Quark Forums

Matthias Guenther (Quark):

Remember that working with a mixed environment (different QuarkXPress versions) has a huge risk of creating unwanted effects!

Please forgive me for butting in here, but I wonder if you can expand on that statement a bit, Matthias. We have different clients who require that we use different versions of Quark; every machine in the production department has 6.52 and 7.31 installed so we can meet those requirements. What kind of unwanted effects are we at risk of? (We're on OS X 10.4.11 Intel minis.) Again, sorry for butting in, but any info about this would be appreciated.

Hi, elpy,

I split your post off the original post, as it has nothing to do with fonts anymore.

Let me clarify what I meant.

There is absolutely NO danger if you do the following:

• Have different versions of QuarkXPress INSTALLED on your machine (I personally have 6.52, 7.5 and differently flavours of 8 installed on my MacBook Pro). Absolutely no danger.
• Have different QuarkXPress versions RUNNING at the same time on the same machine (I do that often to test behaviours). No danger here.
• Have different clients that use different QuarkXPress versions and produce on your machine with the same version that your client uses. No danger, actually the right thing to do.

What is not recommended (and I see as a huge risk though) is the following:
Use the same document and work on it with different versions of QuarkXPress.

For example: So your client uses 6 and you use 7. You open the v6 document, work on it with 7, downsave. Risky, even if you know what you do. The reason is simple: You loose all of the formats that only 7 has (like the caharcter attribute for languages, shadows, transparencies or - as mentioned in the original post - Unicode).
Also, when working with the v6 doc, you might copy and paste it in other documents and now you either have the v6 text engine in a v7 document OR you had reflow and might not have noticed it.

So bottom line:
Always use the same version number of QuarkXPress your client/colleague is using (best even the same subversion), then there's no risk at all.

Does that clarify it?

Thanks
Matthias

Thanks for the quick reply and clarification. The emphasis placed on the "risk" statement back in the other thread was what caught my eye and made me wonder.

We do a lot of updating of documents from older versions, but don't switch versions after the update or engage in other risky behavior you mention above. We haven't really been having any unexplained problems with our setup, either, except for PDFing problems from Quark with Adobe printers and Distiller. Those problems arose after QXP 7.31 and Acrobat 8 were installed on machines that already had (and still have) QXP 6.52 and Acrobat 7. For instance, no one seems able any longer to go direct to PDF through the Print dialog; instead, we have to "Save PDF as Postscript" from the PDF button of the Printer window, then distill the PostScript. Also, we all have trouble printed to the nested folders we were accustomed to using, and instead everyone is printing to the desktop. Some users have had trouble with elements dropping out during PDFing. I'd love to know what's going on there, but since I'm not an admin I can't really spend any time at work looking into it.

Hi, elpy,

may I ask why you use the Print dialog to create PostScript? Why not use the Export to PDF function and set the preference to the watched Distiller folder?

Best
Matthias

Probably because we used to be able to use the Print dialog to create PDFs per our requirements (using Adobe [Acrobat] printers and Distiller), and haven't adjusted yet to this new reality.

Hi, elpy,

which is fine to use, just the PDF Export dialog has a few advantages, like you get all of the media boxes in the PDF (we will offer media boxes also via the Print Dialog in a 8.x release later this year) etc.

Best of all, you cannot accidently put PPD information into your PS or specify the wrong page sizes.

Remember, though it called "Export to PDF", you can also optionally "just" created PostScript with it.

Regards
Matthias

Hi, Glenn,

how about JoJo?

Also, you do not need to try to open the QuarkXPress documents, just use the Open Dialog and select (not open) the document. It will tell you which version created and which last saved the document.

Or, if you like an AppleScript droplet, use "Welche_XPressVersion_X" by Hans Haesler.

Best
Matthias

 Just wanted to add here that I'm using QXP4.11, 6.52, and 7.5 concurrently during my normal work week. I'd be solidly on 7.5 if the boss would upgrade one of our XTs and if my type/slowdown issue in 7.5 was fixed.

I'm getting used to CTRL openening files with the appropriate version because if I dont I get some issues. If I mistakenly open a QXP 7.x file with QXP6.x and then try to open the file in QXP7.x I have to resave the file to the desktop and then replace it on the server. Otherwise I get save errors. Suposedly this was fixed with 7.5, but I'm not seeing it.

Other than that I'm not using QXP7.x features and downsaving. Our ads (because they are single pages) remain in QXP7.x and our other newspaper documents remain in QXP6.x.

Looks like I have to pay for JoJo, and my German isn't up to using the droplet.

Using File>Open  only gives info on older files and even then its often wrong, I've opened a v5 file in v8, backsaved v8 to v7 to v6, and saved with v6, but v8 still says its a v8 created v3.31.

In case anyones wondering what sort of messed up workflow requires this sequence, its a really old file that needs extensive re-working, so you sort it all out in the latest version because v5 is installed on a classic mac thats busy with something else, then 2 weeks later someone else needs a v6 version cos thats all they've got.