New features in QuarkXPress 7 are designed to make collaboration on the desktop easier.CHICAGO—Quark for the first time Monday publicly demonstrated the newest version of its flagship software, QuarkXPress 7, during a keynote presentation by Jürgen Kurz, the company's senior vice president of product development, at the Seybold Chicago seminar at the McCormick Place convention center.
The Denver-based company's publishing software debuted during Kurz's remarks, titled "Transforming the Business of Creative Communications."
Kurz said that the latest version of the software–the first significant revision of the program in two years—is designed to make collaboration on the desktop easier, more efficient, and more consistent.
"The enhanced graphics capabilities of QuarkXPress 7 make the design experience more satisfying than ever," said Kurz, who joined Quark Inc. in 1997 and is said to have played a key role in steering the development of the company's software since then.
"With creativity flowing this naturally, creative professionals can work together more effectively."
Kurz, who holds a media design degree from the Graphic Arts School in Munich, Germany, and a product marketing degree from the Industrie und Handelskammer, also in Munich, and who is based in Hamburg, added that with this new iteration of the software, "parallel workflows are a reality."
The software includes a number of new features including "composition zones" and "job jackets," said Kurz.
The new composition zones in the software now enable editors, artists and other creative professionals to work on the same page, at the same time, and automatically view each other's changes.
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This is a big change. Since digital desktop publishing debuted in the 1980s, editorial and artistic contributors to a magazine or newspaper or newsletter, for example, have had to wait for other teams to complete their work before they could complete their tasks.
The new job jackets enable workgroups to "share specifications across workstations," said Kurz.
A synchronization palette enables teams of creative professionals to ensure that design is consistent—synchronizing text, pictures, and other items and their attributes, he added.
New transparency features enable artists to specify the opacity of the elements that make up any item – text, pictures, blends, boxes, frames, lines, tables and the like.
If embraced by the publishing industry, the new composition zones may change the way that work flows from conception to production.
A newspaper publisher may have two users—from the graphics department—working on different parts of a page at the same time. One graphic artist can design a fractional ad, while the other creates the overall look for the page.
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Smaller publishers can use the tools too. A newsletter publisher can have a graphic designer position an article on the page, while the editor works with the copy to make it fit the space.
The job jackets will take job management beyond pre-flighting—and ensure that jobs adhere to specifications from the second they are created.
Projects are linked to synchronized, dynamically updated design specifications, including style sheets, colors, page size and page count.
The software even enables designers to pre-set specifications—eliminating time wasted by focusing work only on the content that will be included in the print run.
The software uses the JDF (Job Definition Format), the emerging standard for storing information about print jobs.
The developers hope that by incorporating the standard in their software JDF will emerge as a comprehensive communications platform for the publishing industry.
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"By delivering these tools, QuarkXPress 7 will help customers achieve their creative goals while managing their business efficiently," said Kurz.
The work that went into the creation of this latest version of Quark's software builds upon the efforts of the ICC (International Color Consortium) to promote a uniform approach to color management.
One user said that the new version of QuarkXPress 7 is a "leap" in terms of advanced functions for the company.
"We invited Quark to address the controversy that lingers in some users' minds--Is QuarkXPress 7 worth the wait?" said Cynthia Wood, content director, of Seybold Seminars, sponsor of the event in Chicago, which was co-located with the Print 05 and Converting 05 conference. "And will there be reason to move back to QuarkXPress from InDesign once QuarkXPress 7 ships?"
Koprowski is a 2005 Lilly Endowment Award Winner for his columns for United Press International.
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