I Shout “Quark Sucks!” Loudest

Cool! I’m sure this entry will concrete your top spot for “quark sucks”! :)

LOL Thanks, David!

True, Carl. Remember: Quark sucks!

I agree. QUARK SUCKS ASS!!! I hate is more and more everyday. Screw Quark.

Just wanted to join “the QUARK SUCKS list”. Just installed OS Panther and of course now I have to REACTIVATE through their amazingly awful customer service dept. And for you folks that may not know this… you are only allowed to “REACTIVATE” up to 5 times a year and that’s it. So if you’re having hardware trouble, system reinstalls, anything like that sort, watch out!! The only excuse they accept to not add to your “5 times” talley is if you have a corruption so I suggest stating that being the reason every time you have to “REACTIVATE”. PLUS it took 3 days to get a reactivation code last time we needed it. What regular Quark user can afford to be down without their program for that long??!! So next time I need to spend almost $1,000 for a layout program I will be happily giving my money to Indesign as I will pray that they blow away Quark with their next release!!!

Betty:

If it takes that long to do a project in InDesign, you’re doing it wrong. Seriously. InDesign makes things a hell of a lot faster—direct PSD and AI placement, without having to use intermediary TIFF and EPS formats; genuine transparency support, not cludged clipping paths or Quark’s internal clipping; real, not faked drop shadows; hanging punctuation; paragraph composer; OpenType support so cross-platform projects don’t reflow; no need to create an annoying picture box before placing a picture each and every time; direct PDF export (that works); nested, (optionally) automatic styles—which of these is not a time saver for you?

Does anybody have an idea of how long it would take to convert the whole industry to InDesign? If this happened, it would make everyone’s lives a whole lot easier. Quark absolutely blows and I can’t wait until it fades away. Quark simply does not listen to it’s customers. I mean, it took them 12 years to simply come up with multiple undo’s. And they still do not have built-in impositioning. And that’s just a start of what’s wrong with Quark. Hopefully within the next few years, the industry will make the switch to InDesign. Productivity and creativity will skyrocket, not to mention customer service!

The latest marketing genius from QUARK — to shepard it’s (paying) customers along it upgrade path by making their registered copys NON-TRANSFERABLE. It’s amazing — a ‘Google’ seach for “quark sucks” produces 7,430 hits, yet QUARK management still doesn’t get it!

Look at the license agreement.

Quark retains the ownership of the CD and the manuals; not the licensee.

The license restricts the use of the physical product solely to the licensee, unless you get permission from Quark.

Now that Quark has stopped doing license transfers, you cannot sell it, or even give it away.

The license goes so far as to command the licensee to destroy the physical product if it is no longer being used.

xynaxis: Unbelievable. Quark is mad! They’re killing themselves.

Xynaxis:

I’m just shaking my head and Quark’s mismanagement. Better not try to sell your old software.

I don’t know about them changing owners—my understanding was that Fred Ebrihimi, Quark’s CEO, has always been the majority shareholder—but they’ve always been very antagonistic toward their customers.

Thanks, Xynaxis. Actually, RagTime isn’t limited to OSX users. They also make versions for Windows (XP/2000/NT4/ME/98) and Mac OSes 8 and 9.

I’m downloading a copy now to try it out.

From a quick glance at the marketing material, though, it looks like RagTime is being positioned as more of a business publishing or hobbyist layout program to compete with PageMaker, Microsoft Publisher, or Serif PagePlus.

Still, it’s worth a try. I love layout programs. Serif PagePlus, when they sent me version 1.0 for review about ten years ago, was a whole lot of fun. It wasn’t as powerful and precise as Quark (2? 3? I forget)—for example, PagePlus only allowed positioning to within a one hundredth of an inch, which isn’t precise enough for professional work—but it was a really fun program to play with.

I’ll let you know what I think of RagTime.

I’m not sure about contributing since I have some other pans in the fire along those lines myself. I think I can at least provide a reciprocal link, Tony. Thanks for leting me know about it!

Quark Sucks. Long Suck the Quark.

Just got a letter in the mail from Quark, lauding their recent changes. I won’t go into all of the unbelievable back-patting, but rather get to the point: They offered an online survey for feedback.

www.quark.com/survey/user/

“Please let us know how we can serve you better.”

Don’t worry, I will!

thanks to Alan for giving me the survey site. Although Quark won’t listen, it sure was nice to vent!

Hallelujah! Praise be unto PostScript, brother T-Bone has seen the light. Say it with me now, children: Quark Sucks!

Beleive me- I hate quark more than all of you combined… Unfortunately I’m having to use it right now and encountering a problem. Quark obviously won’t handle any issues, and for everyone here hating it so much, must mean you’ve used it so much and might have a solution. I’m trying to print an 11×17- only no matter what I do to change the print size from 8.5 x 11 to 11×17 it doesn’t. Oh, this is Quark 4.1… Now for the fun stuff. Quark is quite simply the most pathetic excuse for a software development company in the history of computers. It is the sick, dying uncle that just won’t die. Saying the words industry standard over and over again in an elitist fashion won’t make it so- I’m sure quark was effing brilliant in 1988- So was Duck Hunt. If anyone is uncertain, mark my words like a Calculus mid-term cheat sheet- switchto/choose InDesign at all costs. Cheers.

sorry about the accidental double-post… Quark sucks

Thanks so much Pariah-

The document size is 11×17- When I change the paper size from 8.5×11 to 11×17 in the printer properties, my print settings in Quark have not changed. It’s Windows XP Professional… This happens on a previously created document. The only workaround I’ve found is to open a new 11×17 document and copy then paste- which should be an unnecessary hassle. The printer is a Ricoh E-300 with an Adobe Fiery driven postscript 3… it is not without its own flaws, but after a couple of years using Quark, you learn to recognize that specific, agonizing quark headache. Again, thanks so much… I really appreciate it. Quark owes you a multitude of the millions it owes me for time lost and damages. Cheers.

I think that the guys, writing about Quark, does’nt know much of the features quark gives it to you.

They are now giving free “variable printing”

extension to it’s customer. Why does’nt you point out this. I tried indesign and it’s does’nt give you half the features what the quarkxpress gives to you.. think over it.

Thank GOD for the PDF. I used Quark for about six years and the place I work at used it for longer than that. So, I had a big fight on my hand to make the switch. But with the help of the Sevice Provider program, I now have a solution. The price for being a member is less than buying Photoshop and Illustrator separtely. And, I get InDesign, GoLive and Acrobat Professional. I used Acrobats Distiller to PDF any job for Quark. If I need to make minor changes, I do it directly in Acrobat. Or, I can delete the items I need to change and import the PDF into InDesign and recombine it into my PDF. I could never accomplish this, with out taking a coffee break inbetween, in Quark because of the “preview” of imported items. For the price of two upgrades, from 4 to 5 and 5 to 6, I can have a seamless workflow and may be enough left over for lunch. Oh, and uh, Quark Suuuucks.

Quark is giving away free variable-data publishing? Only if you are running an Indigo. You should read deeper. And as a VDP XTension, whatever the hell that is, eXclusive or some nonsense, it really is not very good and gives you no control over what you are doing compared to something like DesignMerge. DesignMerge in Quark is awesome.

Our switchover to InDesign is complete. What a relief. Quark Sucks.

Quark. S U C K S.

Hello, I would like to comment that its true that there are some problem while using Quark, however it is not only with Quark, but also with other softwares also. So instead of searching or finding the flaws we can also look into the better side of Quark.

Indesign saved my life, Quark is such crap. I mean u have to buy a seperate plugin just to have tables.. seperate plugins just to do a PDF , and to top it off when working with a lanuage like arabic u need some stupid dongle, and most of the the time the arabic comes out all worng.

QUARK TEAM WAKE UP or DIE,
Indesigne is such a sweet software to work on. Easy to handle, previews are brillant and to make it all better is the wounder ful service the Adobe team provides

I love my job even more thanks to INDESIGN

I used to hate InDesign … but since moving to Mac OSX … and releasing CS2,Adobe really seems to have gotten their acts together. I never thought I’d say it … but I’m a total InDesign convert. (Adobe … I take back every time I’d called it “InDespair”!)

By the way folks … there are much worse programs out there than Quark. Just about anything Microsoft has put out is total crap (anyone try to get four colour separations out of Micro$oft Punisher, I mean Publisher??) And there are still many idiots out there attempting to get profesional printing jobs out of a Word document!

And don’t get me started on Corel!!!

I would take Quirk … I mean Quark over those noob programs any day of the week!

One reason why Quark even exists nowadays is because of all the “old” graphic designers that are still in the field. I remember being in college a couple years ago finishing up my Bachelor’s and my design teachers still REFUSED to use anything BUT Quark. By then, Indesign CS was out and almoste very student had access to it. But noooo…., the old designers wouldn’t have it. Same goes for the printing company I interned with that same year - of the 7 designers that worked their full-time for 10+ years, only [1] occasionally used Indesign. The rest were so obsessed with Quark Quickkeys and losing all their extensions that it drove me crazy. Even in late 2004, I still had to use Quark 4.0 & OS9 at WORK at one of the largest printing companies in Northern Michigan. And at the college newspaper where I worked as a production staffer (& eventually manager) from 2001-2004, my boss refused to let us make anything in Indesign. The printer also wanted ONLY Quark and nothing else.

I feel like Quark’s longevity has less to do with it’s amazing abilities and more to do with it’s aging core user base who refuse to try anything new. I mean, my old teachers and boss at the newspaper REFUSED to even let me use JPEGs in place of 100+MB TIFF files! These people *who I think aren’t very knowledgeable technically* are so scared of change, they will continue using Quark for the next 10, 15 years easy.

One of my favorite companies is Corel because they try so hard to put out good products are all about customer service. Their prices are cheap, their software is good (Draw is no Illustrator/Freehand…and Photo Paint is no Photoshop…but they come close and can do some things the others can’t) and for a designer who wants legal, authentic design software at a reasonable price with few tech-hassles, they’re awesome.

But I can’t be a Quark hater 100%. Back from 1998-2004 I could make a book / newspaper / etc. faster in Quark [4.0] than I could in Indesign, hands down. Their really isn’t much to Quark and at times their seems to be TOO much to Indesign…OPTIONS overkill. For designers and people who don’t need to create super complicated layouts, Quark is probably a better choice for efficiency…BUT, after you factor in software reliability, activation and price, Indesign is top dog nowadays.

I may not be in love with Indesign, but I certainly have no love for Quark.

Finally, let me say this: Unless you are making a newspaper or magazine, Freehand beats ALL layout programs easily. Sad to see it go extinct thanks to Adobe, but even so, I’d still rather use Freehand than any other drawing/layout program on the market.
*End Rant* :)

Pariah, Hey I had a Quark sucks post on your old site! And guess what?Just in the last year our whole office switched. We’ve got graphic designers, project coordinators, copywriters, and even marketing clerks using Indesign. Now don’t get me wrong there was a bit of an investment, and I believe a few of the girls took a day or so to look over some of the Indesign training CD’s we bought. But the results were insane, we now have people who have only worked in Word before using templates that the Graphic Designers put together and cranking out some really professional looking work. As a Graphic Designer I have more time, no crashes, and though I still have Quark 6 installed on my computer I have not opened that piece of crap for months and don’t intend to open it this year. Quark you greedy son of a b, your going down!

What the heck happened. Its as if new programers developed the revision. For example, what is the deal with the barley shaded tool box. You can’t even tell what the heck your on. Or type, it does not read. Clicking a box is delayed. So you must anticipate the next click. Generally the program is much slower. It feels strange— off. Is there any hope. Because, I fucking hate Indesign, just because!

How could you compare a program that works seamlessly with illustrator, Photoshop, and a host of other formats. Hell I rather use Pagemaker than Quark.
InDesign definitely has cornered market for creative layout design!

Our graphic design firm switched from Quark to InDesign a couple of years ago when Adobe CS came out and Quark was busy insulting print designers and Mac users alike.

I look back on those dark days of Quark headaches and it makes me feel sad for the designers out there today who are forced to use such awful software to do their jobs.

All the problems with Quark tend to kill the creative spirit or at the very least distract and slow you way down.

This is all you really need to consider when comparing the difference between the two progs:

I’ve worked in multi-color, full-color, vector based and raster based output. I’ve recieved output-ready artwork in just about every file format imaginable for every form of output imaginable, for every type of client. Highend graphics, to low end crap. It’s been my experience to find that of all the page layout I get in both Quark 7 and Indesign (CS2), the best artwork and most well-designed stuff comes to me in Indesign format. Period. People, i believe, only still use Quark because they “have” to. Whether it’s because they aren’t willing to learn something new (which is often times the case in print), or it’s because pathologically, they think what they don’t know WILL hurt them. If you honestly think that Indesign is “harder” to use, and it takes you longer, it’s simply because you aren’t as well versed in the Adobe app interface as you should be. Period. There’s basically nothing in Quark 7.0 that’s as intuitive as what you get in Indesign. I just got the newest Quark 7.02 upgrade, and today I’ve encountered THREE ALL NEW PROBLEMS!! WTF?! With 7.01, Quark was crashing like it was nobody’s business. Now, the previews are all jacked, and can barely use the Content tool to type without having to restart the application, because i can’t see what I’m typing as soon as I type it. I’m running on a Dual 2.3 PowerPC G5, with 2 gig of DDR2, and this crap simply should not be happening. The only thing bad I can say about Indesign is that it periodically crashes, but no more than Quark does. However, Indesign’s crash recovery (which Quark has yet to develope a version of, like it never crashes) more than makes up for that flaw. Indesign even CRASHES better than Quark. Why? Because Quark IS CRAP!

@JoeMama:
“Oh yeah, in case you haven’t upgraded to Quark 7 and are considering it first by trying the “evaluation version,” be forewarned: any file you make using the eval. version of Quark 7 cannot be opened in ANY Quark version besides 7.”

Where did you read such rubbish? Of course I can open files created by the evaluation version of QuarkXPress 7 with any production version.

Quark has changed that with version 7, you live in the past, this used to be the way their demo versions worked (up to 6.5).

Hey, Joe, it is 2006! ;-)

hello Pariah Burke! I was doing a project on Quark vs Indesign, and we were suppoused to make a personal preferrence. Well, now its Indesign. The more and more i read about the “war” between the two, and what horrible decisons Quark has done, i’ve come to the conclusion that quark deserves to die.

@JoeMama:
You cannot open a 6.5 file in 7? Does that surprise you? My ID CS cannot open a ID CS2 file. Naturally, how could they have known in old versions how the newer version will look like?

So you need to dowsave. In InDesign via INX, in Quark via Export->Layout as Projects.

Bottom line: Often the problem sits between the keyboard and the chair ;-)

P.S.: There is a 6.52 update available, which fixes many of the downsave-issues in 6.5

Steve, That is a common scenario in the newspaper business. Quark is dominant in that sector. Just think about the type of people running the show. You also have to consider that they want all their newspapers on the same platform. Since the have all their equipment and software setup to run on Quark, they are not gonna budge. Not to mention that newspaper is a shrinking industry. The bottom line rules, but for what it’s worth, I agree with you.

I can appreciate the frustrations about Quark: I use it every day. I’m a newspaper editor, and that’s what our Macintoshes and presses are set up to use.
I can also appreciate all of the designers that don’t like Quark. It’s your choice.
However, I get really mad when people send me job applications that say “I can use Quark, I guess, but I prefer InDesign.”
I don’t care what you prefer. Personally, I prefer PhotoShop. However, our company and the way its presses work are set up for Quark. Just because you prefer InDesign does not mean that the company is going spend a few million dollars to reinvent the wheel for you.
If you want to work at a newspaper, you need to know and work with the design programs that newspaper uses. Don’t waste my time telling me what you prefer. Can you use what we use? If you can’t, and you can’t do it without complaining, then move along. I’ll find someone else.
That’s what your professors called working in the real world. This is the real world. If you’re freelancing and paying for the software, you can use whatever you want. When you come to work in a company, don’t waste its time with what you “prefer.”
We prefer that you use the software that’s provided.
And if you’re telling potential bosses that you prefer one program over another, then expect them to prefer another applicant over you.
Welcome to the real world!

Jimbo,

First, learn about operating systems. And then think about document icons again.

Secondly, make the update to 6.52, then Quark won’t crash anymore when downsaving.

Thirdly, if the only bug Quark had was the application logo, you should be happy.

Your
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