Last week Quark released [1] QuarkXPress 6.5, a hint, an intimation, perhaps even a promise, of where Quark 7 may take us next year. The 6.5 upgrade, available free of charge to all registered Quark 6 users, has new features, though none of them insurgent. Not in today’s desktop publishing dominated by the agile, feature-packed InDesign. For Quark, however, the new features are something to behold.

• QuarkVista, a new Xtension providing basic image editing functionality from within Quark. Features include adjusting color balance, levels, brightness, contrast and effects filters. Additionally, like InDesign and Illustrator, effects are non-destructive and can be edited or removed at any time.
• Native import of Photoshop files, which actually trumps InDesign’s support for Adobe’s own PSD file format. Unlike InDesign, which treats placed PSDs as a solid, flattened image without affecting the content of the image, QuarkXPress 6.5 actually grants access to the layers of a multi-layer PSD, including turning them on and off just like within Photoshop itself. Moreover, layer opacity and blending mode can be changed, channels can be assigned to print as spot colors, and clipping paths can be selected—all from within Quark. The secret is [2] ALAP’s PSD Import plugin, once available as a standalone third-party plugin, fully integrated into XPress 6.5.

  Note: The PSD import feature isn’t yet available for Quark 6.5. ALAP hasn’t yet finalized its development. Quark expects to make it available in the first quarter of 2005.

• For OS X Quark users who output to HP Indigo presses, 6.5 includes an upgrade to the variable data publishing Xtension, QuarkXClusive. The new version adds support for PPML-T, increasing compatibility with models of the HP Indigo digital press.

• In response to the growing use of enterprise-level deployment sofware, which enables running of applications installed on a server across the network on standard or even non-harddrive client systems, 6.5 and Quark License Administrator have been optimized for Citrix Metaframe, the most popular deployment system.
• The ability to group tables with, and like, any other object has been added to 6.5.
• OPI and bleed can now be set in print styles using certian Xtensions.
• Quark claims the overall reliability and stability of QuarkXPress has been “improved” with 6.5
• Cross-promotion value-adding is also a big part of 6.5, with professionally design layout templates from Stock Layouts, demo versions of Creo Token and Insider Font Agent Pro, and a non-charge, downloadable bundle of Linotype fonts.
• Users can now place guides on a master pages’s pasteboard and they automatically appear on document pages.

Exciting as they are, more interesting than the features themselves is the fact that they are wrapped in a free half-step update rather than in a full version upgrade for which Quark can—and would previously—charge.

Is this the kinder, more customer-focused Quark realizing that past practices of nickel-and-diming customers isn’t the path to inspiring loyalty? Or is this a nervous Quark desperately playing catch up with InDesign’s features to slow the hemorraging of XPress’s user base?

If the intent was to polish the rusted brand image of Quark, none of the new 6.5 features will do that. Quark hasn’t innovated anything. The greatest feature of the update is the native Photoshop PSD import and manipulation functions, which Quark didn’t create; ALAP did. Following closely on the heels of PSD import is QuarkVista, a virtual mirror of InDesign’s native features and another ALAP plug-in,[3] InEffects for InDesign.

So the two greatest marketing points of 6.5 are someone else’s work. The rest are no-brainer tweaks that should have been in Quark years ago and minor enhancements, often building off someone else’s technology, as in the case of the XClusive Xtension to make use of HP’s Indigo workflow. Partnership and licensing from ALAP, Linotype, and others, is not innovation.

But then, innovation isn’t a word most QuarkXPress users have associated with the Denver-based company in a very long time—unless you count [4] erecting a city in its own name.

Most long-time Quark users would charge that Quark hasn’t innovated since the introduction of QuarkImmedia, the suite of xtensions for multimedia export of Quark documents, originally released in the mid-90s. Features like the new tables tool (introduced in Quark 5) and multiple layouts in a single document are examples of Quark ingenuity.

But tables wasn’t an idea thought up by Quark, it was a feature added to catch up with table features already present in InDesign, and, as part of a separate bundled application, in PageMaker for ten years. Creating multiple layouts—complete with different page dimensions, layers, and content—for print and/or Web use, and the ability to sychronize text between them was indeed highly ingenious, and Quark should be commended for its efforts here. But, does this one feature justify the expense of a new copy of XPress?

Ever since winning the first Desktop Publishing War against Aldus’s PageMaker in the early 90s, Quark has been stagnant. Bug fixes are few and far between—some decade old bugs have yet to be fixed—and remarkable or even highly useful new features are even scarcer.

Quark 7, tentatively due Summer 2005, is rumored to be called inside Quark HQ “the InDesign Killer,” in reference to the media’s moniker for InDesign, “the Quark Killer.” So far the news leaked about the expected feature set of 7, however, still bears no stamp of innovation. Competitive seems to be the operative phrase around the Quark development camps in Denver and India.

Allegedly targetting feature parity with InDesign, 7 may not introduce anything innovative at all—especially if Adobe holds to its intended Creative Suite release schedule. If so, InDesign 4 should precede Quark 7 by two or three months, which would render Quark 7’s feature parity with InDesign 3 (CS) moot.

If Quark’s goal is indeed to play catch up with InDesign’s innovation, the once king of the digital publishing world will find itself relegated to the dreaded “alternative choice” circle beside Ottawa-based Corel.

With the exception of Painter, a natural media graphics application it acquired as part of the purchase of Kai Krause’s Metacreations, Corel’s entire stable of creative and office programs have always been low-market share second-stringers. From WordPerfect, which has at last count a 7% installed market share against Microsoft Word’s 92%, to PhotoPaint, a strong and swift anchor running always one lap behind industry-standard image editor Adobe Photoshop, Corel is constantly playing feature catchup with the big boys.

If Quark is going to play the same game with InDesign in hopes of retaining users who would rather wait 12-18 months for features than learn a new program, it will be in friendly company. But odds are it won’t last too long with that strategy. It nearly did in Corel, and Corel has a whole selection of applications for different workflows; Quark is a one-trick pony.