What is QuarkXPress 5?

It's been almost 15 years since the release of the first QuarkXPress. Since then, the program has evolved from an upstart wanna-be to the undisputed leader in the pagelayout arena. This January, Quark took the wraps off QuarkXPress 5.0, an upgrade armed with several useful new features the program’s users have been requesting for years. To our chagrin, OS X support isn’t among those new features.

Make no mistake about it, QuarkXPress 5.0 is a formidable program — but it’s also a mixed bag. If you see the proverbial glass of water as half full, you’ll find that the new features make a solid program even better. If you tend to see the glass as half empty, you’ll be disappointed that Quark didn’t push the envelope a bit further when it built QuarkXPress 5. If you reckon the glass is just twice as big as it needs to be, check out Adobe’s InDesign 2.0..., which beat Quark to the Mac OS X table and has a hungry eye on the old-timer’s lunch. (And it’s not just an OS X thing, either: We know a few OS 9 holdouts who prefer InDesign.)

Half Full: What's New in Quark 5

Tables: QuarkXPress has never had much in the way of table-making capabilities. In previous versions of the program, users had the choice of creating tables manually using tabs, paragraph rules, and lines — a laborious and time-consuming processor purchasing a table-making XTension (a third-party plug-in).

In QuarkXPress 5, you create a table as you would any other item: Choose the new tables tool in the Tools palette, then click and drag a rectangle that defines the table’s size and shape. Each time you create a table, a dialog box lets you specify the number of rows and columns and choose between text cells and picture cells. You can also create a table by selecting text and then using the Convert Text To Table command. (The Convert Table To Text command reverses this process.)

A table in QuarkXPress 5 is essentially a group of boxes. Once you’ve created it, you can modify it by splitting or combining cells; changing text cells into picture cells and vice versa; inserting or deleting rows and columns; and specifying width, color, and style for the grid lines and border. A table can contain any combination of text and picture cells, and you can modify individual cells much as you would text and picture boxes.

If you need no-frills tools for creating basic tables. Quark’s new table features are precisely what you need; if you’re looking for heavy-duty tools, such as those in Microsoft Word, you’re out of luck. For example, you can’t import tables from Word or Excel (unless you first save the table as text); you can’t specify the color of individual grid lines; you can’t automatically flow a long table from one page to another; you can’t make a cell transparent; and you can’t link text boxes within a table (this makes it particularly difficult to enter data), hough you can Control-Tab from cell to cell.

Layers: Most QuarkXPress users are already familiar with the concept of layers, either from using graphic programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator or from using third-party layer XTensions in previous versions of Quark.

The Layers palette in Quark 5 lets you create and name as many layers as you want. You can then show or hide and lock or unlock individual layers. For example, you can create an annotation layer with special printing instructions, and the printer can hide the layer when it's time to output the document.

The Layers palette displays the names of all layers in a document and lets you change the stacking order of a layer by Option-dragging it. Control-clicking a layer name brings up a contextual menu with commands for deleting, modifying, and duplicating the selected layer, as well as showing or hiding and locking or unlocking all layers. One handy feature lets you maintain the runaround attributes of a layer even if it’s hidden, so you can show and hide items on a page with the option to reflow text.

Web publishing: Version 5 greatly expands Quark’s Web-publishing capabilities. Not only does it improve upon previously available features (export HTML text, import PDF files into picture boxes, and export documents as PDF files), it also has a full-blown tool set for creating design-intensive Web pages, and includes the avenue.quarkXTension, previously sold as a separate product, for XML import and export.

Creating a Web document with Quark 5 is much like creating a print document; however, you must begin it as a Web doc (you can’t convert print to HTML format).

If you need to convert a print document Into a Web document, you can still do it the old cut-and-paste way.

Quark made several clever changes to the program’s features and interface to accommodate Web-page creation. For example, typographic features such as horizontal scaling, tracking, kerning, and baseline shift, which HTML pages can’t implement, are not available for text boxes in a Web document. For complex design elements, such as hand-styled text, stylized fonts, text on a Bézier path, and tables, you have the option to convert the elements into graphics (GIF, JPEG, or PNG) on export. If you convert a text box into a graphic, all typographic controls (horizontal scale, kern, track, and so on) are available for text within the box.

Quark 5 allows experienced users to create design-intensive Web pages that contain form elements with little additional training. On the other hand. Quark 5 is not a dedicated Web-page publishing program and consequently doesn’t have the breadth of Web-specific features you’ll find in programs such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive.

Half Empty: What's Not in Quark 5

Like a Swiss Army knife. Quark 5 is a versatile, feature-laden tool. However, several features are conspicuously missing, in particular the ability to run natively under Mac OS X (though it’s reasonably stable in the Classic environment).

Quark has explained that Apple’s release of OS X developer resources occurred too far into the development of Quark 5 to allow creation of an OS X-compatible version. On the bright side, the company demonstrated an OS X-native version of Quark 5 in July 2001 and says it remains committed to OS X. Quark has not announced a release date for this version, nor has the company said whether current users will have to pay for OS X compatibility.

Depending on your point of view, QuarkXPress is either aging gracefully or looking a bit long in the tooth. The program’s overall look and feel hasn’t changed much since the late 1980s, it doesn’t offer any controls for managing the numerous palettes, and it remains a clickand-drag-intensive application. No doubt the status quo and Quark’s ongoing continuity will reassure some longtime users, but others will likely leave Quark behind as they migrate to OS X.

Cruise, John. (May 2002). QuarkXPress 5.0. MacAddict. (pgs. 52-53).

Download QuarkXPress 5 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver