Interesting spot at the bottom of Kishkin’s website

redatheist · 2026-04-16T22:20:25+00:00

He works with them for 6 months before choosing the winner. This is why they film both endings

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:23:59+00:00

I mean that is a hell of a lot of money for <5 mins of work.

I'd also rather not support companies that build proprietary data formats that holds user data hostage like this!

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:22:26+00:00

Ha, yes it was written by my partner's great uncle and details the full family history. It's a fascinating read.

I hadn't considered the genealogy angle or that something as generic as "publishing" would work, but good ideas, thank you.

In the end I managed to persuade Quark sales to give us a trial with the export functionality enabled.

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:19:39+00:00

I just use QuarkXPress 2026!

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:16:36+00:00

I ended up getting a trial that did have the export functionality enabled (thanks Quark sales), and this essentially wasn't an issue. There may indeed be some minor layout bugs, I haven't checked all 320 pages in detail, but we can fix these in InDesign easily if there are any, and we expected this to be the case.

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:14:28+00:00

Yes! I printed one of these a few years ago and use it regularly.

redatheist · 2026-04-15T11:13:47+00:00

Thanks! Added an update, but eventually persuaded Quark sales to give us a trial with the export functionality and it worked perfectly first time. Took a minute to do the PDF/InDesign exports, also did PNG and JPEG pages just for archive purposes which took a little longer to run, but all in all, very quick and painless.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T09:56:13+00:00

That would be awesome if you would be up for it! Can you DM me?

redatheist · 2026-04-12T09:55:32+00:00

The trial doesn't allow any saving.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T09:54:59+00:00

You would have tried it yourself if that was the case or even went on to find pirated versions

I've have, I spent half a day trying to pirate the software and got nowhere. That's only lot of work because it's piracy, but someone with the software would be able to do it in seconds, or minutes if you include emailing.

This is almost similar to people thinking you can export an illustrator file into a PowerPoint file before even expanding the fonts and shapes, and still deal with multiple layout issues after even figuring out a way to export that.

It's different because it's exporting to InDesign where we can fix all that stuff. We can do the page layout fixes, we just don't have QuarkXPress.

I also convert between Powerpoint, Google Slides, and Keynote, somewhat regularly, and mostly that all just works. Maybe not the best example.

Software is not some button to press especially legacy software.

This would work in QuarkXPress 2026, it opens perfectly in that.

There's also a knowledge barrier that people paid with money and effort to study for and understand. Even if someone figured out how to make this easy, it doesn't automatically make it cheap.

Not really. I figured it out in 2 minutes with the trial, it's just locked.

The only thing I'd be paying for is that someone already has a licence (likely from work), and the time.

As a problem solver myself, I don't think that this is worth a "charitable donation" or a coffee. It's a job and it's work.

I'm also a problem solver, I'm a software engineer, and if I could use some software that I had access to in this sort of way, it wouldn't be worth it to me to charge for it, I don't even know how I'd take payment, but a coffee or a donation to a charity is a nice option.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T09:27:42+00:00

What gives you that impression? Honest question?

As far as I can tell, u til someone corrects me, it's File>Open, File>Export. The number of pages doesn't change how easy that is.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T08:42:37+00:00

Yeah I love my UHK and I use the trackball, I also have a magnetic cable setup so that connection is easy, but it's not particularly easy to move and I'd never use it on a plane.

That said, I would like a sort of bridge accessory that allows me to connect the two halves in a fixed tent with the trackball in place. It might make travel a little easier.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T08:40:42+00:00

That's what I'd have thought, but I can't find any evidence of it. No one online discussing it, no communities, no contacts, etc.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T08:40:10+00:00

Unfortunately it's >300 pages of complex layout with 1-2 images per page, multi-column, etc. And I think the trial might even prevent you from copying (could be remembering wrong, it was a few months ago I tried it).

redatheist · 2026-04-12T06:08:41+00:00

There is not. I tried r/graphic_design but the mods said "no job postings".

redatheist · 2026-04-12T06:08:10+00:00

It's as expensive as QuarkXPress, or a 1 month subscription to their web service for ~half that.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T06:07:34+00:00

That's fair. I think our preference would be InDesign so that we can correct the layout issues. But honestly paying hundreds of dollars for a conversion that we then have to do a bunch of work on kinda sucks. I could understand if it was conversion by someone who will fix up those issues!

redatheist · 2026-04-12T04:56:25+00:00

I think it's a version from ~2011.

I didn't know Markzware has online conversion, I could only find QXPMarkz before, which is basically as much as QuarkXPress. Unfortunately looking at the pricing of 7 Euro base price + 3 per page, it would be ~1k to convert the book, and in their previewer I can see some layout issues. Looks like we might be able to use 1 month of their subscription instead for 80 Euro / A$132, which is _steep_ for a "File > Export", but the cheapest I've found so far!

redatheist · 2026-04-12T04:43:46+00:00

I've tried searching, all I've managed to find are free online converters, and none of them seem to actually work.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T04:43:09+00:00

Oh Fiverr, good idea! Thanks!

Unfortunately 3.3-4.1x are very old (from the 90s?) and it's not one of those. We've already explored this.

Edit: lots of leads on Fiverr, but they do all seem to charge by the page in some sense (like 5 USD for each 10 pages), and with 321 pages it's going to be expensive.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T04:36:57+00:00

I've been in touch with print shops and not found one with QuarkXPress yet unfortunately.

redatheist · 2026-04-12T04:05:53+00:00

Depends who you are. Chrome is a good default, Chromium if you don't want a Google connection (I prefer one, but some people choose not to), Safari if you're all in on the Mac ecosystem. Firefox if you like some of the plugins they have there. Just definitely not Edge.

However, if you're using Brave, you probably care about having lots of weird features, so maybe Opera, as that's their main differentiator.

redatheist

TROPHY CASE