

In QuarkXPress, a book requires a set of separate files for each chapter and section, plus two special files that keep track of the book’s contents and pagination. You would not want to read the full litany of the faults I found-even assuming I could remember them all-but here are a few problems that give a sense of what I put up with. What a mistake! QuarkXPress is the most bug-ridden application I have used in 36 years of working with the Mac. I found InDesign more confusing, and I dislike Adobe-Creative Cloud requires a pricey subscription and fills your drive with files-so I bought a copy of QuarkXPress. Both seemed to have comparable features and limitations. The only heavy-duty choices at the time were QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. If you ever need a page layout application, do not buy QuarkXPress.Įighteen months ago, I needed to lay out an illustrated book. In the end, after much troubleshooting and experimentation, the best I could recommend was that he cut his losses and switch to InDesign, a luxury that he couldn’t afford given publishing deadlines. I can thus say, from personal experience, that what Charles relates here is only the tip of the iceberg of what he went through. Although I don’t know QuarkXPress, I’ve laid out many books in Adobe InDesign and have years of experience working with PDF ebooks. Every day when I came back from the conference, I found Charles at his Mac, swearing at the latest problem created by QuarkXPress.

At that point, Charles was in the final throes of laying out their book, Pretty Ugly: Why we like some songs, faces, foods, plays, pictures, poems, etc., and dislike others. Unless You Are a Masochist, Do Not Buy QuarkXPressĮditor’s Note: In May 2019, I stayed with Charles Maurer and his wife Daphne for a few days while attending the Collision conference in Toronto.
