d20 Companies: What's your publishing program?

[Pale]

There are a few out there and I know that one of the biggies is QuarkXpress (which I'm very familiar with) I was wondering what was being used out there at companies other than White Wolf.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[GF Jeff]

We use Quark for layout, and Photoshop / Illustrator for touch-ups, etc.

Jeffrey S. Carter
Head Writer / Assistant Editor
Gaming Frontiers
www.gamingfrontiers.com

 

[Pale]

For touch-ups? Please explain. Here at the paper we use Photoshop/Illustrator for working up photos, doing cut-outs, fades, etc. But all on the picture front. Graphs and charts are done 50/50 in Quark and Illustrator. Everything done in the Adobe programs is imported into Quark before sending them to the RIPs for the negative to plate process.

 

[beta-ray]

Well not to start a platform war, but since the general question was asked, which platform do you use? Mac? Win? Linux? All or some of the above?

 

[Pale]

I'll answer that one for the paper here. We're currently using Macs for all design and graphic purposes. PCs (with Win98) for all of the editing (which is done with an archaic newspaper editing program called ATEX that is somehow married to the PC programs). All of which are connected together using 'frankenstein' hook-ups via UNIX. It really is a frightening set-up that crashes about twice a day).

If it weren't for the budget cuts (I'm sure that most large companies had them this year) we would no have an entirely new system that would eliminate the use of Quark and ATEX altogother. That doesn't look like it's going to happen for a while. Thus, the reason for my question, there are better programs than Quark out there, at least 2 or 3 companies that sell entire set-ups for a publisher dedicated system from editing to layout to print. I'm trying to get a resumé out there pretty soon and it would be helpful to know what everyone is using in-house.

I use a PC at home.

 

[sppeterson]

Currently using PageMaker for my first product but I intend to switch to InDesign 2.0; both running on a PC.

 

[beta-ray]

Cool thanks for the answers so far.

I myself use a Mac, though I don't do large publishing things. I have worked on books before (in the old pre-ppc days)... At the time we used a combination of aldus pagemaker, frame technology's framemaker and aldus freehand. Ah the good ol days!

Dunno complete solutions, but am more familiar with mac software (i think all of them available on win)... InDesign is thought to be pretty good but not as mature as quark as of yet. I still like the pagemaker metaphor and frame maker is still around but probably will be axed.

 

[Viking Games]

I'm using InDesign 1.5, but plan to switch over to 2.0 when it hits my school's shelves in the revised Design Collection (packaged with Illustrator 10, InDesign 2.0, Acrobat 5.0, and PhotShop 6.0) PC format.

 

[Abashima Press]

I used QuarkXPress for years upon years, but I'm getting more familiar with InDesign and am loving it. I plan to go to use 2.0 full time as soon as I can.

I also use Illustrator and Photoshop for other things.

Macintosh platform.

Almost used QPS (Quark Publishing Solution) at two different companies, but it never materialized for a variety of reasons.

And, I've tried cheaper solutions, but the programs have always lacked some function that I particularly enjoyed, or their interface plain sucked (Create by Stone Design comes to mind).

 

[Pale]

Hey Abashima Press!

Is InDesign more versatile than QuarkXPress? And what's the learn ratio with it? Is it a smoothe transition going from Quark to ID or is there a LOT of learning involved?