Xpress 7, due this year, will support transparency and include a new cross-platform graphics layer.QuarkXPress 7, the next version of Quark Inc.'s professional publishing application due for release this year, will include a completely reworked graphics engine and new interface that will, the company claims, be "much more modern."
Speaking to Publish.com, Gavin Drake, marketing director at Quark UK, revealed that the re-engineered graphics engine will support transparency—the first version of XPress to include this feature. Although Drake acknowledged that other publishing applications—most notably XPress' main rival, Adobe Systems Inc.'s InDesign—already support transparency, he claimed that Quark "is not the first, but we want to be better than anyone else."
Transparency in XPress 7 works at the same level as color, allowing users to apply a transparency effect wherever they can apply colors. This means, for example, that transparency effects can be applied to any object, including tables. The transparency features in XPress 7 also include drop shadows, alpha channel masks and opacity.
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Drake said that Quark, which is headquartered in Denver, is also committed to ensuring that the transparency effects in XPress 7 work as well as possible with a wide variety of RIPs, to ensure that the effect seen on-screen is replicated well in printing. Included in the product are intelligent flattening options, including the use of spot colors to make transparency effects work well.
As part of the work on the graphics engine, Quark will introduce X-Draw, a cross-platform graphics layer that sits between the graphics engine and either Quartz (on Mac OS X) or GDI+ (on Windows). This acts as an abstraction layer between XPress and the operating system's graphics subsystem, and should, in theory, mean that the company can respond more quickly to any changes in the underlying graphics architecture of Windows or Mac OS X. Drake said that it will also make life easier for third-party developers, as it will give them a single consistent graphics API for use in XPress.
However, Drake added that this use of a cross-platform layer will not degrade performance—instead, he claimed, users are likely to see an overall performance increase compared with previous versions of XPress.
QuarkXPress 7 will also see some major changes to its user interface, to give what Drake described as "a much more modern look." One new feature is palette groups, which will allow users to group palettes together, attaching, detaching and collapsing individual palettes within the group as required.
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Users will also be able to define palette sets—groups of palettes associated with particular tasks, such as color work, layout, or text editing—and switch between them quickly through user-defined menus.
Possibly the most significant palette change will be to the Measurements palette, which will become a context-sensitive palette that will allow users to access many features that have previously been available only through modal dialog boxes.
As the user hovers the mouse over the top of the new Measurements palette, tabs will appear that make available different functions depending on which objects are selected on the page, including items like a text tab, frame tab, runaround tab, and even a tab allowing tabs to be set directly on the page.
Drake reiterated that XPress 7 will ship "in 2005," but added that the company will be showing more of the product publicly over the next few months—including showing the product in more detail to major customers.
Graphics Tools 
