Quark XPress

Quark Inc.'s flagship desktop publishing application for the Macintosh. Launched 1987 — became the canonical Mac DTP app of the late 1980s and 1990s, displacing Aldus PageMaker as the professional choice.

Pi coverage

• 1987-08 — V09 N08 — ★ First Pi review — "Quark XPress: A Review" by Jay Rohr — Pi reviews it at launch
• Through later 1990s — XPress recurring DTP topic at Pi

Significance

Quark XPress's launch in 1987 coincided with the maturation of the Apple Desktop Publishing ecosystem (Mac Plus + LaserWriter Plus + PostScript + Adobe Illustrator). For the rest of the 1990s, "desktop publishing on a Mac" effectively meant "Quark XPress."

Later challenged by Adobe InDesign (1999) and gradually displaced through the 2000s.

Connections

• Apple Desktop Publishing
• dPub SIG
• LaserWriter Plus — the printer XPress targets