Jeff,

If you want more professional help in using InDesign, make it a point to visit the ID User to User forum — http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.ee6b330

You will find plenty of friendly guys there who are most willing to help new users of ID. You will find that most of them are (or used to be) Quark and Pagemaker users, and they also represent the Designer, Pre-press and Printing Press communities. Just make a search first before asking any question because most likely, you would find it already asked and answered. And give details when you ask a question.

Good luck.

rendezvous and the network
 

So you are saying that when you switched from appletalk to using rendezvous you started having printing problems. Which system was this on and did they fix it and why did you switch? (speed gains maybe?)

Jeff

WOW! This forum looks nicer than ever.

jrogers,

All I'm saying is that Photoshop-processed images saved in the EPS format (binary encoding) refuse to print in our laser printers linked to our network via XServe. I may be wrong in saying this has something to do with Rendezvous. What I'm sure is that our client Macs access these printers that dislike the EPS - binary images via Rendezvous. On the other hand, when these printers are connected to the network via Appletalk (that is, client Macs access them via Appletalk), they have no problem with the EPS-binary pictures.

No it has nothing to do with speed. I'm not techically savvy enough to explain this but as a workaround, I found that if I reprocess the problem pictures in Photoshop and save them as TIFF, PSD, PDF or EPS in ASCII encoding, they print well.

gotcha
 

ok just trying to find out what the actual issue is.

fractions not using opentype
 

trying to create fractions with a font other than opentype. I can get 1/4,1/3, and 1/2 using glyphs, but doing advertising for the foodservice industry, I need a whole lot more? Is there somewhere I can buy Opentype font if there is no other workaround. Using the 4-6 Opentype fonts is not going to be fun!!!!

update complete
 

Just an update on the system conversion to 10.3. The update took roughly 24 hours to complete over a two day period. I will touch on some of the high points and some of the things that helped save time.

First 12 hour day consisted of getting roughly 6 machines on OSX and getting the updates going. We then just concentrated on getting the rest of the machines (14) to OSX and installed desktop remote on my admin machine. Second day was bouncing around via remote installing, updating and restarting machines! Very good call on the apple desktop remote!

Very happy this whole thing is behind, now I am having to get everyone fluent and running with the Adobe suite. Transition from Quark to Indesign so far has been pretty good!

Oh and by the way QUARK customer service is horrible, one of our admin people is still on quark. Well after the 10.3.3 update quark 6 now will not run, says the installer file is corrupted and to reinstall, 6 installs later and 1 hour 47 minutes on the phone with Quark service in India, still doesn't work.

I have to open the Quark file in BBedit and copy and paste the text into Indesign!!! Oh did I say how much I didn't like Quark!!!!!

InDesign & Quark
 

Hi jrogers,

Glad to know you like InDesign. You're not alone in finding that Quark stinks. Visit http://www.adobeforums.com and check the forums for InDesign or Adobe Creative Suite and find out what many disgruntled Quark users are saying. InDesign has its own pain but at least Adobe has a place for you to ask questions, or to vent your bad feelings. Quark yanked off its forum because it didn't want users to complain.

growing pains
 

Yeah we are running into small "issues" with indesign, but I have yet to not find a solution or workaround, just takes some time and a little creativity!

Quark is Hemoraging
 

Want a lesson on how NOT to run a software business? Look no further than Quark. It's days are numbered, so good thing you went inDesign now!

Mac to PC InDesign File transfer
 

I urgently need to open a Mac InDesign CS document on a PC.

All I get is the following message:

"Cannot open file.

___________________________

DOCUMENT FRAMEWORK.RPLN

___________________________

Cannot open "***". please upgrade your plug-ins to their latest versions, or upgrade to the latest version of Adobe InDesign"


I ran the latest updater from Adobe's site but still get the same message. It appears to be having problems with the plug-ins. Anybody seen this before?

indesign files
 

have you tried adding the Indesign .indd extension to the file? I know it sound trivial, but could be the issue?

Jeff

Quark may have support issues, but I can set any job faster in quark than I could in indesign cs, IF abobe could make indesign as user friendly as quark I would have no trouble backing you on this one, but for now I do all my typesetting in quark and only use indesign cs for it's ability to trap files for our film imagesetter. :eek:

The extensions are correct.

That is an odd statement... one of the things that QuarkXPress has always been known for is not being user friendly. It got away with it because of expandability and becoming the standard for industry.

Now, if you are saying that you want InDesign to be exactly like QuarkXPress so you don't have to spend any time learning anything different, that is at least understandable. Of course you can do something faster in something you know verses something you don't.

As far as the user friendliness issue, it is faster to learn InDesign than QuarkXPress for someone starting out. That is the guide by which most people (including me) rate an application as user friendly. On the other hand I know very few people (if anyone) who uses the idea of "teaching an old dog new tricks" as a standard by which to judge user friendliness.

Rubaiyat, you might want to check here:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/w...4142@.3bb568f8


I agree with RacerX. InDesign is much easier to learn than Quark. Apparently B&C Printing has not fully explored IDCS' myriad features. All over the Internet, there are many of those who had been advocating Quark for years who are now singing hallelujahs for InDesign. There are those who just wouldn't want to explore because they just feel more comfortable with what they'd been using. In my not-so-humble opinion, when we talk about user-friendliness, ID is to Mac as Quark is to Windows. ;)

I don't mean to give the impression that I'm incapable of learning new software, that's not the issue here. The issue is querky way of item manipulation in indesign, an example with quark you can almost blindly snap an object to a guide were as in indesign you snap to it, but upon zooming in on to see that it only got close to the guide line. The manipulation of text is another are where quark exceeds indesign.
I don't know what your job entails, but mine often is creating an exact duplication of a provided sample and this is far eaiser to do in quark.

I think we sometime lose sight of the fact quark is a typesetting program, while indesign is a combination of an illustration, photo editor, and typesetting programs and I would rather have 3 separate programs that did their specific function well than one that did all 3 so-so.

There is one feature of indesign that I love and that is the ability to zoom in more than 800%. Beyond that it's like setting type in Illustrator.
Now I may be an old dog, but I like things that work on a daily basis and quark has never given me any problems for over 8 years now.

Also I am self taught on all the programs I use so you educated people will want to flame on in me now.

I have yet to ever hear anyone who has used quark on a daily basis say that indesign was a better program, the ONLY reason they switched to it was because it was cheaper (or so they thought with updates every 6 months or yearly the cost can add up), or they didn't have anyone who could tech support the program for them.

If you don't think that is true you should see all jobs that get sent to us in those "I'm a printer now" programs".

Bottom line is you get what you pay for. Quark has recently had people leave the company that where key in quality control of the product and this has indeed caused them to be slower than usual with software upgrades and tech support, wether they will get that straightened depends on their management and their willingness to bring in people who can fix the problems.

We use many programs: Illustrator, photoshop, indesign, quark, acrobat, freehand, pagemaker, but most reliable one has alway been quark xp.

But I can tell you that when apple swithched to Unix it was a total screwing over of the printing industry and it's taken a long time to get programs caught up to the new software and their still not there yet in IMHO.

The system worked fine before all it needed was faster processors, but they had to change it to compete with MS and pretty up the look of the OS which is fine I love new system, it just created nightmares for printers who had tons of fonts and programs that they paid alot of money for in some cases, which were suddenly no good for OSX.

Ok, now you may flame away, but I will still see things the same way no matter how much you say otherwise :D

Hi B & C,

Apologies if I said anything offensive. It's not meant to be that way. I also was never trained as a designer. My job is to edit copies but I taught myself Quark XPress and later InDesign because our civic organization has a regular newsletter. That said, what Racer X and I are not saying you should stop using Quark. Rather, we're saying you have to explore ID more in order to benefit from its many advantages that you won't find in Quark. You can use both to suit your needs.

It's obvious that you aren't tapping ID's full potential when you said "Quark is a typesetting program, while ID is combination of an illustration, photo editor, and typesetting programs..." Both programs are not for typesetting, and ID is neither considered an illustration (done by Adobe Illustrator) nor a photo editor (done by Adobe Photoshop). Both Quark and ID are page layout programs, although they could in some limited extent all three functions that you mentioned. The older versions of InDesign did not have a story editor that Quark sported, but IDCS, the latest version of InDesign, has it.

>
I have yet to ever hear anyone who has used quark on a daily basis say that indesign was a better program, the ONLY reason they switched to it was because it was cheaper (or so they thought with updates every 6 months or yearly the cost can add up), or they didn't have anyone who could tech support the program for them.

I was telling you that the Internet is awash with remarks from Quark advocates who have shifted to InDesign because they found it to be really superior than Quark. To name some, there's David Blatner, Sandee Cohen, or Olav Kvern, who have all written books on Quark and other programs. Search their names in the Web and find out what they have said and are still saying.

Once again, apologies if you felt offended. We didn't mean to flame you. Stick with Quark if you're comfortable but don't deprive yourself of the advantages of InDesign. Cheers!

That might be possible if we upgrade to the Rampage RIPing system, but till then Indesign is just about useless with out Xitron RIP, casing more crashes and restarts than I care or want to deal with, thus my negative stance on a program with no backwards compatability built into it. Like I said it's not a question of learning the program. it's question of why shoot yourself in the head with a product that causes more problems than it fixes? Designer's are the printers worst enemy, just ask someone who works in the pre-press industry, but that's another whole different flame session.

I do use ID, but still find it totally frustrating. As long as my quark works I see no reason to switch over, just forced to use it because others have given up on quark!

Just to add my two cents (and a little perspective). I learnt (self-taught) design/typesetting in Pagemaker 4 on the PC and remember when I had to switch to Quark on a Mac thinking to myself "this program sucks...it's so restrictive". But eventually, once I learnt the program, and more importantly how to manage it's workflow (re: printing, separating, ripping etc) I began to love it more than I ever did Pagemaker.

Now Indesign came along and I heard many collegues, say very similar things to what i said years ago. But thought I'd give it a go. Now I'm probably 15% into the learning curve, but already I think it far surpasses Quark 6 in reliability, usability, and flexibility, and I can't wait to use it more and more.

Also I have heard from multiple printers that they can't stand Quark since version 6 as they have had so many problems with it and hope that more people switch to IDCS!

I have to agree with B&C Printing. I too am moving to InDesign as I am attracted by its features and I think Quark has dropped the ball since OSX came out.

Having said that there are a lot of frustrations with InDesign beyond that of having to relearn a new application.

I think those who were happy with other Adobe products and hadn't learnt Quark in depth do like InDesign a great deal. Especially PageMaker users and those who didn't know Quarks (IMHO) superior method of keyboard shortcuts. I'd gladly elaborate on that if anyone is interested.

Particularly annoying in ID is its extreme slowness on anything but a pumped up computer. This is why I am having to move onto my recent model PC, ID is intolerable on my 400MHz G4.

Major annoyances are Master template items remain locked on pages by default. I have always worked extensively building documents using a basic design on the template and fleshing it out and changing it on the page. ID is almost like PM with its uneditable MPs. I wish Adobe would give me a preference to change this. Also I don't know if this is fixed in ID3 but in ID2 there is a bug where wrap arounds on MPs don't wrap around on the page when you add new text (this was akiller last time I used ID).

The method of adding, flowing and linking text I think is much slower and less obvious than Quark's 2 tools for this task and ID used not to add pages in correctly for overflow text whilst Quark does. ID3 is a magnificent typesetting engine and does save time on fixing setting problems but is considerable slower (probably for those reasons) than Quark on getting the type in. The Story Editor is the same cludgy solution that Adobe came up with to patch PageMaker's failings here.

Things are better now that ID3 has given us a Measurements pallette but ID still has a complicated sprawling convoluted interface that requires more steps to achieve simple tasks than Quark does. I suppose that the excuse is that complicated tasks save time in ID but I still don't excuse the bad basic interface that Adobe has plastered on all its latest products, and fiddled with repeatedly.

I'm tired of having to constantly relearn keyboard shortcuts for each Adobe product everytime they "upgrade". Particularly as a contractor when I have to use multiple versions and remember them all in the middle of tight deadlines. Quark had a lovely mix of very predictable pnemonic and positional keyboard shortcuts.

Sigh! Guess I am crying over spilt milk. This is all part of a trend to complicate and fiddle with what was simple in the pursuit of featuritis and forced upgrades.

Unfortunately Quark 4 is wed to Mac OS 9 and appears to be going nowhere (the subsequent upgrades are not worth having) and ID does have a host of good features (if you can get them to print) and is clearly the future. I am unhappily caught between the two. As a contractor having to work on both screws up my productivity enormously.