QuarkXPress Passport
The first version was released in
1987. XTensions technology, which allows developers to create custom software add-ons for
Quark products, was also introduced in 1987. QuarkXPress Passport is QuarkXPress with the
added ability to handle multiple language documents.
Although there are similar
applications for the home and small office market, such as Adobe PageMaker and Microsoft Publisher,
QuarkXPress has long been the dominant application for professional design of magazines
and brochures.
Adobe InDesign, launched as a
direct competitor, was slow to gather speed, but outsold QuarkXPress in 2002.
QuarkXPress' market share 8 times InDesign
However, even if this trend
continues, Quark's much larger installed user base would take years to erode. According to
Meryl Lynch in 2004, QuarkXPress' market share was still 8 times that of InDesign.
However, for much of its history,
Quark had a history of doing relatively infrequent new versions, and pricing them at a
high level. This, combined with public perception of former CEO Ebrahimi's attitude
towards the company's customers, has resulted in a strong negative feeling among many of
Quark's customers, which seems to be enhancing competitor Adobe Systems' ability to woo
people to try their competing software, Adobe InDesign.
Recent new versions of QuarkXPress
have emphasized web development features almost as much as print publishing, which has
frustrated some of Quark's traditional print users seeking feature parity with InDesign.
Since version 6.0 QuarkXPress offers
multiple undo/redo functionality, enhancements to the table, XML and web page features and
support for direct PDF output. Quark has said that it will not support advanced layout
features of OpenType before version 7 and also Unicode will be supported only in
QuarkXPress version 7.
New versions of the software
introduced new file formats. However, in order to retain compatibility QuarkXPress 5 can
save in 5 or 4 format, QuarkXPress 6 can save in 6 and 5 format and both QuarkXPress 5 and
6 can open QuarkXPress 3, 4, and 5 documents. Obviously, only QuarkXPress 6 can open
version 6 documents. This creates a number of problems for users trying to maintain
compatibility with each other and is holding back the upgrade process since a large share
of users still use Quark 4.11.
Comparisons with Adobe InDesign can be
found here:
http://www.creativepro.com
http://www.arstechnica.com
http://www.macworld.com
This article is licensed under the GNU Free
Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Desktop
Publishing.
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