We’re having the QuarkXPress vs InDesign debate at the LSJ. It’s been rumbling under the surface for a while, and it finally broke out after our recent (successful) accreditation visit from the Periodical Training Council (PTC).

Quark
Quick summary: QuarkXPress was launched in 1987 as the professional print design and layout tool and quickly became the market leader. There’s no doubt it deserved its position. It was powerful and flexible, and could do everything from flyers to books.

But it got such a grip on the market that it became a de facto monopoly. And, as all monopolies tend to do, it got bloated, dozy, smug and expensive.

InDesign
Then along came Adobe InDesign, which had a better UI, seamless integration with other Adobe apps, and was …cheaper. It was marketed as a Quark-killer, and it could well end up doing just that. Quark’s market share is now 25%. It’s a minor player.

My view:

• The PTC recommends InDesign.
• The students want to learn InDesign.
• The industry uses InDesign.

So…
Sorry, Quark. Game over. Goodnight. Thanks for playing.

But…
We have to make sure we don’t get hooked on InDesign as we were on QuarkXPress. It’s dangerous to get fixated on an application. All applications decay. Stick with them, and you’ll decay as well.

Adobe’s market lead will make it like Quark (bloated, dozy, smug and expensive). In fact, this MacUser post argues that’s happening already.

An app for that
And as we speak, there’s probably someone out there writing an app that will cost a tenner and do the job just as well.

Whereupon someone else will write an app that costs a fiver…

So, we should focus on what we teach and what the industry is using. But we should never get locked into one way of doing things, into using one tool. There are lots of tools out there. We should try them all.

Mao Mao
As Mao Tse-tung might have said if he’d been in the journalism business, and not gone on to have such a successful career in mass slaughter: “Let a hundred applications blossom, a hundred lines of code contend”.

(Bit tasteless. Might cut that.)