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Whether Quark regains the sta­tus of seri­ous InDesign com­peti­tor or sim­ply becomes to InDesign what PageMaker was to XPress–an aging but occas­sion­ally use­ful sec­ond stringer–will depend largely on what 6.5 holds. The half-step ver­sion needs to prove Quark’s com­mit­ment to the cus­tomer and what his work is about. The mar­ket needs from Quark a show of good faith.

Press Release
DENVER—July 27, 2004—Quark announced today its mem­ber­ship in Networked Graphic Production (NGP), an ini­tia­tive of lead­ing print indus­try ven­dors com­mit­ted to work­ing together to deliver seam­lessly inte­grated solu­tions that max­imise the effi­ciency and prof­itabil­ity of its joint customers…

Adobe, Macromedia, even Microsoft per­mits installing a sin­gle copy of their soft­ware on two com­put­ers for the use of one per­son with­out addi­tional licens­ing fees…

Highlights from Craig Cline’s cov­er­age of the recent high-altitude Quark Summit, held at 9,700 ft above sea level for large Quark customers…

Would I like to see com­pe­ti­tion remain in the lay­out appli­ca­tion mar­ket? Yes, whole-heartedly. Quark, Inc. only got as good as it did because it began as an upstart com­peti­tor to PageMaker. But I also believe in reap­ing what you sow. Quark, Inc. has stepped on its users and ignored them for so long because users had no other choice but QuarkXpress, that Quark, Inc. has become a real bad guy in the indus­try. I want to see Quark, Inc. finally real­ize the con­se­quences of its actions, just like every­one else. It would be good for the mar­ket if Quark, Inc. did so, then learned from its mis­takes and man­aged to stay alive to build a bet­ter application.

I don’t advo­cate the demise of Quark, Inc., I pre­dict it. There’s a major dif­fer­ence there.

Not only am I the top two hits on Google for “Quark Sucks”, but my opin­ions on the Quark-InDesign war are being quoted and ref­er­enced all over the place…

Fred Ebrahimi, CEO of Quark:

“

We’ve just announced QuarkXPress 7 will ship on November 1st, and XPress 8 will ship on December 20th…

Macworld Magazine, cover date September 2003, from let­ters to the editor:

Congratulations to Pamela Pfiffner for deliv­er­ing the most amaz­ing scoop I’ve ever seen in Macworld: Quark is com­mit­ted to its cus­tomers and giv­ing them what they want (”The World According to Quark,” June 2003)…

I’m still laugh­ing at Quark 6. I’ve seen it. I’ve played with it…

I won­der how long after ini­tial release it will take for them to release the 6.1 patch that makes it work