New York City ’s voguish SoHo territory is the setting for Quark ’s rollout of QuarkXPress 7 , the newest variant of its page layout software for Mac OS X and Windows . Quark Senior Vice President of Desktop Products Jurgen Kurz spoke to an audience of Quark exploiter , spouse and press at a keynote address that kick off a one - day training and mathematical product introduction issue on Tuesday .

The choice of SoHo as the event ’s venue was an obvious one , said Kurz . “ This is the heart and soul of the publishing industriousness , ” he say .

Quark itself turns 25 year old this year . The society estimates that well over three million copy of QuarkXPress have been licensed over the years , with more than five billion QuarkXPress papers in circulation worldwide .

QuarkXPress has picture its dominance as the leading pageboy layout package on the food market erode in recent old age , primarily thanks to challenger from Adobe ’s InDesign software program .

“ People expect me if I spend sleepless night worrying about Adobe , ” Kurz enjoin . “ I do n’t . I lie alive worrying about you . ”

keep back tempo with ever - change nature of graphical design and providing added functionality while improving performance and ease of role are key for Quark going forward .

“ This is our biggest upgrade ever , ” said Kurz . “ We ’ve add more than 160 new features to QuarkXPress 7 . ”

Better look

“ Everything simply look better , ” he said . QuarkXPress 7 has a completely rewrite nontextual matter railway locomotive that supply better image control and much tighter integration with Adobe Photoshop . What ’s more , QuarkXPress 7 features improve livelihood for OpenType fonts and Unicode multi - spoken language graphic symbol set .

“ We ’ve minimized palette clutter so you may operate faster , ” said Kurz . “ Almost all core excogitation functionality is now available in a dewy-eyed , lightweight palette . ”

Kurz demonstrated how QuarkXPress users could apply filters and make adjustments to layers in Photoshop document without having to open up Photoshop . With the acquisition of ALAP ( A Lowly Apprentice Production ) , no other software has the integration with Photoshop that QuarkXPress 7 does , ” he enunciate .

“ colour direction has been wholly redefined , ” said Kurz . “ user do n’t call for to be a colour scientist — colour management just works . After 20 years , WYSIWYG is finally a realism . ”

QuarkXPress 7 includes default management options and output setup that the companionship said should sour well in most situations . user can also create custom source and output setups , which can then be included in a Job Jacket , which help make color and other key elements of the page consistent from starting line to finish .

New key feature

The Job Jacket is a key feature of the new liberation . Kurz describes the thought of the Job Jacket as keep “ everyone on the same page from construct to press and pressing to concept . ” It go beyond pre - flighting , to help designers and press alike make certain that documents stay in compliance with specifications . Job Jackets are Extensible Markup Language ( XML)-based documents that practice the Job Definition Format ( JDF ) , an open monetary standard .

Another fresh feature in QuarkXPress 7 is the Composition Zone . Kurz explain :

“ The Composition Zone is a piece of real estate on a page — or several piece — that you could produce out to other users , ” he said .

partake in elements can reside in dissimilar layouts , but remained linked to their original source . When a architect , editor or someone else makes a alteration to that original shared capacity , the update happens in real - time .

Apple “ an authoritative family relationship ”

While QuarkXPress 7 ship this week as a PowerPC binary only , Kurz said , “ We ’re almost there . We ’re go at full speed to roll out the first Universal Binary professional layout program program . ”

“ The demo I gave today was done on the Universal Binary , ” aver Kurz . He added , express joy , that he would n’t have done so unless he had faith that the merchandise make for well .

Quark plans to ship the Universal Binary as a free update to QuarkXPress 7 sometime this summer . And to demonstrate the fellowship ’s commitment to Universal Binary keep , the six dozen or so systems Quark has set up in SoHo ’s Puck Building for Tuesday ’s hands on breeding are Intel iMacs , running the pre - unloosen Universal Binary version of QuarkXPress 7 .