Approaching its third birthday,
QPS is attracting both attention and new usersBy John Cruise

he past ...
In the late summer of 1991, about a dozen and a half Quark employees were summoned to a lunch meeting. In the preceding weeks, the buzz around the company was that something big was brewing, and there was a general feeling of excitement. It had been a little more than a year since QuarkXPress 3.0 had been released, and Quark's reputation - not to mention the company itself - was growing rapidly.

Quark president and CEO Fred Ebrahimi informed the gathering of software engineers,writers, graphic artists and technical support specialists that they would be collaborating on a project that would play a key role in the future of the company. Their task: to develop a full-blown editorial management and document tracking system around the company's flagship product, QuarkXPress.

Within a month of the initial meeting of what was dubbed "The CopyDesk Team," a smoke-and-mirrors version of the barely nascent software was demonstrated at the fall Seybold Conference. Over the next year, the software - or to be more precise, a suite of software components - began to take shape. The key pieces were a word processing application called QuarkCopyDesk that worked in tandem with XPress and a server-based application called QuarkDispatch that controlled the storage and routing of electronic files.

An editorial management and tracking application, the QuarkDispatch Planner, was added, as was another program, called QuarkDispatch FileManager, which automated the process of moving and deleting files after they are no longer needed.

Other software components included the QuarkDispatch Administrator application, for customizing system-wide features such as automatic file routing and revision control; the QuarkDispatch XTension to XPress, which links off-the-shelf QuarkXPress to the system; and QuarkConnect, a system-level utility that enables other DTP programs (including Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word and Macromedia Freehand) to be integrated into the system.

This suite of software components was to be called the Quark Publishing System, or QPS for short. (See sidebar "QPS Pieces" for more information about the QPS software components.) In December of 1992 QPS 1.0 was ready to make its debut.

"The old systems were ailing," says Susan Friedman, QPS product manager, of the circumstances that led Quark to create QPS. "There was a need for new technology. Basically, QPS was created because Quark's customers asked for it. Quark looked at the paradigms of proprietary systems with the aim of making something better, something that would let publishers create text and paginate within a single system and - more important - that, like QuarkXPress, was easy to use."

The new technology QPS 1.0 offered to Mac-based publishing sites included a number of powerful and previously unavailable features, including:

  • A set of integrated workgroup publishing tools that enabled writers, editors and page layout artists to work simultaneously on the same QuarkXPress document.

  • Real-time copyfitting for writers and editors; stories could be written/edited to fit their allotted space in a QuarkXPress document.

  • Customizable software that allowed sites with differing editorial and production processes to maintain their current methods.

  • File tracking and file management software.

  • The ability (with QuarkConnect) to integrate other DTP software into the system.

    But not all of the system's powerful features were new. Like QuarkXPress, QPS was built with an open architecture that enabled third-party developers to create XTensions for all of the applications. This means potential QPS sites that required specialized capabilities had the option to further customize the software with XTensions.

    Releasing a new product was nothing new for Quark. The company had rolled out QuarkStyle in 1989 and QuarkXPress for Windows in 1991. But it had become apparent during the development of QPS that this product was going to require a different approach.

    Nearly all popular applications are created with individual users in mind: one product box, one user. But QPS was created specifically for publishing sites with multiple users - and multiple job descriptions - who collaborate on printed publications over a network. Simply making an off-the-shelf version available through traditional software retailers wasn't going to work. The solution: the QPS authorized system integrator program.

    In a nutshell, Quark decided that specialized software such as QPS required a specialized distribution method. Any site that purchased QPS would need considerable guidance and hand-holding.

    Many issues had to be considered: Did the site already have a network and a network server? How would the transition from a site's existing production methods to QPS be handled? Which employees would use which software components, and how would employees be trained? These were issues that had to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

    During development of QPS, Quark put the word out that anybody interested in selling the software would be required to attend a week-long training course. Those who successfully completed the course would receive authorization to sell QPS. (Prospective QPS sites already using Quark
    XPress could "self-integrate" by sending a qualified employee to the training course.)

    By the time version 1.0 of QPS was ready to ship, a small group of system integrators had already been trained. Everything, it seemed, was in place, and all indications were that the timing couldn't have been better.

    By late 1992, the desktop publishing revolution that had started in the mid-1980s had matured into the desktop publishing industry, and QuarkXPress had become the pagination program of choice for publishers around the world.

    At many of these sites, a few Macs and a few copies of XPress had become many Macs and many copies of XPress. Sneakernet had been replaced by small, slow networks, which grew into large, fast networks. Keeping track of electronic files was becoming a universal problem, or more accurately, a universal headache. Yes, it was possible to piece together an editorial system, but often such systems depended on manual procedures, complicated folder hierarchies and cryptic file-naming conventions. Under such conditions, the potential for disaster was great. Something was needed to tie everything and everybody together.

    At other sites Macintoshes running QuarkXPress and other DTP software coexisted with large, proprietary editorial systems, but integrating old and new technology was problematic. Resourceful system administrators managed to put together "duct tape and baling wire" solutions, but they too were looking for a more integrated answer.

    Despite the need for new technology, QPS didn't exactly take the publishing world by storm in the months following its initial release. For a number of reasons - the power and complexity of the software, the price (which is significantly higher than individual copies of QuarkXPress) and a general lack of product awareness, even among XPress users - momentum was slow to build.

    Still, convinced that QPS had a bright future, Quark began to localize it for international markets. Within a year, International English, French, German, Spanish and Italian versions were produced. [Since then, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Swiss-German version have been added. Quark is currently considering a number of other languages...

    Read more about Quarks great QPS System in the latest XRAY Magazine!


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    Last modified: 10.12.1995