Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!questor!asmith
From: asmith@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Adam Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Desktop Publishing
Message-ID: <0akgZ1w164w@questor.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 00:05:08 PST
Organization: Questor - Free Internet/Usenet*Vancouver*BC::+1 604 681 0670

I beg your pardon?
Publishing people "don't understand" Quark Xpress?
I'd like to keep this from being a debate on the best DTP package 
available--there are many better venues for that sort of recreational 
impossibility--but this cannot go unanswered.
Quark is the CHOICE of anyone who is serious about typesetting from a 
microcomputer. It has the widest range of features and quite probably the 
finest control available in off-the-shelf packages.

To bring this post sround to the matter (and newsgroup) at hand, I was 
seriously considering buying a Mac so that I could use Quark. (I have been 
working on a PC for a while--BTW I will be happy to leave Ventura 
Publisher, my trusted friend for three years, for something with more 
flexibility.) I have trouble with some of Apple's pricing policies and 
attitudes and I recognized that there are ENOURMOUS advantages to the NeXT 
platform, given the right software. When last year's roll out happened, and 
Quark announced that they would develop XPress for the NeXT (and Adobe would 
do Illustrator), I put the brakes on my Mac purchasing ideas and waited for 
a while. 

Recently the BLand deal has presented me with the opportunity to buy into 
NeXT for a very reasonable price, so I did. I do not anticipate using my 
NeXT as a production machine until early next year, if things go well.

Did you catch that?
I am a full-time graphic designer/typesetter. It's what I do and it's just 
about all I do. I also consult on publishing systems and work part-time at 
an output service bureau (to help expand my view of what is REALLY happening 
in the world of DTP and prepress). There are MANY consideration that go into 
how a platform performs as a publshing platform, choice of page lyout 
software is only one. (Case in point--the Windows PS Printer Driver. While 
the Windows environment holds many advantages and capabilities, it is 
strangled by an underpowered, inefficient printer driver that ALL programs 
must go through.)

And I do not plan to have the NeXT doing serious page layout until NEXT 
YEAR. Yup, Framemaker does cool stuff, in certain situations, but it is FAR 
from being a top-of-the-line page layout program. Illustrator, which goes to 
beta any day now, will help bring the NeXT up to speed, but consider this. 
Adobe has no plans announced to bring Photoshop to the NeXT, a natural 
platform for it. They are, however, working on the Windows 3 version. I say 
this not to infer that the NeXT will be playing catch-up with Windows, but 
to suggest that the NeXT has yet to reach anything close to critical mass in 
terms of drawing developers for DTP-related software.

I hope (and indeed financially support the cause of) Next will become a 
potent force in publishing, but there are some big barriers that must first 
fall.

Cheers to those that help it come about.



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  asmith@questor.wimsey.bc.ca         The Chameleon Papers - Vancouver, BC
                   Graphic Artist - Bad Mood Guy - NeXT user
   Human beings are a great disappointment to me, and it doesn't help one
                       bit that I am one  --SF
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                   Fingers Down The Throat Of Love