I hate Quark

I work in Quark and InDesign. Both have their pros and cons.
I was becoming frustrated for a bit with Quark, but they've fixed the glitches concerning duotones and PDFs.
What are you having issues with in Quark? Maybe I or others here can help.

honestly, it would be a bad thing if quark went away. as much as i love indesign and am not planning on going back to quir... i mean... quark any time soon, adobe needs competition.

I use to be a senior prepress operator for a large printer so we had to know every software you can think of very well in both platforms. Back 6yrs ago quark was the thing to use and Indesign sucked the big one but now, Quark is trying to throw as many doo dads, bells and whistles in it to make it more marketable but its loosing its focus of page layout, IMO! That said Indesign is pretty intuitive if you know how the CS suite works in general you can pretty much maneuver fairly well. If you had to jump into Quark from scratch, knowing Illustrator and Photoshop you would be super screwed, no shortcuts are even similar except for what, paste. It would be an extremely frustrating learning curve. They are also extremely pompous of their software, remember the stupid dongles! I hated that!

May have got off track a little but I hate quark too :)

We haven't worked in Quark for over 8 years now.

I really freaking hate it when a company looks at you resume, your portfolio, asks you questions (face to face in an interview) - and then ask you to take a test.

I refuse to indulge them anymore. First off, do I ask Honda to take apart the car and rebuild it while I'm standing there, just to make sure they know how to build a car? No.

Second, they purposely set you up with f#cked-up files to see if you catch all the mistakes. Those files contain things that not even a 1st year designer would do. Stupid.

And third, if I really wanted to, I could turn the tables on them, lock them out of their own computers, shut down the server, and password the computer and tell them to call me if they would like to gain access to their computer. (Jokingly of course).

Those tests are the "production artist" equivilent of spec work.

I was hired on a quark test. I was unaware of this practice when I got in to the workforce and was thrown for a loop. I was just out of college and they sat me down to build a "live job" tri-fold brochure from the ground up. Needless to say I was sweating bullets during the entire test. I didn't do to great on the test but they hired me anyways. My sad salary pretty much reflected my performance on that test but most of the design and production principles I use today have been taken for that first job. For that I am very thankful. The test also gave me a wake up call that I need to be wise to all keyboard shortcuts and know my software inside and out.

I don't like the idea of giving software tests to prospective hires. However, I do see the practical/business reasons for it. As an employee, you are their investment and it just makes sense to protect their interests before they hand out a contract. Especially in a production environment, (which is where most new hires are going) your efficiency is key.

I've hired people that know the programs, or whom are open to learning on the fly, but in retrospect, I would have gone with the more creative hire. As gwells commented, programs can be taught; creativity is either there or I don't have the credentials to develop.

However, I do think that is not too much to ask that a prospective hire be creative and efficient. I have not yet been in a position to hire creative staff. But I believe that if I am investing in your services, you better be able to perform on all levels. I also expect that anyone contracting my services should expect the same.