Now that we have squared away the deleting preferences issue, I have another couple of rants about quark sucking so very badly.
Firstly, now it's up and running, I'm trying to print to file rather than to a printer. Quark 6.5 seems to print to my printers OK, but printing to a PS file generates a 0kB or 8 kB file which will not Rip to any printers or Distiller. I need to be able to print to file for my Hot-Folder-based workflow to work. Any suggestions?
Also, I've posted this before but did not get the issue fixed... Quark 6 displays some fonts whacky, like the code you get when you display a Japanese website in English.
http://www.eastwoodprinting.com/Quark%206.1%20type%20issue.jpg
Backsaving to Quark 5 fixes the issue.
http://www.eastwoodprinting.com/Same%20in%20Quark%205.jpg
Any suggestions on this one? it happens in any version of Quark 6, and we're using Suitcase as the font manager.
Please help.

It looks like you might have corrupt fonts, or conflicting fonts. We get that all the time in Quark 6.5 Deactivate all the fonts you dont need for the job. As to printing to file, I dont have any problems with that. You could try exporting to PDF, and play with the options in that. It will allow you to save will separations, registration, pretty much everything you need. I would give that a try, and if that doesnt work use InDesign!

I came across the same problem recently :mad:

Here's what I found...you will be up and running in no time.

Creating PDFs From Postscript In Mac OS X (http://www.omnipress.com/content.cfm?categoryID=963A6DAC-D610-4595-0BEC44E5447E9400)

Installing PPD Files (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Printing/Conceptual/UsingPPDFiles/ppd_tasks/chapter_3_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000190/CJBHAFDF)

Hope it helps...it should.

:D

I came across the same problem recently :mad:

Here's what I found...you will be up and running in no time.

Creating PDFs From Postscript In Mac OS X (http://www.omnipress.com/content.cfm?categoryID=963A6DAC-D610-4595-0BEC44E5447E9400)

Installing PPD Files (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Printing/Conceptual/UsingPPDFiles/ppd_tasks/chapter_3_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000190/CJBHAFDF)

Hope it helps...it should.

Yes I agree too, Quark does suck!

:D

Hmmm....
It seems to work, although I don't understand why. What does printing-to-file to a "Virtual" localhost printer do differently than printing-to-file to an actual Appletalk printer? Must be something in the routing.
Thanks for the tip.

Believe me, if I could convince all of our clients to switch to InDesign, I would, but very few have adopted it. Hopefully they'll discover how badly Quark bites soon.

As far as font corruption goes... if a font works in every application other than Quark 6, I consider the font to be good, and the app to be bad.
Quark sucks.

You don't need to fart around with virtual printers if you have Acrobat 6 installed. Simply choose Adobe PDF as the printer and make a preset for print to Postscript File.

As for your jumbled type, this has nothing to do with bad fonts, but rather Quark's poorly-implemented way of reading your system's font cache.

I use Cocktail (http://www.macupdate.com/download.php/10909/Cocktail.dmg) to clean out the cache so that Quark doesn't act so retarded. There are other utilities that will do the same thing.

Quark does kinda suck sometimes.
Generating sucessful PDFs is still a bit of an art. Even InDesign's export as PDF function generates bloated files.

Your best bet is to use a virtual printer, as the local host will create PS files faster for you than an external source. Plus, there's nobody in the print queue besides yourself then.

fontfinagler (http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/) will clean you font cache.

slightly off topic, but check this tip out about getting fonts to preview again in Suitcase:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031225124718455

here is the issue with fonts and 10.3.5
http://www.macmedics.com/tenthreefive.htm

Font Finagler did the trick great.
Thanks for all the help. I know I can always count on the great ehMacians for the best tech support.
Quark Sucks!
ehMac Rocks!!!
:D :D :D

Funny how we are all quick to dump on XPress [the actually name of the application BTW - not Quark - that's the company name]. I too have been guilty of this.

But let's do some math here...

Quark XPress costs $1,400. A typical studio charges $75-$100 per hour for digital composition work. So, within just 14-21 hours the cost of that application is covered. A typical year yields 340+ days of production @ 8hrs/day = 2,720 hours @ $100/hr - $272,000. Not a bad return on investment. I certainly wouldn't risk that $2,500 on the stock market or invest it for a measly 5% on return.

Sure, XPress has pissed me off some days. But, as we've found out from this post, it often has to do with font issues and not XPress at all. XPress may be the most susceptible to font problems but hey - maybe Quark should come out with it's own font management utility - that'd really **** you off wouldn't it?

You should now take what people have told you here and learn that you need to close off all the fonts and start from step 1. This will make us all better Mac users, and happier XPress users in the end.

Wasn't Apple the fiend here by developing an OS that allows system level fonts installation, user fonts installation, and of course you can open fonts anywhere with a utility like Suitcase.

Apple is the real culprit here because their OS is generating a messy playing field. Why can't Apple build in the kind of carpetsweeping needed that these little third party utilities have been created to do? This should not be necessary. Apple dropped the ball on this and it doesn't appear that they'll pick it up any time soon. What the hell is all this Japanese crap on my comptuer?????? If I want Japanese fonts on my computer, I'll install Japanese fonts, thank you very much. Get it the hell off my computer.

I'd be sad to see Quark fold because they gave me the tools to provide myself with a pretty darn good livelihood.

OK, my coffee break is over. Back to work. On Xpress. Thank god it's not PageMaker. Or Ventura. Or Framemaker. Or MS Publisher - AAAAAAACK!

Oh, BTW - you ARE running a legitimate copy of XPress, right? No need to answer, it was a rhetorical question.

Hope the rest of your day goes well.

macandy
G5 1Gb/160Gb 20in
G4 PB400 512Mb/6Gb
and proud of it!

Word to your mother, flamer.
You certainly don't seem to have a problem jumping to conclusions about me or the company I work for. What is your damage? Do you want me to post my serial numbers (yes, numbers, as we do own 6 XPress licences, among many, many others)? What exactly in my posts on this subject suggested to you that I was a software pirate, my difference of opinion? You should apologise.
In my opinion, Quark (the company) has not released a leading-edge product since version 4 (when was that... 1999, I think)(a point could also be argued back to ver 3.3). They have continued to recycle the same old product with only minor "features"changing in all that time, whereas Adobe, in all its products, have advanced the industry in leaps and bounds by comparison.
I consider both of the issues discussed in this thread to be exclusively Quark XPress 6 problems, as we have not had any similar problems with any other piece of software we use, and we use just about everything in the DTP realm. It's Quark's (the company's) responsibility to engineer their software to work on the platform they're releasing it on, not the other way around. Everyone else seems to have managed to do it without corrupting font caches, etc. so why not them?
Believe me, I used to be a staunch supporter, but these days I don't feel I owe Quark (the company) anything just because they used to be good. :mad:

Hey, Lobster, you took my reply too seriously. Sorry I didn't flower it all up with smiley faces. The gist of the fact is... it wasn't XPress' fault - it was Apple's font management. No harm intended.

macandy
G5 1Gb/160Gb 20in
G4 PB400 512Mb/6Gb
and proud of it!

Perhaps you should take it more seriously.
I'm sorry I can't see the humor when you imply (for absolutely no reason that I can see) that I'm a criminal on a worldwide forum with thousands of members.
How would you like it?