New licensing deal expands document import-export possibilities for future QuarkXPress versions, including XPSQuark, Inc., the venerable page-layout software developer and longtime Adobe nemesis, has announced in conjunction with Global Graphics that the company has licensed Global's eDocument Library for integration in future versions of XPress.
Previously, Quark had licensed the Jaws PDF Library, which enabled PDF export for prepress files, thus giving XPress users the ability to generate high-quality, prepress-ready PDFs from within QuarkXPress without having to purchase Acrobat. This upgrade, in layman's terms, throws open the door for Quark, among other things—keep in mind nothing's been formally announced yet—to offer XPS import and export in its popular page-layout application, among other things.
Global Graphics chief technology officer Martin Bailey says that there hasn't been a whole lot of call for XPS in the prepress world yet, but the Microsoft PDF alternative (developed with Global Graphics as a consultant) will likely pop up on printers' radar in coming years as more and more people migrate to Windows Vista and beyond.
That will leave printers with a dilemma, Bailey says: Process XPS files natively or convert them to PDF at some point in the workflow, both of which have their potential pitfalls, the latter "an accident waiting to happen," as he puts it.
XPS will probably find its way first into workflows at shops like Kinko's and Staples, where office workers might bring in presentations or wide-format jobs for small distribution. Retail stores that offer business printing services and small commercial quick-printers will probably be the first to have to deal with the file format.
"[It's] growth out in that direction we're expecting to see, over time," Bailey says, adding that some printers might even start asking for files in XPS format and make the PDF conversions themselves instead of requiring customers to do it and potentially create problematic files. "It makes customer education really simple, it guarantees the printer can do something with the file, it avoids a lot of internal work . . . and it reduces the likelihood that a customer will simply walk away because you can't handle their file."
The eDocument Library also supports layers and transparency more fully than previous editions, as well as emerging standards such as PDF/A for archiving and prepress format PDF/X. The newest flavor of that, PDF/X-4, isn't yet supported in the eDocument Library but is in development, Bailey says. X-4 helps mitigate some transparency issues currently occurring between designers and printers that can affect print fidelity.
"Over the last several years, we've seen huge adoption of PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3," Bailey says of two relatively recent prepress file standards that—like the other flavors of PDF/X preceding them—require transparent objects to be flattened, reducing the editability of files submitted to printers. "The other side of the coin is that a lot of people want to use live transparency for delivery to the printer. The designers want to use transparency, full-stop, and there are sometimes some quality issues with requiring people to flatten their transparencies as PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3."
