At the Apple keynote speech, Jobs seemed confident Quark was just a few weeks away. Hmm.

Quark has always had its head up its ass as far as customer relations go. When Kinko's, as a corporation, wanted to site license Quark Xpress for their self-serve DTP machines, Quark balked. They weren't going to site licence, and when it came down to it, they were a bit pissed that Quark be allowed on any self-serve machine. They considered that "renting the software" which was against their license.

 Adobe is full of crap as well. Why no Framemaker for OS X? They've already got a linux version. Some weird designer-arrogance culture permeating both corporations. I hope their pissing around creates a market opportunity for someone who cares about customers.

Quark can die for all I care now... this has kept our newspaper from switching to OSX as of now, and if I can shape the purchase desicions any, I will suggest we go another route rather than giving money to someone who obviously doesn't want it...

Where's Al Quada now that we really need them?

What's needed is an open source Quark killer, the DTP equivalent of OpenOffice. The closest candidate we have right now is Scribus. Hopefully, in a couple of years, Scribus or another open source program will be mature enough to replace any of the many proprietary DTP solutions (Framemaker/Pagemaker/InDesign/Quark/et al.).

This whole dynamic is something I find fascinating. Development for Linux automatically extends the options for OSX users... but not for Windows users. Unless Palladium/TCPA takes hold, I don't see how Windows will hold its market share. Eventually desktop Linux will undercut Windows base, but Mac chic will continue to grow, since Apple has complete control of the hardware, and can use it to provide a richer, easier, more customized computing experience for those willing to pay for it.

Great idea dan, but useless. If my printer can't get his Scitex to output 133 lpi film what good is that going to do me? I can't export it a PDF and expect him to seperate and trap that. 4/C maybe, but not spot colors, not special die line plate or foil stamps. Its the same problem if I used Deneba Canvas. Service bureau can't support, I ain't gonna run it.

I don't see any mention of long document support, pagination, H&J, optical kerning, OPI, master page features. I mean really, can it do spreads and facing pages? I don't even see Pantone mentioned.

Also keep in mind most designers are not tech heads, I'm migrating my office to InDesign and it's going to be major headaches retraining everyone. We don't have the time or resources to place bets on open source.

The problem is that the printing industry is very capital intensive and low margin. You have all kinds of print houses with stuff that costs a lot and they don't make so much money that they can retool everything just to run a different software package. Quark Xpress is just the tip of the iceberg as far as this goes. I thought Quark sticking with OS 7 b/w menus was wierd. However, in the grander scheme of things it makes sense: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Most print shops I've seen don't even run Xpress 5 because Xpress 4 became the standard. Most smart designers will send me coupons in Illustrator eps version 7 because that is the max that can be imported in Xpress 4. For most little things, there are tools better than Xpress, even though I used to use Xpress for them. The stuff that requires Xpress I can use Classic mode in X; I feel bad for the folks stuck in 9 world because Xpress is their principal app.

XPress is the principal app in my field-- magazines. I have long felt that Quark's contempt for its customers was untenable, and have been waiting (hoping) for the day it is unseated by InDesign. The keynote comments gave me hope that the day was approaching... Unfortunately the company that signs my checks has a huge investment in QPS, so we'll be limping along with that (and OS 9) for the forseeable future. I just take comfort in knowing that it would be harder to switch the entire company over to Windows machines than to InDesign, should Quark abandon Mac entirely.

Dan Z. sez: "This whole dynamic is something I find fascinating. Development for Linux automatically extends the options for OSX users... but not for Windows users."

Cygwin makes porting to Windows relatively painless, actually. The Mono project will make it even easier.

Adolph sez: "I thought Quark sticking with OS 7 b/w menus was wierd. However, in the grander scheme of things it makes sense: if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Funny you should mention that -- that's a major symptom of the problem of porting Quark to OS X.

Those aren't OS 7 menus. The widgets in XPress are not Macintosh widgets -- Quark wrote proprietary widgets, and then skinned them to look like the Mac OS. (why? something to do with squeezing a little more power out of the CPU back in the MacSE days, I'd wager)

All that proprietary code makes Quark impossible to port to OS X. It would almost be easier to port the Windows version to OS X.

The real problem, as far as I'm concerned, isn't Quark, it's the printing industry. Most "press monkeys" I've encountered are slightly more tech-savvy than a typical plumber (no offense to plumbers). To these guys, PDFs are fancy-pants new-fangled city-folk technology.

Professional printing could be as simple and platform/software-agnostic as desktop printing (when's the last time your inkjet said "I don't accept InDesign?"), but nobody like Apple or Microsoft has the inclination to tackle the problem.

cowboy X says:
Most "press monkeys" I've encountered are slightly more tech-savvy than a typical plumber (no offense to plumbers). To these guys, PDFs are fancy-pants new-fangled city-folk technology.

oh I don't know about that. Three years ago when I started at my current company, half the publications took Film and Matchprint only. I now send out ads to about 20 or so publications a month, NOT a single one of them take veloxs or film. PDF or EPS, not even native Quark docs because of font conflicts from different type house vendors.

Adolph has it. This is a low margin business... capital investments are huge. I don't know about those illustrator 7 eps thing, I import illustrator 10 eps into Quark all the time... but I'm straying.

I do run quark 5 at home, its crap... unless you are into XML and cross purposing artwork constantly. I open up Indesign and set Quark keyboard shortcuts, everyone is happy.

Besides Quark's business practices (which seem to operate in a separate universe...this is the company that, after Apple removed floppy drives from their product lineup, still shipped software that required you to insert a floppy disk to install its product), I've always been boggled that Quark files are proprietary by their nature. If I could export a Quark document out of InDesign, or export my Quark document into Illustrator, life would be oh so much simpler for everyone.

Cowboy X said: Cygwin makes porting to Windows relatively painless, actually. The Mono project will make it even easier.

The thing is, Cygwin is a door into Linux, not out of it. Every Linux app used under Cygwin is one more reason for Windows users to abandon ship. (Not to mention the gains in speed and reliability gained when running Linux apps natively.)

Mono/.Net seem to me to be neutral at best. Cross-platform coding means I'm less likely to be tied into Windows in the first place. As I see it, Palladium/TCPA and integrating DRM into the OS are Microsoft's only avenues to keeping their desktop monopoly, since they are both legally (and perhaps technically) impossible to implement under Linux.

Also, what blotter said.