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Ann Rockley

Quark Acquires In.vision

17-Jul-2008

Tags: Component Content Management, Selecting Technology, XML, , Arbortext Editor

Today Quark Inc. announced that it is acquiring the assets of In.vision Research Corporation. In.vision is best known for its XML add-in for Microsoft Word ("Xpress Author for Word"). Quark is best known for QuarkXPress, a design and desktop publishing tool. The In.vision team will continue to be located in Florida, but the former In.Vision module will become "Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word."

In recent years Quark has lost ground to Adobe InDesign. There are many reasons for that, but from our perspective (XML & Component Content Management), Quark simply did not handle XML very well, and InDesign was more capable in that area. Quark began to signal an interest in XML when they announced the hiring of their new President and CEO, Ray Schiavone, formerly President and CEO of Arbortext, one of the frontrunners in XML-based authoring and publishing products. Schiavone brought a considerable amount of knowledge about XML to Quark and quietly hired a number of former employees of Arbortext that had left after its acquisition by PTC.

Quark more strongly positioned themselves in the XML multichannel publishing world with the launch of their Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution (DPS) in March of this year. DPS uses Quark Transformation Engine, essentially an XML rules-based engine, to convert content coming in from many sources to XML then renders it to multiple channels.

The acquisition of In.vision now takes the XML publishing process back to the content contributor -- Word of course being a ubiquitous authoring tool. While some would argue that QuarkXPress is an authoring tool, it is really oriented towards designers - few content contributors would ever want to work in Quark directly.

What does Quark gets out of the acquisition?

• Integrated XML-based content contributor software, making dynamic multichannel publishing accessible to broader areas of the enterprise
• Expertise and functionality in SPL (Pharmaceutical XML standard) and DITA (fastest growing XML standard)

What does In.vision get out of the acquisition?

• Global sales force
• Access to broader opportunities for the use of its products

But what does the customer get out of this? Well, In.vision and Quark have been working together as partners for a number of months, with some hand-offs to show for it. But the integration is not complete. For example, you can't just say "publish to DPS" from Xpress Author. DPS is treated much like a call to the DITA Open Toolkit. Round-tripping from XML to design to XML is possible, but not productized yet.

In the long run, customers may see some benefits:

• Access to XML-based publishing software that allows not just simple layout, but full camera-ready layout
• More DITA-based publishing for the enterprise

This acquisition moves In.vision from a small XML solutions company into a much larger realm, and this allows Quark to move closer to XML-based enterprise dynamic publishing. But full integration will take time. We'll keep watching...