QuarkXpress is  Desk Top Publishing (DTP) software for creating and editing WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) complex pages.  It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and published by them.

QuarkXPress' users are designers, publishing houses and corporates who produce, for example, single page flyers, multi-media for magazines, newspapers and catalogues.

The first version of QuarkXPress was released in 1987 for the Macintosh then Microsoft Windows version (3.1) in 1992. It runs on macOS and Windows.

QuarkXPress was widely used by professional page designers, the typesetting industry, and printers in the 1990s. Mac version of 3.3 (released in 1996) was very reliable and working seamlessly with Adobe's PostScript fonts and Apple's TrueType fonts. Quark's support of AppleScript  was a key success factor for both Quark and AppleScript.

In 1989, QuarkXPress included XTensions, an application programming interface (API), which allowed other developers to create custom add-on features to the desktop application. XTensions and Adobe's Photoshop plugins, were early examples of a mainstream Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) allowing other ISVs to create software add-ons.

Although there were other competitive products like PageMaker, QuarkXPress had an estimated  ~95% market share during the 1990s. After QuarkXPress 3.3, QuarkXPress was seen as needing significant improvements and time to market was poor.

QuarkXPress provides the basic functionality of font, alignment, spacing, and colour, however,  for professional typesetting it also has functions such as kerning, curving text along a line, and ligatures. A QuarkXPress document contains text and graphics boxes,  which can be reshaped, layered, and given varying levels of transparency and text alignment (runaround). Box positioning and graphic or text positioning within a box has an accuracy of one-thousandth of an inch and colour control for printing-press standard Pantone or Hexachrome inks, and other colour-space options. Draft output can be printed on conventional desktop printers and final process color separation films in Cyan Magenta Yellow Black (CMYK) for printing-presses. QuarkXPress enables composite work-flows, both with PostScript and PDF output.

SUMMARY OF VERSIONS for QuarkXPress 3:

QuarkXPress 3 (1990) – First version with measurement palette and support for libraries

QuarkXPress 3.1 (1992) – First version to also support Windows

QuarkXPress 3.2 (1993) – First version to support Applescript and color management.

QuarkXPress 3.3 (1996) – First version to support PowerPC natively. First Passport Version (optional).

QuarkXPress 3.32 (1996) – Support for QuarkImmedia. This is the last version which works on Windows 3.x 

 QuarkXPress 3.31 is for the Apple Power Macintosh first generation and Reduced-Instruction-Set- Computer (RISC). In addition to all the features of QuarkXPress 3.3 for Macintosh, this Power Macintosh version includes QuarkPrint, XTensions from Quark, fonts, sample Quark Libraries, ......

The software covers photo editing and computer graphics creation. Also included with the software is Eficolor, which allows for colour matching calibration and management over multiple screens.

Platform: Apple Power Macintosh CD-ROM drive

               Mac OS System 7.1.2 or greater

Application Software (AS:) Desk Top Publishing (DTP)

Version: 3.31

Related Items in the Collection:

Publish It! 2

QuarkXpress 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 For Macintosh

Aldus Pagemaker (version 5.0)

Adobe PageMaker 6.0

QuarkXPress 4.0

QuarkXpress 4.1

Textease 2000

IBM ViaVoice Millenium Edition for Macintosh

Adobe InDesign 2.0

Information About Quark: