The Lexington Herald-Leader plans its first upgrade in 10 years to Quark's publishing-workflow software. What sealed the deal? Enhanced cross-platform support.The Lexington Herald-Leader, in Lexington, Ky., is looking to upgrade to Quark Inc.'s upcoming Quark Publishing System 3.5 because the new version supports Mac OS X more effectively than earlier versions have.
The Herald-Leader, with a circulation of over 140,000, is beta-testing QPS 3.5. The paper has been using QPS since 1995 and presently has a site license for over 100 seats, but it has not upgraded since Version 2.11.
Bill Pinkston, the newspaper's publishing systems editor, said the Herald-Leader did not want to upgrade until Quark made QPS fully compatible throughout the newspaper's mixed Windows and Mac OS X environment.
Click here to read more about QPS 3.5.
According to Pinkston, the newspaper wanted QPS to be natively compatible with Mac OS X because, unlike with earlier versions of the operating system, Mac OS X is highly compatible with Windows. QPS 2.11 (and Xpress 4.1 for that matter) runs only in OS X's "Classic" mode, and there have been problems with redraw issues that have bogged down the system as a whole, he said.
QPS 3.5 is the first version of Quark's publishing workflow software that works natively in Mac OS X, and the Herald-Ledger had delayed upgrading until Quark made that leap. Moreover, QPS 3.5 comes with several useful new features, Pinkston said.
In particular, QPS' new "jumps" feature, which in the case of newspapers enables to set jump points for articles broken out over several pages, is something "we have been begging Quark for some time," Pinkston said. QPS' new redlining feature, which can assign each user in the editing process a specific color to track changes within a story, also is helpful, Pinkston added.
QPS' upgraded notes feature is particularly helpful during the stages a story takes through the production process, said Pinkston.
"Once a story is filed, it routs to an editor who makes editorial changes. The notes, which are like pop-up stickies, note any changes in spelling, any fact checks [that accompany] the story all the way to the designer layout and pagination stage. You can add notes that follow the story throughout—anything from important phone numbers to putting [the story] on hold status, so that if you have a long-term investigative story, it doesn't get purged by mistake," Pinkston explained.
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In addition, Quark either is providing or working on certain modules the newspaper needs, Pinkston said. Through a module, QPS 3.5 is fully compatible with Hamilton, Ontario wire services provider, QuickWire Labs' newswire capture and management program, allowing it to separate wire reports into various categories, such as Kentucky News, National Sports and so forth.
Pinkston said that Quark, meanwhile, is working on a module that will integrate DeskNet Inc.'s text-extracting application with QPS 3.5, which the newspaper uses to extract text from QPS to use on the newspaper's sister Web site, Kentucky.com.
"That was our ultimatum to Quark. We couldn't go live [with 3.5] until that was solved. Quark is moving fast so that gets taken care of," Pinkston said.
The Herald-Ledger still has several tasks it must accomplish before it can upgrade the newsroom to QPS 3.5. It needs to upgrade the hardware of many of its Mac workstations, which adds additional cost to the migration. The newspaper also has yet to move to the template stage or to train its staff to use the application.
As a whole, though, Pinkston sounds pleased with the upgrade, adding that perhaps 3.5's best feature is its increased stability. "Its configure file is very stable. You can check it on the fly, something you can't do with 2.11," he said.
According to the company, QPS customers with up-to-date Quark maintenance agreements will receive the upgrade at no charge. Pricing for new customers is determined on a per-seat basis, with different price points depending on whether the potential customer purchases QPS Classic or QPS Enterprise, which offers added functionality and configuration choices.
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