Wait, people are still using Quark?

[Joe]

Hi hotmetal...I get PDF's from people using Quark. They are a lot larger than Indy PDF's but they work other than the designer that decided the correct way to do it was to convert everything to EPS and then distill to PDF. No live transparency after that but it is possible though like I said Quark PDF's with transparency tend to be massive in size as compared to Indy PDF's.

Glad to hear you are still kickin' about.

[frailer]

Got himself a 'rare skills niche' by the sounds. Noice...

[Slappy]

Yeah, we make all of our Quark PDFs using "native transparency" and even though it makes obscenely HUGE files, haven't had any serious issues to date. It refuses to load certain fonts consistently across different Macs for some reason, so sometimes only 1 person can work on a particular job once the fonts are all working. Fun stuff!

Hotmetal: Good to hear you're keeping busy and checking in on us too!

[hotmetal]

Yeah, we make all of our Quark PDFs using "native transparency" and even though it makes obscenely HUGE files, haven't had any serious issues to date. It refuses to load certain fonts consistently across different Macs for some reason, so sometimes only 1 person can work on a particular job once the fonts are all working. Fun stuff!

Hotmetal: Good to hear you're keeping busy and checking in on us too!

Busy, yes... and yet so much more calm and relaxed after 32 months of retirement from punching a clock and working for fools and morons.

My wife recently said: "I didn't know you could be funny, you were so grim when you were working." Apparently I'm funny now!

Speaking of fonts... gnrrrrrr... one of the things I've always been good at is figuring out font conflicts and brainless usage, which most of the designers and pretty much all of the prepress grunts I've dealt with since the late 1980's treated in an "why are you bothering me with this irrelevant la-de-da complaint?" I'm talking about workers who load and use (possibly just sitting down at a group machine where the fonts are already loaded) the same typefaces, but from several different foundries, and/or eras, at the same time. You've all seen mashups of Futura, with incomplete sets of Adobe from 1988 mixed with parts of Bitstream and other brands, where, over various cycles of revisions, the weights and foundries and (in Quark and Pagemaker) different fucking styles selected randomly all through the document, sometimes using several different combinations of weight and style and foundry in one line of text, has turned the file in to one huge reflowing clusterfuck with psuedo-italic used to make up for missing italics in one file, the actual italic showing up in the next. (Sometimes the books are all one file, sometimes broken up into a dozen stand-alone files. This can take some time to figure out.)

That is the main problem with the books I'm working on. They've been worked on by many people, mostly freelancers, in different countries, over the last 10-15 years. And each new person would just load in all the various sets and bits of sets and proceed to do whatever the markups say without giving a thought to the mess they were working on. Or, maybe, knowing something wasn't quite right, but going ahead anyway, because, after all, it's just desktop publishing.

I can't work like that. The first thing I do is get the links up and running and evaulate the fonts, over the entire length of the book (or series of books — most of what I work on is an entire series of textbooks.) I deal with the font situation first, before I do a single edit. I don't think very many designers and "desktop publishers" out there would even think to do this, they just wander around the publishing landscape with pebbles in their shoes and think this is normal.

The people I work for are aware the files have problems and are thrilled that I just take them, fix them, update them, and send them back in a sparkling new paintjob. I don't bother bugging them for fonts, because they have no idea where they came from or went to, I just go into my own secret libraries of client fonts and find what I need. The missing images... so far I've been able to retrieve them from the last high-res PDF they've got.

I get paid well for something I'm very good at... and my client keeps saying "thank you, thank you, thank you!" My guardian diva was sitting on my shoulder that day last summer when, worried a bit about finances, I felt compelled to take one more frustrating look at the local craigslist employment ads. I'd search for ads with "InDesign", "Quark", "typesetting", stuff like that. And this time the "Quark" search turned up a winner!

Love you guys!         

[born2print]

The first thing I do
fixed
And this time the "Quark" search turned up a winner!
lol!
Love you guys! 
 :cool: :cool: :cool:

[Tracy]

That sounds like a great gig Hot Metal!
for your wife too!  :laugh:

I shoulda wrote that in haiku, next time :laugh:

[born2print]

I should have, could have
wrote that in the haiku style
It makes people smile
 

[born2print]

when I die and they
lay me to rest I'm gonna
go to the place' best

 

[Tracy]

 :laugh:

haiku is 3 syllables  :tongue:

[frailer]

has turned the file into one huge reflowing clusterfuck with psuedo-italic used to make up for missing italics...

 :laugh:   You bring back memories. Much as we love to hate Abode....      :undecided:

[youston]

:laugh:

haiku is 3 syllables  :tongue:

I leave you people for just a couple of years, and THIS is what happens?!? 

 :police:  Had to come out of semi-retirement to point out that haiku is 5-7-5.  :police:

[frailer]

Told you standards had gone to the dogs...  But you'll sort us in short order.

[hotmetal]

:laugh:

haiku is 3 syllables  :tongue:

I leave you people for just a couple of years, and THIS is what happens?!? 

 :police:  Had to come out of semi-retirement to point out that haiku is 5-7-5.  :police:

Couple of years, huh? That explains a lot! I don't come here every day anymore, but I'm still following some of the same long-time threads. And I kept wondering, whatever happened to youston?

[frailer]

Oh, we still wonder....

[youston]

Told you standards had gone to the dogs...  But you'll sort us in short order.

Oh, I'm retired.
Couldn't possibly spend time
correcting grammar.

See? 5-7-5!