# Replacing Publisher?



## Da_iMac_Daddy (Jan 2, 2003)

A friend of mine is switching relatively soon and would like to know if there is any good replacement for publisher on the Mac.

Any suggestions would be awesome.


----------



## Urbansory (Jan 2, 2003)

Are you refering to Adobe publisher? I think you are, haven't seen that in such a long time. InDesign is the best to me, the industry has yet to adobt it, but they still use OS 8 or lower and Ill 7 among other old apps. inDesign is great for layouts, and the fussion between Adobe's other apps makes creating a pleasure rather than a pain.


----------



## BoneFill (Jan 2, 2003)

If your friend is talking about M$ Publisher  InDesign is the option anyway.


----------



## Da_iMac_Daddy (Jan 2, 2003)

It's M$ publisher I'm talking about.


----------



## BoneFill (Jan 2, 2003)

InDesign & Qark are the best options but M$ publisher is kinda limited so maybe he'll feel better with FreeHand or even CorelDraw


----------



## toast (Jan 2, 2003)

Quark XPress is the industry standard (it hasn't changed so much, although ID2 is really better it's not supported by many RIPs).

Publisher exact equivalent is AppleWorks > New Vector Picture file 
I'm not kidding so much ! All you can do with Publisher you can do with AppleWorks. Almost. I swear.

InDesign costs a lot. Quark costs even more. Adobe Pagemaker, though old-fashioned, is not very expensive and still powerful (more than Pub, that's for sure). Combine PM7 with Adobe Acrobat 4 and you're fixed.

A good forum to ask the question, a forum where you'll find Mac/PC professionals (all using either PM7, ID2, Pub, QXP etc.) is www.desktoppublishing.com.


----------



## Da_iMac_Daddy (Jan 2, 2003)

OK I know absolutley nothing about publisher so I don't understand all that remember I'm just asking for a friend


----------



## Urbansory (Jan 2, 2003)

I guess it depends what the friend wants to do. I never use M$ Publisher, so i have no idea. i have used the others for years, so i know them. I never liked Quark, I had to use it when i interened at the plain Dealer in Cleveland, it was easy, just too limited. My college uses InDesign as the standard, I haven't seen Quark in a while and I don't think i would ever buy it for my system unless they make a ton of changes.


----------



## toast (Jan 3, 2003)

Da_Imac_Daddy,

I'll make it shorter then: AppleWorks can replace Publisher, I *swear*. Otherwise, Adobe InDeisgn is a costly but powerful replacement with many more features (this 'many' is euphemistic).



> _From Urbansory_I never liked Quark, (...) it was easy, just too *limited.*



9 books out of 10 and 100% newspapers are arranged under Quark XPress, which is one of the most complicated program I know. The basics are actually, I admit, simple, moreover the applications LOOKS imple when you open it  but I can tell you it gets a fcuking more difficult than that when you start color management, trapping, PostScript coding and so on...


----------



## Factor41 (Jan 3, 2003)

Quark's a piece of cake to get the basics of, but as Toast sez, there's a whole lot more going on than first meets the eye. InDesign is fantastically capable, but is yet to be adopted by many printers due to RIP problems. Getting better all the time tho. Unfortuantely Quark is yet to be released in OS X form, but when it does come out, I for one am hoping for many InDesign-esque improvements. PageMaker is a horrible program, but cheap and was once the standard before Quark overtook it so may be worth a look in. Please don't send them to CorelDraw! It's a nightmare for printers when people set magazines in that tat. AppleWorks is very limited, but it's true that it might be about equivalent to MS Publisher so it's worth a try before you invest in anything else. Not good if you want to commercially print anything tho. If you can afford it and need the power, InDesign could well be your best bet - free demo downloads and cds are widely available. Always best to try before you buy!


----------



## toast (Jan 3, 2003)

Wired made a very good paper about Quark for X. It's called "Vaporware": software promised, software you must have, software never released.



> 7. QuarkXPress for Macintosh OS X: Quark's page-layout system, QuarkXPress, is probably the most eagerly anticipated application awaiting conversion to Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X. Wisely, Quark hasn't committed to a release date, but, as readers noted, the OS X version has seemed just around the corner for the last couple of years. Clearly, many graphics enthusiasts thought it would appear in 2002. Alas, it did not.
> 
> "Quark, which has given new meaning to the term 'customer-hostile,' is now damaging Apple with their way, way, way overdue Mac OS X-native version of QuarkXPress," wrote Michael Stango. *"Their ineptitude at keeping up with the pace of change in the Mac market is doing more to sell copies of Adobe InDesign than anyone in Adobe's marketing department." *



Source: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57023,00.html


----------

