pagemaker vs indesign (vs quark)

[rallynavvie]

OMFG Cap, that better not be your computer

[lordsmurf]

What's wrong with PageMaker 6.x ??

[Capmaster]

OMFG Cap, that better not be your computer

I love it. Working WYSIWYG all the time is great. And I use it constantly as my image printing app. Pagemaker has one of the fastest Windows printing interfaces around, and sizing for the page, text wrapping, even changing the line frequency of the images prior to printing is easy

I've used Pagemaker since the old Windows run-time version in the 1986 timeframe ...when Aldus made it

[rallynavvie]

*thread hijack in progress*
PageMaker is teh suck. InDesign is a far superior product. Actually there wasn't even supposed to be a version 7 release of PageMaker as InDesign was its replacement but for whatever reason it came out anyway. If you haven't used InDesign I highly recommend getting a copy of it. I don't know how you're getting WYSIWYG from it since stupid text frames always seem to cut lettering off though it doesn't show it when exported to PDF for print. I'm unfortunately forced to use the program at work and had to take classes in it at the local tech and the only reason they still use it is there are too many industry people already using it.

I mean come on, hasn't it ever bothered you that it doesn't have a similar user-friendly interface like Photoshop and Illustrator? It carries with it hardly any of the shortcuts. Quark is a better product and I don't like that one much either. Trust me, give InDesign a try and you'll realize what you were missing with PageMaker

*/end adobe rant*

[Capmaster]

*thread hijack in progress*
PageMaker is teh suck. InDesign is a far superior product. Actually there wasn't even supposed to be a version 7 release of PageMaker as InDesign was its replacement but for whatever reason it came out anyway. If you haven't used InDesign I highly recommend getting a copy of it. I don't know how you're getting WYSIWYG from it since stupid text frames always seem to cut lettering off though it doesn't show it when exported to PDF for print. I'm unfortunately forced to use the program at work and had to take classes in it at the local tech and the only reason they still use it is there are too many industry people already using it.

I mean come on, hasn't it ever bothered you that it doesn't have a similar user-friendly interface like Photoshop and Illustrator? It carries with it hardly any of the shortcuts. Quark is a better product and I don't like that one much either. Trust me, give InDesign a try and you'll realize what you were missing with PageMaker

*/end adobe rant*

You stick with what you like ...and enjoy. I'll stick with what I'm comfortable with

[lordsmurf]

InDesign was canned pretty early on. I remember hearing about it being the "replacement" for Quark and PM for years, about 1998 or so that rumor started. Never happened. PageMaker will continue for quite a while.

Quark is for Mac. PM is for PC. Easy as that.

I've been using it since about v4 or so. Back when Aldus still made it. My favorite was 5.0, but 6.5 is pretty good too.

[Capmaster]

I like how you can easily display and custom tailor the keep-out zones for text wraps around graphics. The other coolest features are a very slick text force-justify, especially when working with multiple columns on a page, and the ease of overlapping images and text. And the color libraries are excellent, as is the color management. And the graphic handle to move an image within a predefined area to center the focus of attention

[rallynavvie]

Uh, InDesign was bundled with CS, not PageMaker, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't canned. It's also what the local rag (Star Tribune) went to for almost all of their layout instead of Quark. InDesign has all those elements that PageMaker had so it isn't hard to pick up if you've used any Adobe layout application. But I guess you'll never know what you're missing if you don't try it :P

Here's the kicker showing PM is finished and InDesign victor
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/pm_ind.html

[lordsmurf]

I've used it, but I'll look it over again. With the CPU-glutton PS's (with almost NO added features, just "pretty" interfaces), and Encore disaster, as well as "Elements" versions of software, Adobe has lost most of my respect. I'm curious what kind of personnel ovehaul they've had in the past couple of years, as I bet it's directly related.

I don't even know what CS stands for these days, I'm several months behind.

[lordsmurf]

Hehe.... we were threadjacking.
I've split it.

[Capmaster]

Smooth, Smurfie

I see you learned where the "Split" button was pretty quickly

[rallynavvie]

I didn't even know you could split up threads, that's handy

Photoshop has pretty much been the same beast since version 4 or 5. Revisions have been pretty minor AFAIK. Same thing goes for Acrobat. Acrobat 7 is due out soon. Didn't Acrobat 6 come out just last year? Getting our company to upgrade to latest versions is like pissing up a rope and since Acrobat is an industry standard I'm sure we'll see incompatable PDFs from version 7 that won't work on 6. The whole idea behind Acrobat and the PDF format is to create a universal, cross-platform media format. It's always been horribly proprietary but now it's getting even more tedious with all these different versions

I dunno what you're talking about with Encore 1.0, I only had problems with it the first few weeks I had it

[offline]

People who bash Pagemaker in favour of Quark or vise versa do so because they cannot handle the software interface.

Pagemaker is more in tune with the cut'in'paste style of traditional publishing whereas Quark relies on the
grid and field layout method made popular by typesetters.

Both are great programs imo. Indesign is not bad
in a closed shop but its poor support makes it the
lame duck of the three.

BTW I grew up on Letraset before moving to
Aldus then Adobe so I'm biased towards PM.

-edit-

When Quark was an apple product only, people from both camps
(PM and Quark) were extremely hostile towards each other. Large
companies would moan and complain if you sent them a PM file.
Mac was the only true DTP platform in those days
and Quark was the only tool. God forbid you if you dared to use PM. Those using Corel were just dismissed as idiots

The stupid thing was, to process large color sep images, both the PC and Mac
were hopeless. Unix and midi's were required.