Quark To Launch New Mystery Product

Mum’s the word in Denver about what is described in a 4 October press release as “an inno­v­a­tive new prod­uct from Quark.” What is this new prod­uct? Quark declined to return my calls ask­ing for comment.

The new prod­uct could be almost any­thing. A num­ber of high pro­file pub­lish­ers have recent­ly announced their adop­tion of Quark’s pub­lish­ing work­flow man­age­ment sys­tems, Quark Publishing System (QPS) and Quark Dynamic Document Server (QuarkDDS). We could be look­ing at an add-on for QPS or QuarkDDS, maybe one that extends their pro­gram­ming sup­port and ver­sa­til­i­ty into the range of SOAP-driven InDesign Server.

MacExpo London could bring a Photoshop com­peti­tor, too. QuarkXPress has been los­ing ground to InDesign part­ly because of the tight inte­gra­tion of that appli­ca­tion with Adobe’s defac­to stan­dard image edi­tor and the bundling of InDesign and Photoshop into Adobe’s Creative Suite. A viable Photoshop com­peti­tor could boost XPress sales.

Last year Quark acquired A Lowly Apprentice Productions, a plug-in mak­er known for its exper­tise with Photoshop (ALAP’s tech­nol­o­gy became the PSD import and manip­u­la­tion tools in QuarkXPress 7). Quark has also been extreme­ly cozy with Apple since 2002, even bor­row­ing some of Apple’s pro­gram­mers for devel­op­ment of XPress 6.x and 7. Independent of Quark, Apple has been chip­ping away at the base of the mono­lith­ic Photoshop by bundling Photoshop-like and Photoshop-exact fea­tures into the OS X oper­at­ing sys­tem and Apple’s own appli­ca­tions. Other Apple devel­op­ments are erect­ing tents just beyond Adobe’s oth­er bor­ders, hint­ing that a con­cert­ed siege may be forthcoming.

Allying with Quark to top­ple Adobe’s sin­gu­lar hold on the pro­fes­sion­al image edit­ing and photo-retouching mar­kets would be a giant check in the win col­umn for both Apple and Quark.

Could the mys­tery appli­ca­tion be a consumer-level QuarkXPress-lite to com­pete with a rumored in-the-works InDesign Elements? Not like­ly. Quark’s just isn’t inter­est­ed in serv­ing con­sumer and pro­sumer mar­kets, and those mar­kets just aren’t as impor­tant to Quark’s con­tin­ued sur­vival as top-end pub­lish­ing and high-volume pro­duc­tion. (For the record, I don’t believe the rumors that Adobe is work­ing on InDesign Elements, either–at least, not such a prod­uct to be released any time soon.)

So, what could Quark’s new prod­uct be? It could be a lot of things, but I have a theory.

I think it’s a multi-media pub­lish­ing tool. Imagine QuarkXPress meets Dreamweaver, with (almost) one-button simul­ta­ne­ous out­put to HTML, XML, Flash, HTMLHelp, Windows Help for­mat, and PDF. Consider a QuarkXPress-esque WYSIWYG Web and elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment edi­tor with­out all the sil­ly lit­tle icons and dot­ted lines that mar Dreamweaver–an edit­ing envi­ron­ment with the sim­plic­i­ty and clean­li­ness of QuarkXPress and a for-print QuarkXPress doc­u­ment. Now add in an HTML/XML source edi­tor. Lastly, imag­ine if this new hybrid could also cre­ate PDF elec­tron­ic forms with tools and a user envi­ron­ment more famil­iar and intu­itive to cre­ative and pro­duc­tion pros than the Microsoft Access-inspired Adobe LiveCycle Designer.

On what do I base this wild the­o­ry? Quark’s own words of course.

In November 2005 Quark com­mis­sioned a sur­vey from Absolut Data Research & Analytics. At the time, Quark VS InDesign​.com report­ed on the sur­vey because it con­tained explic­it details about the fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty of the then as-yet (and still) unan­nounced InDesign CS3 and all of Creative Suite 3. Also in that sur­vey were sev­er­al ques­tions hint­ing at a pos­si­ble QuarkXPress-inspired Web design tool. The sur­vey even put forth a fea­ture list and pro­posed price–US$299–for the hypo­thet­i­cal application.

In a sim­i­lar online sur­vey last month from Absolut Data Research & Analytics, the same Web author­ing appli­ca­tion was dis­cussed again, in greater detail.

My the­o­ry is fur­ther bol­stered by con­fi­den­tial sources inside Quark who told Quark VS InDesign​.com that devel­op­er groups in Quark’s India and Switzerland offices have been spend­ing a lot of time learn­ing about HTML, CSS, and XML/XHTML.

While the mar­ket is hold­ing its breath for Creative Suite 3, when Adobe is expect­ed to make good use of its acquired Macromedia tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er a true mul­ti­me­dia pub­lish­ing plat­form with InDesign and InCopy at its core, such a pub­lish­ing sys­tem from Quark, six months ahead of Adobe’s expect­ed April 2007 CS3 release date, could steal some of the wind from Adobe’s sails.

Is any of this rel­e­vant? Is my the­o­ry of a Quark Web lay­out appli­ca­tion or xten­sions add-on suite for XPress cor­rect? Or, will we see Quark PhotoXPress, QuarkXPress Server, or some­thing else entirely?

We’ll know in two weeks.

Quark Senior Vice President of Desktop Products, Jurgen Kurz, will deliv­er a keynote pre­sen­ta­tion 26 October, 2006 at MacExpo London. Kurz will dis­cuss the lat­est devel­op­ments at Quark, pre­view sev­er­al prod­ucts planned for future release, and, of course, launch the next new Quark product.

Registration for the keynote pre­sen­ta­tion is sep­a­rate from reg­is­tra­tion to the MacExpo exhi­bi­tion. Quark notes that all keynote atten­dees will be giv­en com­pli­men­ta­ry access to MacExpo fol­low­ing Kurz’s keynote. First come, first served reg­is­tra­tion is avail­able at Quark’s European Website.