QuarkXPress 7 Built On Open Standards

Quark Inc will further its commitment to collaboration and inter-operability by building the forthcoming QuarkXPress 7 software on open standards.

Quark Inc will further its commitment to collaboration and inter-operability by building the forthcoming QuarkXPress 7 software on open standards.

The upgrade will combine more design features with job-driven workflow capabilities and multi-channel publishing to deliver simply faster creative development and print production - transforming the business of creative communications, said Quark.

QuarkXPress 7 will provide tools for simply faster creativity, combining the latest design features in what the company described as an intuitive, standards-compliant product that's accepted everywhere.

The forthcoming release will have new and enhanced features to control transparency, images and colours and to accurately visualise graphics and work with Opentype text.

With new transparency features in QuarkXPress 7, users will be able to specify the opacity of the pixels that make up any items or content in QuarkXPress - text, pictures, blends, boxes, frames, lines and tables.

QuarkXPress 7 will have greater control over transparency than other applications by managing opacity levels for any colour rather than on an object-by-object basis.

The transparency features will also enable the creation of automatic feathered drop shadows and alpha channels for masking pictures, said Quark.

To enhance colour management in QuarkXPress, new controls will improve on-screen simulations for soft proofing.

For example, users will be able to preview how RGB prints to CMYK on-screen or how CMYK prints in greyscale.

Creative professionals will be able to judge colours on-screen better, with fewer surprises on the press, added the company.

QuarkXPress 7 will expand its access to special characters through Unicode and Opentype support and interface improvements to insert special characters without looking up keyboard commands or resorting to third-party software.

The new release will offer full support for the multitude of characters built in to Opentype fonts, including special characters and fonts required by different languages, it is claimed.

The update will provide faster production, enabling creative and output professionals to define job parameters that provide centralised control and streamline design, layout, and production processes.

Built on industry-standard JDF, QuarkXPress 7 will allow users to set specifications to control a job from start to finish using a Quark Job Jacket, which incorporates detailed workflow and pre-press information directly in to a QuarkXPress project.

That helps control every aspect of the publication, from design to output added Quark.

A Quark Job Jacket is a container for all the specifications for an entire print publishing process.

It contains the information about the job itself, the resources required, rules, schedule, and tasks.

All the guidelines, rules, and settings for all the processes are saved in the Job Jacket to prevent errors during the publication's creation and output processes.

The company believes that centralised job jackets let art directors, marketing managers, and print service providers specify parameters for design, content, production and output - providing control and consistency from job initiation to final production.

Changes in project specifications can be made to the job jacket and will be automatically updated to all projects that use the job jacket as a resource.

Job Jacket elements in QuarkXPress are said to be compatible with JDF elements - they can be mapped to JDF elements and vice versa.

QuarkXPress 7 will also offer rule-based pre-flight capabilities to ensure that the file is output-ready, at any point in the design process.

It is also said to provide the instructions that ensure that all the elements needed for production - fonts, colours and images are automatically embedded with the output file for right-the-first-time, every-time printing with Certified PDF/X output, said the company.

The software will help content creators publish multiple print and web layouts, quickly and reliably, from the same content.

Users will be able to create multiple document types, sizes, and media, re-use any content, image or design element, streamline development processes through open standards and take advantage of one-to-one content personalisation.

QuarkXPress 7 will allow design compositions that can be merged with content from different sources and create output to send to presses with claimed minimal pre-press production costs.

Support for output in personalised Print Markup Language (PPML) adds the features of database publishing to QuarkXPress 7.

In PPML, all the static content, multiple instances of same static content, synchronised content and master page elements will be recognised as reusable objects and saved in the memory.

The ability to automate database publishing through industry-standard PPML support will make QuarkXPress 7 suitable for creating graphically rich, personalised communications materials based on variable data believes Quark.

Quark said that it has also opened the QuarkXPress file format by creating QuarkXPress Markup Language (QXML), a DOM schema for QuarkXPress projects.

The structure of the QuarkXPress project is defined according to DOM so that developers can easily access, update and create QuarkXPress project elements.

DOM exports the QuarkXPress project as XML, which allows any application that understands the schema of a QuarkXPress project to access the QuarkXPress data and process it.

The application that accesses the QuarkXPress schema can be running on any platform and using any language.

In brief, it is a live representation of QuarkXPress projects as XML.

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