Publishing on multiple channels

Publishing Quark seizes the opportunity and steps on the gas on all fronts before porting InDesign to the Apple Intel platform.Apple's change of operating system from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X left the software company Quark behind. Since then, the Adobe Creative Suite (CS) software collection has been giving the Colorado-based software company a run for its money in the desktop publishing/page layout sector. With the CS 2 update, Adobe then upped the ante once again. Finally, in mid-2006, Quark released QuarkXPress 7, which Quark felt was urgently needed. The recent release of a version adapted to the new Intel processors, which Apple has been using in its computers since the beginning of the year, could prove to be even more important for the company.
For once, Quark is ahead in this transition, as QuarkXPress 7 runs natively on the new Intel Macs without any loss of performance. While Adobe's PDF tool Acrobat 8 has also already been adapted to the new chips, Adobe will probably need several more months to follow suit with Creative Suite 3.
Seizing the momentFor Quark, this situation is a good opportunity to make up lost ground. At the launch of XPress 7, Jürgen Kurz, Vice President Desktop Publishing Products at Quark, predicted that Quark would now be a force to be reckoned with again - and that other products would follow the main product XPress 7.
The company has now kept this promise. Firstly, the privately owned software company has been offering the "Quark Print Collection", a bundle for XPress 7 and Adobe Acrobat for professional document imposition, since mid-October.
This bundle includes four products: the program extensions Quark Imposer for QuarkXPress and for Adobe Acrobat as well as the smaller XPress extensions Quark MarkIt and Quark Item Marks. With these extensions, users can impose native QuarkXPress 7 layouts from QuarkXPress and PDF files within Adobe Acrobat 7 or assemble them in two, four, six and eight users. Various binding and page assembly types can be selected here, and settings can also be made for bleeds or binding growth, for example.
In contrast to other assembly solutions, the original or source files remain unchanged. The XPress extensions can also be used to place user-defined print marks or info text lines and logos.
A further step towards consolidating XPress 7 in the publishing environment is QuarkXPress Server 7, which replaces the previous Quark DDS server (see below). The technology should be available in the first half of November.
At this year's Ifra Expo, Quark also presented a preview of the latest update to its Quark Publishing System, better known by its abbreviation QPS. QPS 3.6 contains a number of new functions and improvements. Quark also showed a preview of the next version: "QPS Next Generation" is to be based on open standards and work completely platform-independently.
Interactive layoutsNow, however, XPress' competitor InDesign is enjoying great success, especially with advertising agencies. In order to attract this clientele (again) to XPress 7, Quark is breaking completely new ground with the new and already available Quark Interactive Designer tool.
The XTension Quark Interactive Designer, which is reminiscent of the QuarkImmedia offered by Quark in the past, has it all: Put simply, Quark uses it to integrate SWF or Flash technology into a classic DTP application without any detours. Normal XPress elements are used to create "interactive layouts": imported images, set text, created areas and shapes.
This is where the projects introduced with version 6 pay off once again: a print layout can be easily duplicated in an interactive layout with the new XTension and the data can be edited there directly. This makes the document the center for print, web and interactive content. At the same time, the user benefits from the Composition Zones introduced with version 7, which enable several people to work together on a layout designed for whatever purpose.
It can also be used to standardize/synchronize used elements: If a logo, an image, a color, a style or a text in the print document is defined as "Multiple-use content", then used in web or interactive mode and changed in one place, these changes are transferred to all elements used in all projects and linked to them. This is particularly interesting for companies that want to maintain a uniform corporate identity or simplify publishing for different media.
Three steps to SWF animationAnother advantage of using Quark Interactive Designer is that you don't have to deal with timelines and programming in the Quark environment. The creation of interactive or animated files is relatively simple.
The path to the target, i.e. the SWF file to be played in the Flash player or corresponding browser, involves three steps: First, the objects to be animated must be named; objects can be all Xpress elements, including a placed video or SWF, for example. In a second step, events are assigned to the objects; classic events include mouse clicks or rollovers. Finally, in the third step, the desired effect can be selected from more than one hundred actions.
>> Click on the image for a demonstration of the SWF animation.

The XTension can be used to create interactive buttons and animations or to integrate music and movie data. These functions are mainly made possible by the predefined actions mentioned above. Existing Flash, video and music files can also be integrated. This makes QuarkXPress 7 the only environment to date that can be used to create print and web content as well as interactive content without switching programs. This makes the layout program the first extended multi-channel publishing application.
The basis is XPress 7.02With an introductory price of 159 francs until April 1, 2007, Quark has positioned the Xtension Quark Interactive Designer at a very attractive price. Quark is also putting its XPress 7 publishing software in a different light and strengthening the main product. The prerequisite is XPress 7 version 7.02 - on Mac or Windows.
Important step: Dynamic publishing with QuarkXPress Server 7In mid-October, Quark
announced the launch of QuarkXPress Server 7, a dynamic publishing technology that leverages the new collaboration features introduced in XPress 7. Quark envisions the server, previously known as Quark Dynamic Document Server or QuarkDDS, as a foundational technology for producing Web-based or data-driven content. Based on QuarkXPress Server, data-driven applications can be developed to optimize production - and content can be published via multiple output channels. QuarkXPress Server, which includes the new features of QuarkXPress 7, can be integrated into existing IT infrastructures and is usually offered by system integrators as part of an overall solution. In conjunction with XPress 7, users benefit, for example, from the Job Jackets for collaborating on projects, the new features for printing variable data and optimized PDF output. Quark will continue to partner with software developers and system integrators to provide its server solution for catalog production, web-to-print and one-to-one marketing.
Flash and SWFOalthough they are often understood to mean the same thing,
Flash and SWF are not identical. Flash, which was developed by Macromedia and has been called Adobe Flash since the takeover by Adobe, is a proprietary development environment. SWF data is generated as the output format. The abbreviation SWF can be formulated as either Small Web Format or ShockWave Flash. This refers to vector-based animation data that can either be played in a web browser (with the appropriate plug-in) or in a special (Flash) player. Jürgen Franck