QuarkXPress 7 Coming Soon?

[MacRumors]

According to Macworld.co.uk, Quark is gathering the press for an official launch event for QuarkXPress 7 at the Congress Centre in London on June 2. As the site notes, this is the strongest evidence yet that Quark is readying to ship version 7 of their over-due flagship desktop publishing application.

Quark has seen greatly increased competitive pressure from Adobe's InDesign in recent years. A recent Macworld.co.uk poll shows that consumers are split in general between the competing platforms.

 

[morespce54]

It's darn about time !!!

 

[CaptainScarlet]

The question is though...Will it have a universal binary?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Someone around here is attending that event after getting emails from Quark yesterday. Of course, the free food was the main attraction... but I expect some very interesting conversations to take place.

The question is though...Will it have a universal binary?

Yes.

 

[SFVCyclone]

If you work in Pre-press this is not a welcomed thing.

 

[longofest]

The question is though...Will it have a universal binary?

QuarkXPress 7 is indeed UB. See their website. It is in beta now, but should ship as UB. If it doesn't actually ship as UB, then it will be an update soon afterwards (kind of like Digital Performer 5 by MOTU in the music realm).

 

[snkTab]

According to Macworld.co.uk, Quark gathing the press for an official launch event for QuarkXPress 7 is the strongest evidence yet that Quark is readying to ship version 7.

Now that's a logical assumption.

 

[dizastor]

Too bad it's too late...

This sucker better really innovate to get anyone to consider it. All of the companies I've freelanced at over the last 2 years are either in the process of phasing out or already have phased out Quark completely.

I dread having to open a file in Quark these days.

Luckily my company recently purchased the wonderful Q2ID4 quark import plugin for InDesign. It works flawlessly 90% of the time.

 

[Daschund]

The question is though...Will it have a universal binary?

Quark said since the beginning that version 7 would be UB. They already got burned out enough when they took too long to release an OS X version and lost a ton of market share to InDesign.

 

[longofest]

According to Macworld.co.uk, Quark gathing the press for an official launch event for QuarkXPress 7 is the strongest evidence yet that Quark is readying to ship version 7.

Now that's a logical assumption.

Hey, you never can tell with Quark... they like to keep pushing crap back and pulling "Next Tuesdays" on us

 

[Blue Velvet]

There are two things I want to know: how much is it (or our site license) going to cost? And when is v7.1 due out?

When 6.0 was released, there were useful discounts for the upgrade for about a month or so but anyone who uses Quark day-in, day-out knows that they don't have a great track record on x.0 releases.

So... buy it straight away to save pennies but don't install it until the early adopters can show you their battle-scars.

Oh, and by the way. Yeah, we know Quark suxxorz and InDesign roolz...

 

[SFVCyclone]

Oh, and by the way. Yeah, we know Quark suxxorz and InDesign roolz...

If you're talking about Indesign CS1 then maybe yeah, but 2.o PSHHHHH, Theyre both on the same level really.

 

[babble]

I just hope this new version won'T ba as buggy as 6.5...

 

[Blue Velvet]

If you're talking about Indesign CS1 then maybe yeah, but 2.o PSHHHHH, Theyre both on the same level really.

Having used InDesign for a few freelance projects recently, I would respectfully disagree. InDesign offers a level of control over so many aspects of typography and layout that Quark 6 can only dream of dreaming of.

However, Quark has some nice features that are not replicated in the current release of InDesign.


My take:

InDesign — creatively-inspiring but a bit cumbersome and palette-heavy.
Quark — clunky but extremely fast in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

 

[Doctor Q]

My take:

InDesign — creatively-inspiring but a bit cumbersome and palette-heavy.
Quark — clunky but extremely fast in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

That makes sense. One (inDesign) is relatively new (in the geologic sense), full of features but not refined over as much time. The other (QuarkXPress) is more of a legacy product, fine-tuned over the eons but more set in its ways.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Too bad it's too late...

I dread having to open a file in Quark these days.

Quark 6 really burned our magazine's production department, so much so everyone kept using 4.01 under Classic. I won't even mention Quark 5, which we thankfully avoided using.

I wonder if 7 will ship with a letter of apology as well?

I'd add to Dr. Q's assessment of Quark vs. InDesign by saying that when I first started using InDesign, it felt "cluttered."

 

[lazyboy922]

Whoopty doo. This software is so late, I don't know if anyone would bother even using it. Most people have converted to indesign by now, unless they have been using Quark since the beginning. Indesign just goes so well with illustrator and photoshop, I think it would be silly to go back to Quark now. They really hurt themselves by taking so long to upgrade their software. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Most people have converted to indesign by now...

That's the perception but not the reality. Most estimates still put Quark at around 60% market-share. There is also some distortion in these figures due to InDesign being bundled with the Creative Suite.

The fat lady is still running through her scales...

 

[Starflyer]

Quark Is Dead.

 

[longofest]

Quark Is Dead.

If dead == still alive, then perhaps yes.

 

[sinisterdesign]

i've used Quark on & off for years, but i've never LIKED the program. it's always seemed clunky, it's needlessly slow to get some things done and the quickkeys always seemed cryptic. maybe that was b/c i'm so used to adobe's quickkeys, but nonetheless it's still a little bassackwards.

 

[Armaggideon]

QuarkXPress 7 is indeed UB. See their website. It is in beta now, but should ship as UB. If it doesn't actually ship as UB, then it will be an update soon afterwards (kind of like Digital Performer 5 by MOTU in the music realm).

I've gone through three beta releases of QXP 7 during the past few months and the third, which I'm using now is the best so far And yes, it is UB. I haven't had the chance to test it on an Intel Mac yet though.

Version 7 is miles ahead of 6.5, it supports Unicode, Open Type and other handy improvements, too many to mention here. I really dread using 6.5 and below, since I work with plenty of languages and it's hell trying to cheat the bugger to display any different script acurately. Not to mention the rendering, which kind of reminds me of Windows Unfortunately, many client source files are Quark, so I have to play along.

I throw party every time I get to work in InDesign. Sadly, some of the designers of the original files haven't bothered to upgrade their fifteen-year-old habits but such is life

 

[iGary]

According to Macworld.co.uk, Quark is gathering the press for an official launch event for QuarkXPress 7 at the Congress Centre in London on June 2. As the site notes, this is the strongest evidence yet that Quark is readying to ship version 7 of their over-due flagship desktop publishing application.

Quark has seen greatly increased competitive pressure from Adobe's InDesign in recent years. A recent Macworld.co.uk poll shows that consumers are split in general between the competing platforms.

If Quark only made PhotoShop. I'll be buying Quark 7 purely out of spite against Adobe - this means I go back to my Quark roots again after switching to InDesign.

 

[Riot_Mac]

If you work in Pre-press this is not a welcomed thing.

youre right! I hate Quark. We recently switched to InDesign and we are not looking back. Down with Quark!

 

[iGary]

If you work in Pre-press this is not a welcomed thing.

I've never heard one pre-pree person bitch abotu Quark.....ever.

I've heard plenty of bitching about InDesign.

I think Blue's comments regarding the two suites is dead on.