On the heels of its release of QuarkXPress 6.5, Quark has announced that it will ship QuarkXPress 7.0 next year.

Version 7.0 came up at the Macworld Conference shoot-out, where representatives of Quark and Adobe touted the features of their respective publishing packages and fielded tough questions from an audience of publishing professionals.

Aulakh also promises that Quark XPress customers will be able to import Photoshop files into XPress in only a few months’ time. “Not only do we have our own image-editing tools,” Aulakh told CreativePro.com, “we allow PSD files as well.” InDesign is not the only Adobe product that Quark is looking to gun down.

The Macworld Conference audience was also told to expect new evidence of Quark’s ongoing campaign to upgrade customer support. Look for Quark Particles the magazine, question and solution swapping at Quark Forums, and a “Let’s Talk” road show in cities worldwide. The road show gives customers a chance to ask more tough questions and to see XPress 6.5 features such as image editing and effects through QuarkVista Xtensions and Photoshop file importing and manipulation. New road show dates and locations are being added weekly at Quark.com.