QuarkXPress 2017 on Mac OS Sierra
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Developer(s) | Quark, Inc. |
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Initial release | March 31, 1987 |
Stable release | 2017 (13.0.2) (July 15, 2017 | )
Operating system | Classic Mac OS, macOS, Microsoft Windows |
Available in | multilingual |
Type | Desktop publishing |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www |
QuarkXPress is desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and published by them.
The most recent version, QuarkXPress 2017 (internal version number 13.0), allows publishing in English ("International and U.S.") and 36 other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Korean, Russian, French, and Spanish.
QuarkXPress is used by individual designers, large publishing houses and corporates to produce a variety of layouts, from single-page flyers to the multi-media projects required for magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and the like. The more recent versions have added support for ebooks, Web and mobile apps. QuarkXPress once dominated the market for page layout software, with over 95% market share among professional users. As of 2010, one publisher estimated that US market share has fallen to below 25% and Adobe InDesign has become the market leader, although QuarkXPress still had significant market share.
The first version of QuarkXPress was released in 1987 for the Macintosh. Five years passed before a Microsoft Windows version (3.1) followed in 1992. In the 1990s, QuarkXPress became widely used by professional page designers, the typesetting industry, and printers. In particular, the Mac version of 3.3 (released in 1996) was seen as stable and trouble-free, working seamlessly with Adobe's PostScript fonts as well as with Apple's TrueType fonts.
In 1989, QuarkXPress incorporated an application programming interface called XTensions which allows third-party developers to create custom add-on features to the desktop application. Xtensions, along with Apple Computer's HyperCard, was one of the first examples of a developer allowing others to create software add-ons for their application.
Although comeptitors like PageMaker existed, QuarkXPress was so dominant that it had an estimated 95% market share during the 1990s. After QuarkXPress 3.3, QuarkXPress was seen as needing significant improvements and users criticized it for its overly long innovation cycles.