Yesterday, Quark Inc. announced the release of QuarkXpress 5.0 for Mac OS and Windows. Unfortunately, the version of the ubiquitous page layout application released yesterday does not natively support Mac OS X. MacCentral queried Quark spokesperson Glen Turpin to find out how the company’s OS X support is going.
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First of all, Turpin wanted to make it clear that Quark is fully committed to Mac OS X, the current version of QuarkXpress not withstanding. “We’ve been pursuing parallel development with QuarkXpress 5.0 for Mac OS and Mac OS X for the last several months,” Turpin told MacCentral.
The Mac OS X version of QuarkXpress 5 has been Carbonized so it will run natively. Turpin could discuss neither specific feature differences in the Carbon version, nor details about specific OS X technologies supported in the OS X version.
Turpin noted that Mac OS X users anxious to try QuarkXpress 5.0 are welcome to do so, if they’re willing to run the software as a Classic application.
“The Carbon version of QuarkXpress 5 will be the next upgrade,” Turpin said. “There’s one thing we need to do before the Carbon version of QuarkXpress 5 is released: We need to launch QuarkXpress 5.0 in Europe.”
Turpin explained that Quark’s development team is working now on localizing and testing QuarkXpress 5 for the European market. Once that’s done, the Carbon version of QuarkXpress will receive their full attention.
Turpin also told MacCentral that Quark had not yet determined what the upgrade path will be for QuarkXpress 5 buyers who want to migrate to the OS X version once it’s released. “I think we’re going to include new features, as well,” said Turpin.
Quark isn’t yet offering a specific timetable for when the Mac OS X version of QuarkXpress 5 will debut, noting that as a general rule, his company doesn’t offer release schedules. “We’re taking a very aggressive development cycle. We want to accelerate the development of QuarkXpress for Mac OS X as much as possible,” Turpin said.