Quark Forums

 We just restored our Snow Leopard System back to 10.5.8.

 

Quark has once again let me down. But it's the same situation here. All of our past work is in Quark or I would have switched years ago. This maybe the last straw for sad little Quark. If they try to force me to 8 it will be for sure.

 

Good luck everyone, I'll check back in a few weeks and see if this has been fixed. If not I'll start converting all my work to InDesign files.

mSum:

I'll check back in a few weeks and see if this has been fixed. If not I'll start converting all my work to InDesign files.

Unfortunately, not everybody has that timescale and I certainly don't. I have now migrated over to InDesign using Q2ID for all existing Quark work and I am now thinking it was a well timed move especially with all these recent SL complications I have been reading about.

My frustration and disappointment with Quark is at an all time high. After experiencing this same font problem with both 7.5 and a frantically-downloaded 8.1 test drive, I had no choice but to roll all our systems back to Leopard to keep up with looming deadlines, or be forced to re-do 10 years of legacy files for the rest of my life. Futura is killing me since it's the corporate font for one of our largest clients. Seriously, how much effort does it take to beta-test to a group of actual designers, read your support forums, and Google for "Quark Snow Leopard" and see if there are any problems you as a developer didn't know about? An acknowledgement of the issue would at least be appropriate, to the order of "hey, we just became aware of it, we're trying to fix it, hang in there." I am personally becoming a minority in my usage of Quark, as many of our new designers right out of school are not even getting taught it anymore – it's all InDesign. Though I prefer Quark and have attained speed and mastery after so many years of experience with it, I think this situation is going to finally do me in.

Just to give an idea of what we're talking about, here are some screenshots. Some layouts are fine, some have minor errors and some are ruined.

Just to add to the debate, and in case Quark is listening, we have the same font shifting problem with just one of our new Macs with Snow Leopard. Another identical machine is fine. We are on v7.5 and have to remain on this version for compatibility with our clients. I say clients, but we have only one client now who have not converted to InDesign. This is HarperCollins, a major UK publisher. All the others, Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Macmillan and others are all InDesign now. They took the decision that managing legacy conversion was better than continuing with Quark. This issue and Quark's refusal to acknowledge the problem and fix it for previous versions is one of the reasons why people have jumped from Quark to InDesign in droves. If Quark want to keep whatever market share they have left then you would think they would go out of their way to solve problems like this and communicate better. And replacing a technical help line with a chat line staffed with incompetent people is no answer either. I had a little chat when I first upgraded to Snow Leopard and Quark crashed and was told there was no fix apart from upgrading to v8 when in fact a quick check on the forums then deleting my preferences and upgrading to the latest v7 fixed it. Quark - get your act together please.

I think if you upgrade to the latest version of Snow Leapoard that came out last week, fonts are working fine in Quark. I've heard this from others, but I haven't tested it myself. I'm also told their are some serious .pdf creation issues still not addressed. On top of the pdf issues Quark sent out an ad saying you get Enfocus PDF if you buy Quark 8. To me that looks like Quark is saying...our pdf writer sucks so use Enfoucs. 

But anyway, becuase the font problem wasn't Quark but rather an Apple API, the update should fix 7.5. Where I feel Quark dropped the ball was in testing before the release of Snow Leopard. How something this huge could get by them is beyond me.

Hi, Dave,

actually with the type-1 font shifting issue, Apple patched OS X, 10.6.2 will fix that. There was no need for a patch for QuarkXPress 8. As QuarkXPress 7 uses the same font API the Snow Leopard update should be the same remedy. So update Snow Leopard to 10.6.2 please.

Just be informed that Quark doesn't support QuarkXPress 7 under Snow Leopard.

Thanks
Matthias