Why is InDesign SO much better than Quark?

[eran]

We just spent 3 hours trying to troubleshoot a trapping issue on a Quark PDF. Upon importing into Trueflow images were generating white outlines and nothing was functioning like it should. After much head banging and as a last resort- each page of the PDF was placed into InDesign and exported as another PDF. The newly generated ID PDF operates perfectly and as expected. This isn't the first time something like this has happened and it seems to be a constant that Adobe generated PDFs run much smoother in general. I'm sure there are a ridiculous amount of variables at play here but how can these results be so vastly different? Aren't there standards to how a PDF is technically generated? Can someone help me understand?

Thanks as always!

Eran

[Santa]

Does not always help, put instead of exporting directly out of Quark as a PDF, we export out as postscript then distill it using Acrobat. I could be wrong, but I believe Quark uses "Jaws" to distill, while Indesign being an Adobe product, uses Distiller.

[eran]

Thanks for the reply. Our standard practice for quark files in-house is to use distiller which does works fantastically. I guess this is the sort of thing that stands to remind me why we do that. Out of curiosity, what is the difference between JAWs and distiller?

[William Campbell]

what is the difference between JAWs and distiller?

Distiller = a product of Adobe, the original inventors of PostScript, and inventors and continuing developers of the Portable Document Format. The true "original."

JAWS = an imitation, clone, copy of PDF technology. Couldn't say for sure, but I'd guess Adobe doesn't share PDF libraries with competitors, so they are left to reverse engineer code and hope their imitations are fully compatible. Apparently, not compatible in all cases.

That it uses JAWS instead of genuine Adobe libraries is probably the main reason XPress suffers today. For those of us in prep who must deal with Xpress, the best advice is to print PostScript and use Distiller to create your PDFs.

[eran]

Exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Thanks Guys.

[WharfRat]

The thing to check with Quark files and your trapping problems:
Quark has a default background of "White" in its "Picture Boxes".
So the picture is sitting on a white background.
When you run those files through a trapping application
the picture just sits there
while the White background of the Picture Box (underneath the picture)
"Spreads" out to trap with the surrounding objects
(producing the "White Line").
Always - set Quarks Picture Box "fill" to "None".

MSD

[eran]

That explains what I was seeing perfectly!
Now I haven't really seen the white spreading issue on Quark PDF's produced with distiller- Is that something weeded out by distiller but not JAWs?

[William Campbell]

When you run those files through a trapping application the picture just sits there while the White background of the Picture Box (underneath the picture) "Spreads" out to trap with the surrounding objects
(producing the "White Line"). Always - set Quarks Picture Box "fill" to "None".
MSD

That's your workflow, not XPress. Let me guess... CT/LW? White backgrounds for pictures are no issue for a PDF workflow using Adobe technologies (such as my choice of workflow, Agfa ApogeeX with the lastest PDF Print Engine). Adobe In-Rip trapping will see this XPress page and spread the surrounding color as it should (or image if so instructed).

[dsjprinting]

The thing to check with Quark files and your trapping problems:
Quark has a default background of "White" in its "Picture Boxes".
So the picture is sitting on a white background.
When you run those files through a trapping application
the picture just sits there
while the White background of the Picture Box (underneath the picture)
"Spreads" out to trap with the surrounding objects
(producing the "White Line").
Always - set Quarks Picture Box "fill" to "None".

MSD

That is not always true. When printing seps, we have found that raster images (mainly .tif) with a white area around the image will have a pixelated edge when the picture box is set to "none". It is much better to set the picture box to a fill of black set to 0%. If you need to have a transparent area around the image, then it is best to use a clipping path in photoshop.

[John Clifford]

Does not always help, put instead of exporting directly out of Quark as a PDF, we export out as postscript then distill it using Acrobat. I could be wrong, but I believe Quark uses "Jaws" to distill, while Indesign being an Adobe product, uses Distiller.

Just to be clear, InDesign does not "distill" it's exported PDFs via distiller. It uses Adobe Library to create the PDFs so it is never converted to Postscript. Postscript is no longer being developed by Adobe so distiller for newer applications would not really be applicable.