InDesign v's QuarkXPress Passport 1

[Darzza]

Hi,

I have just started a new job (4 months ago) and because I am relatively young (23) I am therefore a technological whiz kid (which I am not... in anyway shape or form!)

Anyway - to my question. We produce technical manuals (like a car manual) contains loads of pictures and lots of text. We need to produce this in 11 different languages, and currently we have been using PageMaker 7 to design our documents (using external translators) and then converting them to PDF. I have been tasked with establishing new software to use - as the current process is a complete ball ache. Anyway in my research I discovered that InDesign and Quark seem to help with languages to some sort of level, and was just hoping to get a professional verdict on the 2 packages. If it makes a difference - we have got about half of the manuals already completed and therefore need a programme that will allow us to import PM files.

Thanks in advance, PTD

 

[jimoblak]

After you download both demos for Quark and InDesign, you will find that Pagemaker documents open directly into InDesign. You need to purchase separate XTs from markzware.com to open Pagemaker documents in Quark.

Regarding the eternal Quark vs. InDesign debate over which program is better: see

http://www.quarkvsindesign.com

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[jmgalvin]

Since your people were comfortable with PM (and most likely other Adobe apps), they'll probably find ID more comfortable. The interface bears a strong resemblance to Illustrator. I nice side feature is that you'll save a bunch of money with ID over Quark, especially Passport.

You might conside the ID Pagemeker editon, as it will make the transition easier - and save money. You might also look at Creative Suite premium if you have several copies of Photoshop. You'll need 1 license for PS for every "upgrade" you buy from Adobe. The $750 upgrade from any version of full ohotoshop gets you the latest versions of PS, ILL, ID, Acrobat Pro, Golive, + the Pagemeker plugin pack and a training CD. It's a good deal.

Even the full price of Creativ Suite premium is less than Quark Passport, and only a few bucks more than plain XPress.

 

[jmgalvin]

Forgot something. Unless you have Quark Passport, Quark Xpress does not support Unicode - for international translation. Indesign does.

Also, don't guy anything till next week. Adobe is supposed to announce at least some new publishing apps next week.

 

[Darzza]

Cheers jmgalvin,

Thanks very much for your help.

I have been doing a little further research and now think that the choice is between FrameMaker and InDesign CS PageMaker Edition.

To be honest it looks like we could use either of these packages, but as we have to translate all of our manuals (we have about 11 different models and each needs to be translated into about 12 languages) does either of these packages have any supa-dupa function that will be able to help?

Also, each of our plants can be on the market for about 10 years and we make little changes to them almost monthly (and therefore to our manuals too) furthermore 30/40% of the information in the manuals is common across the range of models - do either of the packages have anything that could help with this?

Thanks very much for your help.

P
T
Darzza

'Try fail try again fail better....'

 

[jmgalvin]

Don't buy Framemaker. It's an old program that Adobe does not support much. I would guess that it will disappear - the Mac version of it already has. It doesn't do anything that ID can't. ID is where Adobe sees its future in page layout.

For republidhing repeating data, it;s usually easiest to use templates for pages/documents - just changinf what has to be changed. ID has an easy to use Template save.

Since your people are used to Pagemaker, the logical choice is like you said: ID Pagemaker editon. Although, if the manuals use illustrations, the Creative Suite Premium, with Illustrator (that imports/exports AutoCad if necessary), Photoshop, Acrobat Pro and GoLIve (for putting the manuals on the web if desited) seems more appropriate - at a huge per program savings.

 

[jimoblak]

It doesn't do anything that ID can't.

Framemaker does a lot more than InDesign with longer documents. However, InDesign CS2 (aka version 4) was announced today and it is gradually picking up features from Framemaker. InDesign may replace Framemaker in a few years but it still lacks some Framemaker features.

If you were able to create your documents in Pagemaker, there is little need to choose Framemaker over InDesign.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[Darzza]

We can produce our documents in PageMaker - but the process involved a heck of a lot more PageMaker documents than we had manual types. (Not sure why this is, as i am relatively new to the company) TO be honest I think is' a case of 'this is how we have always done it....' syndrome. lol Anyway that’s another story.

Can ID cope with 600 page long documents? with layering?

I have just been looking at the ID CS2 - and we would go for the full Monty just as soon as we know which brand to opt for.

Cheers,

P
T
Darzza

'Try fail, try again fail better....'

 

[jmgalvin]

I've always found the really long docs, and thnkfully I don't have many of those, are easier to break up into different docs for combining later. I just think it's easier to find things, etc. It's just my preference.

What you will find, on any layout app is that the more pics that are involved per page and the longer the doc, the slower screen redraws take. To speed this up, ID lets you select 3 levels of appearance - from a virtual place holder to full resolution for pics. A lot of this is directly dependent on the machine, meaning the amount of RAM, the hard drive speed, the quality of the graphics card, etc. As usual for the foregoing, the more the merrier. Just experiment. Pagmaker was very weak on longer docs - REQUIRING many publications for later grouping. ID is supposed to support up to about 1000 pages, but again, performance will lag unless you have one hell of a souped up machine.

In ID you can set up, let's say, 6 - 100 page docs, then later combine them into one "book" for printing or creating one pdf. Just look at File menu/new/book. This does not show the indivisula pages but a listing of the docs in the "book". We do lots of prgrams for pro sporting events that average about 70-110 pages and have zero performance problems on mac g4s (1.25 gigs of ram, 64 megs of vram) at high quality display settings. WE find long Word docs to be far slower on redraws than ID docs.

Play around with the demo. There's no emergency here. It takes a LOT of learning (but less than Quark). Adopting ANY new program is going to have its PITAs. That's just the way it is. You leran the various workarounds, etc to solve your particlual situation.