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Quark is preparing to cement its lead in the professional desktop publishing space, by beating rival Adobe’s InDesign at its own game by expanding native support for Illustrator and Photoshop files, according to information discovered by Apple Insider.
QuarkXPress 8, the first update of the two professional suites to natively support Leopard, is expected to launch in August with Quark promising that any purchases of the current version between now and August 1st will receive a free upgrade when version 8 launches.
Adobe was recently forced to admit that its latest version of InDesign is suffering from continued instability that can cause the program to crash without warning, and that is currently no work around for the issue – something Quark is hoping to capitalise on.
The new version of Quark will feature a revamped design along with more intuitive keyboard shortcuts, with them expected to fall into line with productivity software such as Microsoft Office.
It will also come with resizable thumbnails allowing users to more easily swap between pages. It is also expected to come with more standardised Beizer pen tools, designed specifically to reduce designer’s reliance on Adobe’s Illustrator according to people close to the upcoming marketing push.
Quark is also expected to expand on the Picture Content Tool, which debuted in the current version, to reduce the need to use Photoshop to do basic image editing tasks.
Source: AppleInsider
