InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Conversion Isn't Perfect

When InDesign opens a QuarkXPress file, it must do a file translation into the InDesign format. This is extremely difficult, partly because Quark hasn't made public their secret and proprietary file format information (Adobe had to decode it themselves). Plus, InDesign performs a great many page layout functions differently than XPress does, and there are some XPress features which don't exist at all in InDesignlike custom stripes and multi-ink colors. As with translations between spoken languages, conversions from QuarkXPress aren't flawless. It's our experience that InDesign's conversion can get you about 95 percent of the way there in an "average" document. (These same considerations also apply to Adobe PageMaker files, as well.)

All but the most simple XPress documents will likely require some reworking in InDesign. The more design-intensive your pages, the more likely you'll have to do significant cleanup. That said, we also know of cases in which very complex pages converted without any changes whatsoever. On the other hand, we have heard of at least one case of a commercial printer opening a customer's XPress files in InDesign without consulting with the client first (because he wanted to print from InDesign instead)this is clearly a

really bad idea.

What Translates Well

InDesign can read all the paragraph and character styles, master pages, and RGB or CMYK colors in the XPress document (colors other than CMYK and RGB may be an issue, which we'll discuss below). The page geometry (where things are on the page) and XPress-created and linked items will almost always be converted correctly, but proof the files closely for small "glitches," like objects that have moved slightly. Text formatting will usually be converted well, but many line endings may break slightly differently because InDesign uses a different composition engine.

Think "Templates"

In our opinion, your best strategy is to think about opening templates rather than files. That is, open template files, or open old XPress documents that you're going to significantly update anyway. Use the conversion process to create new InDesign templates which can be used to produce new projects. Or, if you have files that have elements which are frequently used in many documents, convert those files only as needed. Converting all your legacy QuarkXPress or PageMaker documents into InDesign documents is probably a waste of time.

Even if you only work in InDesign from now on, you'll probably still want to keep a copy of XPress around to open old legacy documents. This is just a harsh reality of publishingDavid still keeps PageMaker around to deal with the documents he created in the late 1980s!