[design] QuarkXPress 6.5 Release Imminent

The folks over at Quark, Inc are preparing to roll out thier next refinement to their flagship page layout program, XPress.

The new release, version 6.5, will be available free to registered Quark users, according to copious press releases displayed on the Quark home page. It will include not only QuarkVista, the XTension providing basic image geeking from within XPress (and not coincidentally, enable importing of native Photoshop files, according to the press releases).

XPress 6.5 will also include an XTension called QuarkXClusive, which allows for integration of databases to designs, resulting in customized outputs.

This will be well worth watching for. 6.5 will be Quark's first real answer to Adobe's InDesign insurgency. The concept of imagesmithing from within XPress without having to save out and re-edit would be an innovation for Quark. The idea of integrating database content with design is intriguing, but will it be recieved with as much indifference as, say, synchronized text was?

I anticipate the release of 6.5, and promise to publish whether or not I consider it worth showing up for.