worst... UI... ever.

[egypturnash]

I've had to fix up a couple thumbnail storyboard pages. Which means, since that the person who put them together uses Quark, I had to (shudder) deal with Quark XPress.

How in hell does a program with a user interface this hurtful maintain a stranglehold on publishing? There aren't even key equivalants for the tools! Ugh...

Comments

[supersocks.livejournal.com]

Since Adobe has the stranglehold with PS and Illustrator, I wonder why Pagemaker isn't more popular than Quark?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I have the impression that Quark leaped ahead of Adobe in some areas, including (as PM says below), ones involving things that make the printers have to call you up and go back and forth to fix. So it beat every other page layout program into the ground.

Quark XPress now has the same aura Photoshop has: it's the professional tool. This is part of why it's been used at Spümcø for making thumbnail boards that go no further than the laser printers in the studio; also because the person who was making them (and is on vacation) has laid out a magazine in the past, so this is what he knows.

Apparantly Quark is an extremely arrogant and unhelpful company; I have the impression that nobody will really mind at all if something else manages to replace it...

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

Since InDesign 2.0, I think Adobe's pretty much trounced Quark. I introduced a printer to it and he took to it immediately, and it was no problem getting what I needed done. If anyone is familiar with Illustrator and Photoshop, there's practically no learning curve interface-wise.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

We typeset our book in Quark. There was much, much pain doing so. Much, much, much pain.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

Because, unfortunately, Quark delivers the best quality of all the applications out there when it comes to color management, trapping, font management, and image setting. It's the printers who support the application; they have the least amount of problems with Quark when preparing files for print. Since the printers have less trouble with Quark files- designers are encouraged by printers to use it.

Usually, designers are so happy to NOT have the printers calling them constantly with pre-press problems that they are more then happy to try to deal with the application's interactive pitfalls. But, with OSX and a few other timely issues- Quark may be dropping out, and everyone is sounding thrilled by that thought (even if it means having to learn yet another new application).

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

At work we had the list of key commands for Quark on every wall

Quirk

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

i use it everyday.. though since i started working here and taught myself Illustrator, i avoid Quark whenever i can.

Quark ain't so bad though.. i mean.. you can make that little alien robot dude
truck out and shoot things with a zap gun.. how cool is that???!?!1!11

Cloverleaf-Option-Shift-K

i mean.. it's cool right? *sniff*

[synnabar.livejournal.com]

We do a lot of package designs, and most of the work is in Illustrator, with some Photoshop used to fix/edit photos. I HAVE done some freelance package design in Quark, and yes - it IS painful - mostly for the reason you said (the keyboard shortcuts aren't equivalent). It's really best for doing things like page layout; for designing a whole PACKAGE, I don't see why anyone would use Quark over Illustrator (yet some people still do).

When we do catalogs, etc., we'd mostly used Quark because (as was said) printers could do a lot with it, and it was better than Illustrator in handling multi-page documents. However, with the appearance of InDesign, we've now switched over to InDesign completely - and our printers are happy with it, too (thank goodness)!