I wish Quark good luck.

SmartGuides?
Customizable Links panel?
Conditional text?
Live Preflight?
Smart Text?
Spread rotation?
Smart Text Reflow?

Come on. You’re kidding!

Not that I want Quark to fail… I don’t. I like both apps for different reasons. Actually I think all the Quark haters out there should want Quark to survive… because it keeps the Adobe from getting any more lazy than they are now (almost all the new CS4 features are clearly derived from something QuarkXPress already does… you can debate who does it better in various areas but it seems Quark does a better job of getting real and significant innovations in their software these days… ironic ain’t it!). Adobe has already given up the fight for desktop publishing and is taking InDesign into maintenance mode… As they should. Print layout is a limited and shrinking market which they have effectively already won… so why would the suits at Adobe sink more investment in a declining market which they already own and do not depend on to survive? Don’t expect any massive, feature rich releases out of them any time soon. The days of CS1/CS2 are gone… you’ll be lucky to get the same trickle that you got out of CS4.

In short, pray Quark survives. QuarkXPress is your only hope for big releases of cool new features. In their current mode, Adobe will eventually follow along with their version (with refinement/improvement or a half assed try at good enough) of the same feature. Basically if you want InDesign to be better in the long run… stoke the fire of the competition. Sink $300 to buy an upgrade copy of QuarkXPress… if only because you need Quark to survive to drive innovation… (and you might even like it).

if that’s a criteria, then bye bye Adobe, Google, Microsoft…

Just a few weeks ago Adobe fired 8% of its staff worldwide (not just in one country).

again fired 10% all employées in switzerland ..

RIP Quark.

Now I can only hope for Quark to die of natural causes.

I now prefer InDesign, which has clearly surpassed QuarkXPress in the industry.

I’ve read the interview on “Planet Quark”, and I have to say that the views of Quark and the views of QuarkVSInDesign’s “mole” are pretty wildly different—somebody is telling lies! (at least the mole has the decency to back his claims up with actual figures). In any case, it would truly be very sad if many people around the world lost their jobs because of Quark taking a nosedive… (which doesn’t mean that I’ve converted—I still STRONGLY dislike Xpress).

Here’s an idea: if things get really bad at Quark, wouldn’t it be cool if Adobe bought them out? This may just be the random musing of a DTP moron, but think about it…

Anyway, better be going, before I lose MY job

Well Wisher!

Did anyone read this interview

For what it’s worth, I do genuinely like most of the things I know about Ray Schiavone’s New Quark.

Because of my work—here, my books, my consulting and training, and in many other roles in which I serve the creative pro community—I’m privy to a great deal of inside information from Quark, Adobe, and other companies. Somewhere between 50% and 75% of that information the companies themselves officially deliver to me (often under Non-Disclosure Agreement). The rest…Well, let’s just say I keep my promises, and I stay well informed.

Now, I’m pro-Quark and pro-Adobe. I am most certainly pro-QuarkXPress and pro-InDesign. (Note: The order in which I write them has no meaning.) I really like both applications. I also really like what I know about QuarkXPress 8 and InDesign CS4. I like what I know about new, as yet unannounced products, too.

In this case, we’re talking about Quark, so I’ll focus my response to that company and its products.

I’ve met several of the Quarkians who responded above, and many others who haven’t. When I’ve interacted with them, they genuinely are excited about the new direction of Quark.

Tim Bannister, for example. Although his comment above smacks of carefully written marketing spin, I know the guy really is excited for the future of Quark and his part in it. I know that because Tim and I spent the entire day locked in a conference room with 10-15 other people talking about the future of Quark, XPress, QID, and some other topics. The whole time, Tim was excited scribbling notes and passionately discussing his ideas, my ideas, and the ideas of others in the room.

I’m not asking you or other readers to get excited about QuarkXPress or InDesign (or another product) on my say-so. That’s a personal/professional choice each of us must make. I’m excited by both; if I wasn’t, I’d have no right to comment on them.

I hope over the last four years of writing and publishing Quark VS InDesign.com that I’ve proven myself competent, honest, and fair. (To Macman: If Quark considers this site fair, can’t you?) I hope I’ve earned enough trust from my readers that you will believe me when I vouch for someone like Tim Bannister, and, perhaps, even when I tell that Quark is indeed on a better track now than it was a year ago.

I noticed the other day that this site’s homepage weighs in at a hefty “6″ on Google PageRank… this means that everything being said here must be fairly significant to both Adobe and Quark… makes me wonder if some of these pro-Quark guys aren’t maybe Quark’s marketing department in disguise

I’m pleased to see so many Quark employees (Tim, Shellie, Matt, Bryan, and others) participating in the discussion. But, are any of the anonymous or pseudonymous respondants Quarkians in disguise? I don’t know. It’s possible of course, but I honestly doubt it.

In the past I have caught employees of an article’s subject commenting in disguise. I’ve also caught similar attempts at deception where it wasn’t an employee of the subject company but an employee of a rival to the subject of the article. Those are few and far between, however.

More often I catch one person not directly affiliated with either the subject or its rival(s) posting effectively the same information or argument in multiple comments under different names. Every time I find one of these, I look into the author’s location and identity a bit. Never do I recall having found such a person to be an agent of Quark, Adobe, or any of their known partners or vendors.

Maybe Pariah can respond to… Why do comments like [NK’s] targeting Quark remain on this site when similar comments regarding Adobe get removed or edited.

I honestly don’t know to what you’re referring, MacMan. On this thread, I have indeed removed 4 comments.

One had no content or purpose other than a vicious personal attack on one of the Quark employees who responded above.

The remaining three were removed because they were duplicates of comments that are still available above. One of those was an exact duplicate seconds apart—most likely the author clicked “Embed” twice.

The other two duplicates were messages from you, MacMan. The first examples was one I just now removed. It followed and echoed your comments in #69 just above. Your first comment didn’t go immediately through (the system flagged it for editorial approval prior ot publication), so you likely thought it hadn’t gone through at all and rewrote the same thought into a new comment. As they weren’t substantially different, I kept your more detailed first comment and deleted the latter.

The only other comment I removed from this thread was another of yours, MacMan. Posting under the alias of “Chio,” you repeated exactly the same sentiment as comment #48.

PS, Slightly off mark with aka Chio, but It was enlightening news that I would never have found out, without your help.

I don’t think I know what you mean by “enlightening news”.

What the rest of the people involved in this discussion may not realize is that you didn’t enter the name as “Chio aka MacMan”. I did.

You were trying the time-honored Internet tradition of posting the same information under multiple aliases in attempt to manipulate the other participants into thinking that your singular point of view was shared by others. This wasn’t the first time you did that, either.

This publication and I have a low tolerance for that. Consequently, from that point forward (Tuesday, I think) none of your comments will publish until reviewed by the staff.

I value your opinion—whether I agree or not—and contributions to discussions, but, as you proven unable to participate fairly and honestly, we’ve had to restort to using technology to enforce fairness and equality.

Pariah, I await your personal attack and indirect response with baited breath.

PS, Slightly off mark with aka Chio, but It was enlightening news that I would never have found out, without your help.

I noticed the other day that this site’s homepage weighs in at a hefty “6″ on Google PageRank… this means that everything being said here must be fairly significant to both Adobe and Quark… makes me wonder if some of these pro-Quark guys aren’t maybe Quark’s marketing department in disguise

Vex asked:

Pariah, have you got any luck in contacting Ray or is he still hiding somewhere?

I would love to know what exciting story he has to fool people around.

I also received quite a few e-mails asking the same question.

I apologize for keeping everyone in suspense; that wasn’t my intention.

I did meet with Ray Schiavone (and others) late Wednesday afternoon (2:30 PM Pacific Time). During the interview he responded to the allegations leveled against Quark by the Source, and we talked about some related topics as well.

Half an hour wasn’t enough time to fully cover all the questions I feel need to be addressed at this time. So, Quark and I have agreed to split the content of the interview across two articles. The first, which will publish later today, will respond directly to the above “Quark Insider” story. The second, which will cover what I consider even bigger, farther reaching questions, will be addressed in a second article after a followup interview with Ray Schiavone (hopefully next week, depending on Mr. Schiavone’s schedule).

Right now, I’m just waiting to hear back from Quark regarding some quotes I asked them to confirm. Then everyone can read the official response, straight from the top of Quark.

I can feel that there is lot of excitement about Quark, but not in Quark. I see no excitement within Quark but only frustration because of internal politics and top management which raised to that level by default not because of any skills. Politics is there in all companies, but in Quark politics has become more important than company and that is why company is going thru such a bad phase.
Tim/Zach if Ray is really as good & smart as you say he is then why is he not able to see the monkeys (like Nitin Nanda, Dinesh Sharma, Rocky Goffey who are in company only because of Linda and there are others like them who are there because they are close to someone or the other in Denver) and fire them to save money INR 4-5 Million per year per head. He would have saved 4 times the money he has saved by firing 45 guys in India. I really wish that Ray would have had such a vision.
Anyway since I have some observations which I feel can come handy for Ray if he really wants to save this company, I am writing this because I still love Quark as a company and have lots to thank Quark for:
1. Please fire Linda, Nitin Nanda, Dinesh Sharma, Mohinder Pal Singh, Rockey and find others like them and hang them. Just demoting Linda and asking her to report to Jurgen will not help.
2. Give clear targets to guys in India and believe me they can deliver it, problem is not in India office, problem is that you guys don’t know how to manage India operations. Right from day one it has been made centre of politics where people where not treated and respected for work but for the fact that they are either Linda’s team or Jurgen’s team or Kamar’s team or is/was good in managing all of them. Recognize & respect work not monkeys named above.
3. Please hire some good management guys who know how to run business and create your second line, the fools who are there right now there with you are of no use. If they would have been of any use, this company would have been doing much better than it is doing now.
Just to clarify, I have nothing personal against Nitin, Dinesh, Rocky or Mohinder & Linda, it is just that they are biggest reasons for politics, confusion and mis-management in India office. So if you are really serious please get rid of these stupid people and try and retain good guys, you really have some good talented people in India office.

Now - there was this clique of people who used to run the CRM show - with a few in Denver and ONE guy in India. This clique fleeced Quark to the hilt till the time they could - until someone finally decided that the CRM has been a huge drain to Quark’s resource (there never was any market for this product). Now this clique of people moved onto Enterprise products and quietly nudged out most of the existing team fromt he company. This group continues to drain Quark resources with no returns.

The last release of the main Enterprise product was nearly A YEAR behind schedule. So what- it was celebrated and gifts were doled out to the team. This group continues to eat up the bottom line of QUark with 3 Directors (good for nothing) on board - doing nothing but consolidating their positions. It is amazing how the big lady sitting in Denver is able to cover up their tracks.

And so life goes on…
btw - in this latest round of layoffs NOT A SINGLE resource from the enterprise group was laid off ! Amazing ain’t it.
It is time Ray started to uncover the machinations of the top brass of the Enterprise group…

WAke up time !!!

I feel some people ruined the jobs of others without knwing the background story.

Very Exciting.

The vision and future of Quark is very positive and I think Ray and the company will succeed and I wish them well!

Don’t mean to be a party pooper as I can see that this sort of wild speculation is what drives the entertainment value of this website.

Quel drama !

Matt Bargell

IBM let 400 go afew weeks back, is that a siginficant number? it’s less than 2% of it’s workforce.

The source is obviously X or the janitor as they really had no idea about the true plans and reasons.

As Shellie points out herself the desktop strategies have changed and these people don’t fit that refocus within the company. My heart goes out to these people I have been in the same position before, and I wish Shellie the best of luck for the future and I would gladly offer her a position along side us working with these apps.

This is just a small spark fueled by the Adobe fan Club into a fictitious wild fire started by a disgruntled employee. again making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Ironically, when I got the e-mail from Pariah about all this going down, I was attending the local InDesign User Group meeting, with a nice presentation by an Adobe rep about various InDesign tips and techniques. My wife attended and at the end wished she could talk her company into moving to InDesign (she uses Quark).

But my point is that Adobe’s outreach and empathy for designers’ needs seems to far exceed Quark’s, and I expect that when this is all over Quark will actually be doing LESS for designers than before. The fact that they are dumping highly valuable evangelists supports this.

I remember starting as a designer back in 2000, and a mentor was baffled when I adopted InDesign instead of Quark. “Just get Quark,” she said, “it’s required.” That was Quark’s mindset for many years, and look what it’s gotten them.

Just read this

The worst part is this always had (has) a bad effect on morale, on quality and thus on the product itself. No wonder there is overspending and sales are falling thru the roof. There was a faint flicker of hope for Quark India office about a couple of years back when they had hired an excellent MD but the dufuses here played their political games to oust him out and also the upper management sitting at Denver along with the mad Arab couldnt digest the autonomy that guy demanded. And thus ended Quark’s only chance of redemeption.

Now lets see how long it takes for the ship to sink.

I dont know what Ray says and what hype trick he has up his sleeve but it is confirmed that Quark has cut down planned improvements for QuarkXPress’ version 8.0 drastically. Many of the planned enhancement projects are simply gone into thin air. The only thing users can expect till another 1 year is continued performance updates for QuarkXPress 7.0 and related products Quark CopyDesk and QuarkXPress Server.

The middle level managers at the India office (with the exception of a few) are the real symbols of what things have become at Quark. They have been there since the start of India office around 10 years back and have become so compliant and bureaucratic that the only thing they worry about is meeting time-lines to please superiors without any concern for quality issues that will frustrate customers. As I said earlier it is a total lack of vision.

But I am still hopeful, maybe things would turn around after hitting an abysmal low, what with the California office news and lot of talent still with them. The company has claimed to become customer centric but it has also to keep policies to keep the good talent. The programming code of QuarkXPress 7.0 is in a lot better shape now and a lot of innovation is possible. And it would not surprise me if a top level management change is what that will drive this turn around.