Beyond improving the workflow, QuarkXPress 7 is expected to include more layout features including an upgraded QuarkVista. QuarkVista, introduced as a free add-on in QuarkXPress 6.5, allows users to edit image files in its place in a Quark layout. All changes, such as hue, saturation brightness and darkness are done non-destructively so that the original resources can be reused. QuarkVista still cannot match the power and flexibility of Photoshop, and will likely be used to produce minor alterations only. Quark however, insists tools such as Photoshop are overkill for the print layout designers.
QuarkXPress 7 will also finally support OpenType, a feature absent from previous versions. OpenType, created by Microsoft and joined by Adobe, is a highly versatile scalable font format which is a competitor to Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). Support for OpenType is mainly though Microsoft’s Office Suite, although Adobe’s InDesign has incorporated OpenType since its first incarnation. Through Unicode-encoded fonts, the main advantage of OpenType is its foreign language compatibility. OpenType supports up to 65,536 glyphs per font.
Transparency has been one area that InDesign has always been superior to the current generation of Quark. QuarkXPress 7 promises robust transparency tools, but go about things different than InDesign. In XPress 7, every colour value is also assigned a transparency and opacity value. This means that every element on a QuarkXPress 7 page can have a level of transparency to it. This means one can stack layers of objects and defined when they will be opaque to each other.
Finally, Quark promises advanced colour management by building on work done by standards organizations such as the International Color Consortium (ICC) to promote a uniform approach to color management, and is working to bring the benefits of color management to designers and output specialists by simplifying key aspects of color management.
Traditionally, the biggest challenge of reaping the rewards of color management has been maintaining consistency over time and across diverse and changing workgroups. QuarkXPress 7 addresses the concerns of larger publishing groups by making color management settings portable and easier to set up, and promises to address the concerns of smaller shops by providing a well-tuned set of default color management settings. New, previewing options make it easier for designers to see what they're doing with color while they're doing it, preventing problems later in the process, and helping ensure accurate output.
