New Features in QuarkXPress 7 Will Provide Simply Faster Content Creation and Production; Quark to Extend Creative Communications Software on Platform of Open, Industry Standards.

PHILADELPHIA -- Quark Inc. today announced that it will further its commitment to collaboration and interoperability by building many powerful features of the QuarkXPress 7 software on open standards. The powerful upgrade will combine more design features with job-driven workflow capabilities and multi-channel publishing to deliver simply faster creative development and print production -- transforming the business of creative communications.

As a member of the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG); the International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4); International Color Consortium (ICC); the Networked Graphic Production (NGP) initiative; and the Print On Demand Initiative (PODi); Quark supports standards developed with customers and other vendors to serve the needs of creative communications industries.

Job-driven workflow automation

QuarkXPress 7 will provide simply faster production, enabling creative and output professionals to define job parameters that provide centralized control and streamline design, layout, and production processes.

Built on industry-standard JDF, QuarkXPress 7 will allow users to set specifications to control a job from start to finish using a Quark Job Jacket. A Quark Job Jacket will incorporate detailed workflow and prepress information directly into a QuarkXPress project. This will help control every aspect of the publication, from design to output and beyond.

A Quark Job Jacket is a container for all the specifications for an entire print publishing process. It contains the information about the job itself, contact information, resources required, layout intent, rules, output specifications, and more. All the guidelines, rules, and settings for all the processes will be saved in the Quark Job Jacket to prevent errors during the publication's creation and output processes.

Centralized job jackets will let art directors, marketing managers, and print service providers specify parameters for design, content, production and output -- providing control and consistency from job initiation to final production. Changes in project specifications will be made to the job jacket and will be automatically updated to all projects that use the job jacket as a resource.

Quark Job Jacket elements in QuarkXPress will be compatible with JDF elements; they can be mapped to JDF elements and vice versa. JDF is an XML-based file format that provides control over and automation of print publishing production and streamlines information exchange between applications and systems.

QuarkXPress 7 will also offer comprehensive rule-based preflight capabilities to ensure that files are output-ready at any point in the design process.

Further streamlining production and eliminating duplicated effort, QuarkXPress 7 will provide instructions that ensure that all the elements needed for production -- fonts, colors, images, and more -- are automatically embedded with the output file for right-the-first-time, every-time printing with PDF/X compliant output.

Multi-channel publishing and content personalization

QuarkXPress 7 will help content creators publish multiple print and Web layouts, quickly and reliably, from the same content. Users will be able to create multiple document types, sizes, and media; leverage and reuse any content, image or design element; streamline development processes through open standards; and take advantage of one-to-one content personalization.

QuarkXPress 7 will allow creative professionals to design compositions that can be merged with content from different sources and create output to send to presses with minimal prepress production costs. Support for output in Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML) will add database publishing features to QuarkXPress 7. In PPML, all the static content, multiple instances of same static content, synchronized content, and master page elements will be recognized as reusable objects, drastically improving throughput time.

The ability to automate database publishing through industry-standard PPML support will make QuarkXPress 7 the ideal tool for creating graphically rich, personalized communications materials based on variable data.

More design features

QuarkXPress 7 will provide tools for simply faster creativity, combining the latest design features in an intuitive, standards-compliant product. The release will have new and enhanced features to control transparency, images, and colors; and to accurately visualize graphics and work with OpenType fonts.

With new transparency features to be included in QuarkXPress 7, users will be able to specify the opacity of the elements that make up any items or content in QuarkXPress -- text, pictures, blends, boxes, frames, lines, tables, and more. QuarkXPress 7 will have greater control over transparency than other applications by managing opacity levels for any color element of an object rather than on an object-by-object basis. The transparency features will also enable the creation of dynamic, soft drop shadows, as well as the ability to mask pictures with soft edges using alpha channels -- including native Photoshop transparency in PSD or TIFF format.

To enhance color management in QuarkXPress, new controls will improve on-screen simulations for soft proofing. For example, users will be able to preview how RGB prints to CMYK on-screen or how CMYK prints in grayscale. Creative professionals will be able to manage their source colors and output specifications within the QuarkXPress software. Quark will make color management simple so more users will be likely to embrace it and start benefiting from soft proofing.

QuarkXPress 7 will expand its access to special characters through Unicode support, OpenType support, and interface improvements that make it easy to insert special characters without looking up keyboard commands or resorting to third-party software. The release will offer full support for the multitude of characters and typographic features built into OpenType fonts, including special characters and fonts required by different languages.

Open file format

Quark has also opened the QuarkXPress project by creating QuarkXPress Markup Language (QXML), a DOM schema for QuarkXPress projects. The structure of the QuarkXPress project is defined according to W3C DOM and XPath specifications so that developers can easily access, update, and create QuarkXPress project elements.

DOM makes all the content of a QuarkXPress project available as XML, which allows any application that understands the schema of a QuarkXPress project to access the QuarkXPress data and process it; it is a live representation of QuarkXPress projects as XML.

About Quark

Quark Inc. (www.quark.com) is a leading developer of tools and technologies for collaborative content workflows from the desktop to the enterprise. Quark has been providing award-winning software for professional publishers since its flagship product QuarkXPress changed the course of traditional publishing. Today, as Quark software is used by millions of customers around the world, the company is guiding the creation of vital open standards to promote productivity and interoperability throughout the industry. With a new generation of products and solutions, Quark is helping its customers create, manage, personalize, and distribute content to a variety of media formats and devices at low cost. Founded in 1981, Denver-based Quark Inc. is privately held.