the company has to make. However, revealing them to the public could damage the company severely. I know the path of some of the new technologies that are being built - but cannot discuss them until 9/6/08. If Quark has not released anything new by that date - then feel free to get tin touch with me.

In the meantime - explore your options, look at the design tools that are best for you. Even if Quark did go all-enterprise - the support will not go away for the desktop products. By the way - the employee that will be heading up the new Tech Support team in Denver is amazing and he is a long time Quark employee and truly cares about customer support. Congrats Craig!

I look forward to attending the Quark Symposium in Chicago on October 30 to see if Quark is changing their messaging. I will follow-up with a full story which can be found at www.creativeblvd.com - where I am the Editor-in-Chief. I am pulling for Quark and am looking forward to seeing new technologies.

by: bill_gains

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:31:20 +0000

The days of being able to charge 700-plus dollars simply to put text or pictures in a box has long since past. We all need to stop trying to get blood from this stone. And all this talk of Quark becoming an enterprise application — simply more corporate justification to maintain their ridiculous pricing schedule. Not only does InDesign beat this dinosaur feature-wise, so does CorelDRAW!, the red-headed stepchild of DTP.

Quark… still saving pages as EPS one page at a time (or is there a $100 Xtension to fix that?).

by: nk

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:56:21 +0000

hmmf… did any of you guys ever see “The Mummy”? Remember how those anubis warriors disintegrated into sand when their heads got chopped off (and when their boss got deaded)? I think all these Quark warriors are going to go the same way sometime soon

by: Quarker

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:26:21 +0000

Pariah, your interview clearly is one-sided and is wrought with assumptions. How can you expect a CEO tell a “journalist” what the strategy of the business is for the next 3-5 years. Do you understand competitive advantage or do jounalists not have to worry about competition.
I do not blame Mr. Schiavone for not responding to your questions as he is turning around a software company, that has a long legacy of problems and I can imagine has more important issues to cover than defending humself against hearsay from an “unidentified source”, who you are using to create a controversy.
Too bad you do not publizie the good news about Quark, i.e. the Quark Connects program which was announced at Graph Expo which provides all Quark printer partners with a direct avenue to the consumer/customer versus Adobe’s (since retracted) program to exclude all printers by using Fedex.
It is very evident you are an Adobe supporter and continue to bash Quark when you have an opportunity. I strongly suggest all readers of your blog read your responses and assumptions with caution as they are very miseleading.

by: hunter

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:37:59 +0000

Fine job of reporting. Thank you. I’ve been strongly thinking about switching since our last major printing problem. Maybe this is what I need to get me off dead center.

Their direction does make sense from a purely financial perspective, in fact it seems like the only solution for them - to head in the enterprise direction.

Hope you can keep your off-the-record contacts, it’s quite interesting to hear the real story in addition to the for-public-consumption story.

It would also be interesting to find out what Schiavone’s private comments are after he reads your report. Probably not going to happen though.