QuarkXPress is a page layout application for Mac OS X and Windows, produced by Quark, Inc..
QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing (page layout) application for Mac OS and Windows, produced by Quark, Inc.
The first version was released in 1987. XTensions technology, which allows developers to create custom software add-ons for Quark products, was also introduced in 1987. QuarkXPress Passport is QuarkXPress with the added ability to handle multiple language documents.
Although there are similar applications for the home and small office market, such as Adobe PageMaker and Microsoft Publisher, QuarkXPress has long been the dominant application for professional design of magazines and brochures.
Adobe InDesign, launched as a direct competitor, was slow to gather speed, but outsold QuarkXPress in 2002.
However, even if this trend continues, Quark's much larger installed user base would take years to erode. According to Meryl Lynch in 2004, QuarkXPress' market share was still 8 times that of InDesign.
However, for much of its history, Quark had a history of doing relatively infrequent new versions, and pricing them at a high level. This, combined with public perception of former CEO Ebrahimi's attitude towards the company's customers, has resulted in a strong negative feeling among many of Quark's customers, which seems to be enhancing competitor Adobe Systems' ability to woo people to try their competing software, Adobe InDesign.
Recent new versions of QuarkXPress have emphasized web development features almost as much as print publishing, which has frustrated some of Quark's traditional print users seeking feature parity with InDesign.
Since version 6.0 QuarkXPress offers multiple undo/redo functionality, enhancements to the table, XML and web page features and support for direct PDF output. Quark has said that it will not support advanced layout features of OpenType before version 7 and also Unicode will be supported only in QuarkXPress version 7.
New versions of the software introduced new file formats. However, in order to retain compatibility QuarkXPress 5 can save in 5 or 4 format, QuarkXPress 6 can save in 6 and 5 format and both QuarkXPress 5 and 6 can open QuarkXPress 3, 4, and 5 documents. Obviously, only QuarkXPress 6 can open version 6 documents. This creates a number of problems for users trying to maintain compatibility with each other and is holding back the upgrade process since a large share of users still use Quark 4.11.
To translate QuarkXPress files, you need to convert the text in the files to a format that is easily translated.
Story Collector for QuarkXPress facilitates the export of tagged text from QuarkXPress and the subsequent re-import of text after translation, minimizing the amount of time that needs to be spent on preparatory and post-translation work.
TIP: Story Collector for QuarkXPress works with QuarkXPress 4.1, 5.x, and 6.x. It converts files in QXD and QXT format to a text format (QSC) that can be easily translated using Translator's Workbench and TagEditor.
NOTE: You can also easily translate XTG, TTG, and TAG file formats. These are produced directly by QuarkXPress and CopyFlow export functionality. See QuarkXPress documentation for more details.
Story Collector for QuarkXPress is a QuarkXPress 4.1, 5.x, and 6.x XTension. This means that it uses the Application Programming Interface (API) provided by QuarkXPress to add extra functionality to QuarkXPress itself. Once you have placed certain files in the XTension of QuarkXPress, you can access Story Collector functionality via the TRADOS menu.
Story Collector has three basic functions which are presented in the TRADOS menu in QuarkXPress. These are the story order, export and import functions. These functions are duplicated for batch operations.
XTG files
In SDL TRADOS 7.1 TagEditor can also open XTG files created with SDLXtract. SDLXtract is a standalone application, available from SDL, that exports Mac-based Quark documents into XTG text files, which can then be opened in SDL Edit or TagEditor.
Key Term Definition
The following key terms occur frequently in this chapter:
NOTE: QuarkXPress places inline frames at the start of the translated file when you import your translated file back into QuarkXPress. Use your source QXD files as a reference to move these inline frames back into their original position.
Translation Workflow
Translation of a QuarkXPress file involves the following stages:
NOTE: You can also use Story Collector for QuarkXPress to process a batch of QuarkXPress files.
Installing Story Collector for QuarkXPress
Story Collector for QuarkXPress is included as part of your SDL TRADOS installation. These files are installed by default to the following location:
If you have a version later than 6.0, use the files in the 6.0_E folder. Before you install the Story Collector XTension, make sure that QuarkXPress 4.1, 5.x, or 6.x is installed on your system and is not running.
To install the Story Collector XTension:
NOTE:
Sample File
You can use the sample QuarkXPress file (sample.qxd) to work with the Story Collector for QuarkXPress that ships with TRADOS. This sample file is installed to C:\Program Files\Trados\xxx\Samples\Story Collector for QuarkXPress, where xxx corresponds to the name of the software you are using. You should use the sample file to work through the Story Collector process example that follows in this chapter.
Preparation and export for translation
You may need to prepare your QuarkXPress file(s) before using Story Collector to export. The extent of your preparation will depend on the formatting of your document and the source and target languages of your translation.
You should:
How to create a folder structure
As this process produces a QXD (QuarkXPress Document) and QSC (QuarkXPress Story Collector) file for each language, it is vital to set up a folder structure for the project. Otherwise files may be lost or misplaced.
Create a target folder for each language you are translating into, as well as a source folder for the original files. Place a copy of the QuarkXPress file for translation in each target language folder. In this way, you retain a copy of each source and target file.
To retain copies of each file we suggest the following structure:
To keep a copy of each file and file format:
Opening Story Collector for QuarkXPress
Open a QuarkXPress document. A TRADOS menu is visible on the top menu bar. To open Story Collector, select an option from this menu.
How to set the story order?
By default, the stories on each page in your QuarkXPress document are exported in top-down order. However, this may not correspond to the order in which they flow logically. The story order function in Story Collector allows you to choose the order in which stories are exported to the tagged text file so that they are presented in a logical sequence for translation. This will not affect the layout of the QuarkXPress file.
To set the story order for the tagged text export file:
Exporting Stories
To export all the stories in your QuarkXPress file to a single text file:
All stories are collected and placed in a QSC file in the source QSC folder you specified. We recommend that you copy the files in your source QSC folder into your target QSC folder as it makes it less likely that you overwrite the source QSC files by mistake. You can now translate the files in your target QSC folder.
NOTE: If you have the index extension palette open in QuarkXPress, you can export full index entries. If it is closed, you can export only partial index entries.
Translation
Translate your QuarkXPress files using Translator's Workbench and TagEditor. The following steps offer a high level view of the translation process for QuarkXPress files.
Importing Translated Stories
To import the translated stories back into the QuarkXPress file:
NOTE:
When dealing with multiple files, the story order, the export and import operations differ slightly to those of single files described earlier on in this chapter.
How to set the story order?
To set the story order for a batch export operation:
Exporting Stories
To export stories from multiple files at the same time:
Importing Stories
To import multiple files at the same time:
Here's how to do it, along with some tips on how to work with Excel tables after you've got them in there:
QuarkXPress Passport® software is a complete, fully-functioning version of QuarkXPress® that includes additional features for multilingual publishing. QuarkXPress Passport supports hyphenation and spell-checking for 23 languages:
Czech, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English (International), English (U.S.), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian (hyphenation only), Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss-German, Turkish
QuarkXPress Passport files can be saved so that the standard single language QuarkXPress can open and read it. When saving a file, QuarkXPress Passport offers you the option to save the file as either "multiple language" or "single language". If you choose "multiple language" only QuarkXPress Passport will be able to read the file. If you choose "single language" then the standard version of QuarkXPress will be able to open and read it.
Make sure that the QuarkXPress Passport file is saved in a compatible version. For example, if you have QuarkXPress 5, the person using Passport has to save the QuarkXPress document as version 5 or earlier, or you won't be able to open it.
There is an important difference between adding features and improving a product. Quark has been busy adding features to QuarkXPress, but while users can now do substantially more than they used to, they can't do their work substantially better or easier. Sure, XPress has a variety of HTML tools, and you can create multiple layouts in a single document, but its typographic and layout features have hardly changed in more than a decade.
This is in stark contrast to Adobe InDesign. Each version of InDesign has not only added important features, but also improved on the previous version's features. InDesign 1.5 already had far more typographic prowess than XPress, but Adobe improved it anyway in version 2, and now InDesign CS offers even more control over type. For instance, the new Lock First Line of Paragraph to Baseline Grid essentially lets you have more than one baseline grid per page (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: InDesign trumps the much-vaunted typographic controls in QuarkXPress with features such as Lock First Line of Paragraph to Baseline Grid.
Whereas QuarkXPress has become slower and more cumbersome in each subsequent release, InDesign is actually getting faster in many ways, as Adobe focuses a large part of its engineering resources on improving the program's performance.
Quark has also shown a shocking disregard for user interface. For example, many people avoid the Space/Align feature in XPress because its dialog box (which hasn't changed since the early '90s) is just too confusing. And the Merge features in XPress (what Illustrator and InDesign calls "pathfinder" features) have an interface that only a programmer could love. Alternately, InDesign's comparable features - the Align and Pathfinder palettes - are icon-driven, intuitive, and much easier to use (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Hardly anyone uses the QuarkXPress's Space/Align (top) or Merge (bottom) features because of their poor interfaces. Corresponding features in InDesign (middle) are generally clear and require little brain activity to achieve powerful results.
Even if you don't care about typography or the elegance of a program's user interface, InDesign still offers far more than XPress. For instance, after all these years, QuarkXPress 6 now gives us multiple undos. But there are still many features that are not undoable, like moving a guide, drawing a starburst, or making a change to a master page. Actually, it's worse: Most undoable actions in XPress also stop you from undoing any previous actions. So much for multiple undo. Conversely, not only is everything undoable in InDesign, but even if you crash (let's face it, all software crashes sooner or later), InDesign protects your document - even unsaved documents - and you lose hardly any work.
Quark has done its best to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding InDesign's ability to print. The reputation is unfair. Sure, InDesign 1.x had printing issues, but no more than QuarkXPress 1.x did. InDesign 2's print engine was completely reworked, and has been improved further in InDesign CS to the point that some printers and imaging centers now prefer it over XPress. The only InDesign printing problems I encounter these days are due to confirmed bugs in some PostScript RIPs.
Focus on the Features
On the one hand, InDesign wins because it offers big-ticket, flashy features like drop shadows and full support for transparency in native Photoshop and TIFF files. These features mean that I can actually lay out a page in my page-layout application, rather than switch to Photoshop 50 times a day. They mean I can focus on design rather than drawing clipping paths.
On the other hand, InDesign also wins because Adobe has implemented the basics better than Quark - those features that everyone uses repeatedly each day, like guides, the lock feature, linking text frames, and importing text and graphics. InDesign's Control palette is head-and-shoulders better than XPress's Measurements palette, letting you control all aspects of object positioning and text formatting (even paragraph and character styles).
Figure 3: The Measurements palette in QuarkXPress (top) pales in comparison to InDesign's Control palette (bottom). [Note: both palettes have been cut into two pieces to better fit the Web page.] InDesign helps reduce palette clutter by including commonly-used features for character and paragraph formatting (when you select text) or object control (when you select a line or frame). Tip: Switch between the character and paragraph panels of the palette by pressing Command-Option-7 or Ctrl-Alt-7..
Quark has even bungled one of the most important and elementary features of any page-layout program: seeing what imported graphics will really look like when printed. Quark won't even let you use this feature until after you have registered your program and downloaded two XTensions. InDesign just has this feature built-in; plus, it's significantly faster and easier to use than Quark's. After trying the full-resolution feature in both these programs, it feels like Quark's is a bad hack compared to InDesign's smooth elegance.
In fact, "bad hack" about almost every feature in XPress 6, from exporting PDF files (it has to print PostScript to disk and then freezes while the PostScript is turned into PDF, taking twice as long as InDesign to create the same PDF file), to printing in OS X (you can't choose a printer from the Print dialog box), to the anemic Table tool (which can't flow a table across columns or pages) to the clever-but-poorly-implemented Synchronized Text palette (which can't handle anchored objects). The one new feature in XPress 6 is ability to paste-in-place (pasting an object in the same place on different pages) - a feature which InDesign had in version 1.0.
Tipping the Scales
First, Quark seems incapable of changing its program for the better. For example, users have complained for a dozen years that when you lock an object in XPress you can still change its contents, move it by changing values in the Measurements palette, or even delete it. That doesn't seem locked to me, but Quark can't seem to fix it. In the same vein: you still can't rotate tables (even by 90 degrees) or include fonts in exported EPS files - basic features that any user has a right to expect.
The second "tipping point"! InDesign CS has a Story Editor to make editing text easier; a Separation Preview palette which lets us actually see color separations on screen before printing; nested styles for automatically applying character styles to a drop cap or the first word or the first sentence of a paragraph; "header" rows that automatically appear at the top of each column when a table spans multiple pages; the ability to export PDF/X or even save a page as a JPEG image without buying third-party tools.
Where QuarkXPress Wins
Of course, just because InDesign is the better product doesn't mean everyone should use it. There are certain situations where QuarkXPress comes out the winner. QuarkXPress has a number of features - big and small - that InDesign does not, and for some people these discrepancies make all the difference. For example, XPress supports hexachrome color, while InDesign does not. Many of the new features in XPress 5 and 6 revolve around HTML (rollovers, cascading menus, and so on), while InDesign CS has no export as HTML feature (version 2 did, but Adobe removed it, in favor of a new Package for GoLive feature).
QuarkXPress has drag-and-drop text editing, a kern-pair editor (see Figure 4), and the ability to save hyphenation and justification settings as named styles. It lets you build diagonal or oval gradients and apply coarse halftone and image tone adjustments to TIFF and JPEG images. XPress respects text wrap settings for objects on a master page while InDesign does not. XPress can add pages automatically as you type or edit a story; InDesign cannot.
Figure 4: QuarkXPress's Kern Pair Editor.
Features are not everything
Ultimately, both products have plenty of room to improve. For example, neither product includes automatic running heads for directories or catalogs, numbered lists and bullets, object styles (like style sheets for boxes and lines), or the ability to specify type formatting such as indents in em units (which would change as the type size changes). InDesign needs to be able to control text wrap around objects anchored in text or on master pages. QuarkXPress needs to work on its scripting support, especially on the Windows side.
Performance on slower machines used to be an important difference between the two programs; however, while earlier versions of XPress worked reasonably well on slow, RAM-deprived computers, both XPress 6 and InDesign CS require fast machines with plenty of RAM. Both programs also now require Mac OS X or Windows 2000 or XP. I would like to see performance improvements in both programs.
QuarkXPress costs several hundred dollars more than InDesign, and outside the United States the difference is even higher. In fact, if you want to publish in anything other than English, you have to pay a premium for Quark's Passport program (which is almost twice the cost of XPress). Plus, you can't share multi-lingual files with single-language XPress users. On the other hand, InDesign ships with 12 Roman languages built-in and because it's Unicode compliant (XPress is not), you can exchange InDesign files whether they include Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, or Arabic.
Quark 7 is Unicode. When using TrueType which is also Unicode, the CE characters are stored in the Quark 7 document as Unicode values. Quark 6 is not Unicode. It can only recognise character codes based on single bytes so everything except west European characters (Latin 1) will be lost.
When using PS Type1 fonts, which are not Unicode, characters are stored in the Quark 7 document as single byte codes which is the same as Quark 6.
This problem seems limited to the English International and Passport versions of QuarkXPress 4. The symptoms of this problem are that after closing QuarkXPress, you cannot launch QuarkXPress again for another 20-40 seconds (double-clicking on its icon or on a .QXD file produces no result).
This problem is due to one of the printers that are installed on your PC, but is currently either not available or not functioning correctly. This causes problems with QuarkXPress because the hardware dongle used to protect it from pirates is placed on the LPT1 parallel port, the same one used by default by most printer drivers (even for printers that are on the network).
To find out which printer is conflicting with the QuarkXPress hardware dongle, open the Windows Printers folder and select each printer one by one. Most printers when selected will display the status Ready as seen above. The one(s) that is(are) causing the problems will not display Ready, but rather a message in red. You can then either remove that printer from your system (if you are not using it, which is often the case) or ask your system administrator to resolve the printer's malfunction.
