Quark-InDesign-Quark workflow

[walchan99]

Hello,

I have InDesign CS3 installed under Snow Leopard at home. My school is working on a book project in Quark Express (I need to verify the version). I have been asked to proofread and edit the text, and can only do this at home.

I'm looking for some way I can access the editable text, then save it back in the original format for further work. Thought of acquiring Q2ID to get the document into InDesign, but not sure how to save/export to Quark format. Also, if there is a backward conversion, how will the double conversion affect the document integrity? Will it create extensive layout changes?

Alternatively, if I could operate on the text in ID, can I just save the text threads separately, and have the school import the text back into the original Quark document?

[blubbernaut]

Quark to Indesign to Quark conversion would be a really cumbersome and bad idea - there's no telling what you will lose in the process.

You can export story threads from Quark as text. If you were to do that, your best bet is just to open the text up in Textedit or something basic rather than import into Indesign and export back out again.

NOTE You will lose all of the font formatting by doing this, and there is no guarantee that things won't reflow when you reimport into Quark.

Why don't you do what the professionals do: print the book out and proof read and correct on paper! Then the designer/typesetter/you can make the changes crossing them off the hard copy as you go along. Safer, probably easier, and you'll probably catch more things on a hard copy than on a screen.

[walchan99]

Thanks, blubbernaut. I'll go with the text export and offline edit. Appreciate the risk of doing the multiple conversions back and forth. As for the paper edits, I'm very comfortable with that, but the folks doing the corrections don't follow edit marks too well, and I'd end up proofing it again! Thanks once again.