LAYOUT : the newsletter of page design

After a week of analysing IT-Enquirer’s recent report comparing QuarkXPress 7 with Adobe InDesign CS3, LAYOUT concludes that some of the tests were flawed. In our opinion, the tests in question produced results that favoured QuarkXPress 7 when more balanced tests might not have done.

The report does not pretend to be comprehensive, so it can only draw conclusions on the specific tests carried out. The majority of the tests were not flawed, and LAYOUT concurs with many of the report’s conclusions.

The report, entitled QuarkXPress 7 vs InDesign CS3: Analysis of efficiency, workflow, workgroup support, and productivity, was published online by IT-Enquirer Reports (E. Vlietinck) at the end of June. IT-Enquirer is a free webzine and information resource at www.it-enquirer.com. Registered users at the site can download the 34-page report for free.

LAYOUT questions the following tests:

• PAGE 9: The report says that if Acrobat advises that you have made a mistake when creating a PDF from InDesign CS3, the only way to correct this is to go back to InDesign. But if you’re already in Acrobat, you can apply Fix-Ups. If the test allows the use of Acrobat for preflighting, then it should use the program appropriately.
• PAGE 11: The report reveals a “serious colour-related problem” in InDesign CS3 in which a Pantone spot ink was not converted to the same CMYK values as produced by QuarkXPress 7. However, Pantone’s Solid Coated and Bridge libraries are not concurrent: the Bridge libraries are more recent and are known to contain different built-in CMYK values than the old libraries. Also, we question the unchallenged assumption that the QuarkXPress 7 Pantone conversion values are necessarily the correct ones by which all other programs should be judged.
• PAGE 27: This test compares QuarkXPress 7’s built-in Picture Effects with InDesign’s need to enhance pictures externally using Photoshop. The problem is that although Picture Effects are convenient, their inaccurate on-screen previews make them virtually unusable in image-critical workflows, so the emphasis given to this test seems disproportionate.
• PAGE 28: The runaround test bizarrely involved preparing an alpha mask in a PNG file separate from the main image file, and then fiddling around afterwards trying to re-incorporate the mask back into the main image using Photoshop while the stopwatch was running. This workflow doesn’t make any sense, and effectively sabotaged InDesign’s speed-test result from the outset. The report also appears to use the terms ‘mask’ and ‘path’ interchangably, yet they are completely different things.
• PAGE 29: The report says that splitting up linked InDesign text frames at a specific word “required manipulating the text frames in such as way that the word where we wanted the split to appear was at the start of the frame”. This is unnecessary. Just position your cursor in front of the required word and tap the Numeric Enter key.
• PAGE 30: Here the report compares a pro-class £199 extra-cost QuarkXPress XTension with a low-end, built-in feature included with InDesign. To balance this test, InDesign should have been upgraded with a similar pro-class imposer plug-in. The report also states: “Adding a trim and bleed areas to an item on a page in InDesign CS3 involves creating the lines and arrows manually”. InDesign CS3 comes with a CropMarks script, installed as standard, that can do this automatically.

LAYOUT also challenges the following assertions in the report:

• PAGE 6: “InDesign CS3 lacks the ability to turn off plug-ins that are seldom used; there is no method to speed up the launching speed other than by first dragging plug-ins out of the plug-ins folder.” InDesign CS3 lets you turn plug-ins on and off within the Configure Plug-ins dialogue window, and save different plug-in configurations as named presets.
• PAGE 6: “In InDesign CS3… all text frames still have to be linked manually… text boxes also have to be linked from page to page explicitly.” This is true if you follow a QuarkXPress-inspired workflow of drawing text boxes first, then filling them with text afterwards. If you follow an InDesign-inspired workflow of placing the text and drawing text frames simultaneously, you can actually generate multiple text frames linked across any number of empty pages, while simultaneously placing the text inside them, with a single click (plus keyboard modifier).
• PAGE 8: “InDesign CS3… users can save H&Js and other elements as part of a stylesheet, save the stylesheets to an external settings file and then load these in the other document.” InDesign CS3 does not have ’stylesheets’. H&J settings do not exist as independent styles: they are an element of Paragraph Styles. You do not have to export all styles to an external file before they can be shared with other layouts: instead, you can import Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, Swatches etc directly from one InDesign document to another.
• PAGE 26: “QuarkXPress 7 and InDesign CS3 both have their set of creative filters and effects… However, it has no sense discussing which of these are more valuable or look better.” It should have been quite easy to speed-test the performance of each program’s transparency flattener for a document containing basic opacity effects, either when printing or when exporting to PDF. QuarkXPress 7’s transparency flattener is said to be rather slow: it would have been useful to prove or disprove this.
• PAGE 33: The report is disparaging about InDesign’s “extra dialogues” when exporting to PDF. For balance, it ought also to have noted that QuarkXPress 7’s lack of any intrusive dialogue at all can be dangerous too, as it can mean exporting to the wrong preset by accident. We would also liked to have seen a comparison of PDF file sizes generated by each program.
• PAGE 34: “InDesign CS3 has no way of setting up a shortcut that will show the Paragraph Stylesheets (sic) outside of the Stylesheet (sic) palette”. Yes there is: it’s called QuickApply. As well as appearing in their own palettes, Paragraph, Character and Object styles are also available as drop-down menus in the Control palette. Further down the page, the report says: “InDesign CS3 has a new feature called Quick Apply to automate repeating actions”. It’s not a new feature, and it’s not for automating repeated actions: it’s for applying styles and commands using the keyboard only. The way in which QuickApply remembers your last filter keyword is usually accepted as a useful time-saver, but the report describes this behaviour as a “problem”.
• PAGE 34: “In InDesign CS3… Nudging is limited to 1/10th of a point.” No it isn’t. Open the Units and Increments preferences and change the default to whatever value you like.