Quark today disclosed more new features of its upcoming flagship publishing application, QuarkXPress 6. It includes more flexible workflow options, Syncronized Text, enhanced output capabilities, better color management, improved table creation, more Web features, XML enhancements, and improved interface.

Quark Xpress 6 will include an innovative feature called "layout spaces", which will let QuarkXPress 6 users become more productive by sharing attributes and information in complex projects. A QuarkXPress 6 project can contain a collection of layouts that might include print pages, Web pages, or different versions of either, in varying sizes and orientations. Style sheets, colors, hyphenation settings, and lists can be shared among layouts.



It will also feature a new Synchronized Text feature lets users share content between layouts in a QuarkXPress 6 project. When synchronized text is edited in one place, corresponding text elsewhere in the project will be changed simultaneously.



Underscoring Quark's commitment to supporting standards and delivering the highest quality output, QuarkXPress 6 offers several output improvements for print-optimized layouts, including PDF creation technology has been incorporated into QuarkXPress 6. This allows users to output PDF files directly from QuarkXPress without having to purchase a license for third-party software. Version 6 also adds new support for the DeviceN color space, allowing users to output blends, multi-inks, colorized TIFF images, and other items as composite color while retaining spot color information suitable for in-RIP separations. Publishers can now retain spot colors in PDF files.



The new As Is color space feature allows QuarkXPress users to output for optimum color and also lets print and prepress staff control how color space conversions occur. Quark Xpress 6 also includes a convenient Layers tab in the Print dialog box provides a single point of control for outputting specific layers. It also provides a display of inks used.



QuarkXPress 6 broadens the range of table creation functionality to include the ability to control the flow of content by linking text cells within a table, linking tables to each other, or linking a table cell to a text box. Tables can have transparent cells and gridlines for placement over graphic elements, and tabbing order can be defined. QuarkXPress 6 tables can also be converted into a group of boxes that can be moved, rotated, and reshaped independently.



New Web features allow designers to to create Web designs and re-use print content on the Web. Print layouts can be easily converted into Web layouts, or designers can create new Web designs using the familiar QuarkXPress tools and interface. A variety of enhancements to rollovers, menus, hyperlinks, font family management, form control creation, and preview and export controls make Web page implementation faster and more convenient. It also includes new methodology for tagging XML content and it uses the industry-standard Xerces engine to parse XML, which provides more robust XML support and enhanced error handling.



Quark has also reorganized some menus for easier use, and included more useful commands in the context menus to facilitate rapid work. Version 6 lets users work faster and more confidently with an enhanced Undo feature, which supports multiple undo/redo capability and an expanded list of undoable actions. Users are also offere full-resolution preview of on-screen images, so designers can now scale or magnify images with minimal pixelation and position page elements more precisely.



Quark has not yet announced pricing or an anticipated ship date for QuarkXPress 6. The is available on its Web site.

by MacNN Staff