B4Print.com

I have never had a problem with any PDF file from Quark 7 in our platemaker's (read Xitron Xenith) workflow. The Xerox/Fiery RIP is another issue. I have not had some of the issues that folks complain about, but I think the problems that crop up are due to old/incompatible RIP's many times. Hence, my earlier reference to the Fiery...

That being said, Indy does a better job of producing a PDF file that is 99.99% capable. I would only rate Quark/JAWS PDF's at 98%. There are some PDF files that I send to the Xerox from Quark that will not RIP properly, no matter what I do. Rebuild the same job in Indy, goes right through. But this is a pretty rare circumstance. Both programs put out solid PDF's.

The one thing that I DID like in Q6.5 vs Q7.x, is you could embed the entire font. That was handy occasionally when you had a less-than reliable font and/or RIP. I see that capability has been removed since version 7.0. Bummer.

I've been down this road a bit with both Adobe and Quark "specialists" and what I have learned is that:
1. InDesign > Export > PDF ; is NOT Acrobat Distiller, but a pdf engine very similar to it.
2. Quark > Export > PDF; is JAWS, a ripoff rewritten program from Quark that trys to emulate what Distiller can do, and for the most part does a decent job.
3. Either app "Printing" to .ps then using Acrobat Distiller is the only way to get consistant trouble free PDFs that will work in almost every RIP 99.999% of the time.

Adobe explained that trying to get all of the code from Distiller into InDesign was an impossible feet, so shortcuts and certain "items" had to be dropped in order for the App to be properly written.

Since Adobe owns the rights to "PostScript Language" Quark has had to either pay through the nose, or write their own version of .ps in order to make PDFs work from their software without stepping on Adobe's toes.  ::)

You can see where Adobe may have come out on top in these games  :o  8)

What about file size? QuarkXPress 6 would create huge PDF files if you exported them directly. Printing to PostScript and then distilling the file gave much smaller files. Is that still true with QuarkXPress 7?