MACMUSER  In Europe we've had to pay for TVTV access after the first year, ever since EyeTV came out. I happily pay my £15 for it even though digital TV here has a free programme guide also accessed through EyeTV.  
(Version 3.1)

MACMUSER  I find it very strange that I am supporting QXP 8 after many years spent trying to convert hardened QXP users to inDesign. Up until CS2, inDesign deservedly held sway on OSX. Then QXP7 and CS3 came out and started to match each other feature for feature.

inDesign CS4 is… problematic… and expensive to upgrade to. Adobe seem to have developed Quark-of-old's style of customer support whereas Quark have seen the light and realise they actually need customers. QXP 8 is what version 7 should have been (and version 7 is what 6 should have been). Quark lost sight of the ball and needed to get back into the game in a hurry.

As far as the interface is concerned, it is always a matter of personal taste although Adobe have consistently used one box to achieve one end result throughout their product range whereas Quark prefer multi-tabbed boxes which will serve a multitude of settings. Adobe have vertical tabs down the side of the screen while Quark use horizontal. QXP 8 has a (IMHO) more developed and user-definable tool bar and contextual measurements pallet while inDesign has a far better help system.

For speed, try them both. I find QXP 8 quicker to set-up and lay-out a piece of work (especially books) and what I read on the web would agree with me. (Please don't ask for references, it is Xmas holiday after all).

For the future, I see Quark possibly being side-lined and undeservedly so because it is as good, if not better than inDesign. Just as Freehand did with Illustrator and @£$%^ (fill in blank) was usurped by Photoshop. Younger designers might know only the program they use rather than having a more open and experienced view about things. We started in Calamus before moving to Pagemaker. The former has been reborn while the latter is a page in Wikipedia. Nevertheless, Calamus is unlikely to challenge for the DTP crown.  
(Version 8.01)

MACMUSER  Does exactly what it says it does.

Excellent.

Now where's a kitten to kick?  
(Version 3.0)

MACMUSER  iAntivirus is, arguably, a better program than ClamX and as it's free is considerably better than Protect Mac.

In addition, iAntivirus is quicker than ClamX, it's checker for incoming files and attachments does not quit as ClamX's Folder Sentry does and as a bog-standard application iAntivirus is easy to quit the whole thing if necessary. ClamX shoves bits of itself deep into the Library.  
(Version 1.0.2)

MACMUSER  Probably the best release of QXP since version 5 running in Classic on OSX. The new interface shows how clunky Adobe's has become and the tools are in many respects better than inDesign's. But best of all, QXP8 is fast. Huge files open almost instantly, the annoying buglets of QXP 7 have been fixed (no autosave bloat). Quark's helplines are excellent.

Anyone using inDesign really must look at QXP to see what they are missing (I use both so have no axe to grind). The 60-day full version try-out is free.

Anyone using QXP6 needs their heads examining. Why on earth don't you upgrade to get superior typesetting and on-screen display, better tools, transparency, page and box baseline grids, faster working… you might as well be back using QXP 3 or 4 in comparison with version 8.

There are a few rough areas waiting for attention: the book pallet needs redesigning, grids are a little clunky to set up, in-line graphics can become unstable (but still far better than inDesign's) but given the choice between working in QXP8 or inDesign, it's QXP every time.  
(Version 8.01)

MACMUSER  There are now two font managers for QuarkXPress 8, Suitcase Fusion 2 and FontAgent Pro 4. Only the latter will still work with earlier versions of QXP and CS, plus it also opens fonts in Photoshop. Both cost the same amount.  
(Version 8.01)

MACMUSER  Excellent little app that moves iPlayer on a notch by skipping the need to cut and paste the URL from a web browser. iPlyer Grabber has the browser built in.

The BBC site has the occasional glitch that stops files being downloaded, even if they can be played in their on-line player. It's nothing to do with iPlayer Grabber.  
(Version 0.94)

MACMUSER  Right! Got it running by opening Security Pref/Firewall and 'adding' Safari to it to allow all connections – even though it was already in the list.

Always thought that application signing is a piece of pooh.  
(Version 3.2)

MACMUSER  Software Update installed Safari 3.2 on my MacBook. Now Safari won't run, just hangs then stays invisible in the background and has to be force-quit.

Checked drive and permissions, have no haxies installed so d/l a fresh version of Safari and installed that. Still hangs.  
(Version 3.2)

MACMUSER  Vic, I couldn't agree more. QXP8 is very much faster than QXP7 – and inDesign come to that but that's nothing difficult to achieve. I have to work in both so have no axe to grind about Quark or Adobe

The new QXP8 interface is faster, I've had to convert the book I'm working on back to QXP7 for compatibility with my clients. Working in QXP7 feels like rowing through Roquefort and files open sooooo sloooowly.

BUT I am getting very tired of QXP8 continually messing with text flow. I really hope the upgrade (downloading as I type)b sorts that out. The book pallet wont allow the page numbers' column to resize either so that's another glitch I hope they fixed.  
(Version 8.01)

MACMUSER  I couldn't get it to make segmented archives.

Selected the segment size, still only got one file.  
(Version 1.6.7)

MACMUSER  Needed a way to make segmented archives to upload large files. Gumby makes this easy by producing RAR archives which Stuffit Expander can decompress if you use Gumby's non-default (Old) setting.

The developer does seem to have stopped work on Gumby. Luckily it works in Leopard.  
(Version 1.0b50)

MACMUSER  After just a first quick look, the application seems pretty much the same as other converters such as iSquint and VisualHub but until I can get my hands on the AppleTV I don't know whether they can give the same output format.

The demo is limited to 5 mins only and doesn't appear to allow drag and drop of movies into its list of files to convert. With such a short time allowed speed measurements weren't attempted.

I tried to convert a QT.mov file originally recorded in EyeTV and exported from there. Compared with the original .mov the AVC output lost a noticeable amount of colour. Sound and image quality were similar/the same. A smaller animated .mov file originally 31.2MB was reduced to 21.3MB with no loss in quality. EyeTV native files did not convert.

The application crashed once while converting a file probably because I was mousing around its menus. The file output was not affected. Also the preferences menu item is greyed out, possibly because it was running in demo mode.  
(Version 3.1.9.0131)

MACMUSER  Had so many problems with 7.02 moved back to 7.0. Not interested in the weak animation tools anyway.

QuarkXPress is still the most problematic application we have and it has been so since 1989. Considering a lot of the legacy code is still inside it is no wonder.

For the most part, given the choice we use inDesign instead of XPress and luckily our clients are following suit as they too "see the light". I just cannot imagine why some XPress users are so happy. It is a buggy, old fashioned, limited piece of not-quite MacOSX software (no Services access). I shall be pleased when I do the last job ever in QuarkXPress.  
(Version 7.1)

MACMUSER  Jim, thanks for your reply. I did indeed contact your technical support and got back a pretty ineffectual reply that did nothing to address the issue:

----8  
(Version 12.1.2)

MACMUSER  Being an old Suitcase and Font Reserve fan I installed the latest version of Suitcase Fusion and all seemed okay. I love the way it will show all the fonts of the same characterisics - all scripts or all black letter faces.

Then I opened the book I'm working on in XPress 7.0 at the moment, just to see what happened. Firstly it was incredibly slow to open the files even though the fonts were already opened. Same thing happened when I saved the document to test it wasn't font sense needed.

But worst still, in one chapter all the text had disappeared. Nothing there, just completely missing. I reinstalled Linotype FontExplorer and the document was still damaged (even though I hadn't saved it) so I opened the back-up copy and all the text was where it should have been.

Thinking this was just a mistake on my part, I reopened Suitcase and a copy of the back-up document that had worked fine in FontExplorer. No text again. Re-installed Font Explorer, opened the document yet again and text was missing - Suitcase had damaged the document. So back to copying the back-up and learning that Suitcase is very slow at opening documents and can damage them.

:-(  
(Version 12.1.2)

MACMUSER  Remember good old Compactor Pro or Disk Doubler?

The good old days, eh?  
(Version 0.8.5b3)