Specifications
2
Creative Business
www.CreativeBusiness.com
Graphic Design:USA
www.gdusa.com
InDesign Magazine
www.InDesignMag.com
Layers www.LayersMagazine.com
Mac Life www.MacLife.com
Macworld www.macworld.com
Photoshop User
www.PhotoshopUser.com
CreativePro.com
www.CreativePro.com
MacFixIt www.MacFixIt.com
MacInTouch www.MacInTouch.com
MacNewsNetwork
www.macnn.com
The Mac Observer
www.MacObserver.com
MacUser www.MacUser.co.uk
InDesign Secrets
www.InDesignSecrets.com
Planet Quark
www.planetquark.com
Version Tracker
www.VersionTracker.com
souRces we moNiToR
(so you don’t have to)
Quark’s Universal
Quark Publishing
Platform
Quark’s new “Quark Pub-
lishing Platform” address-
es the needs of every mod-
ern publisher, maximiz-
ing your current tools and
helping you move into the
future. Here’s how:
In most workflows, writ-
ers use Microso Word.
So Quark made it easy for
Word users to not only
write and edit stories in
the structured, output-
agnostic XML format, they
also made it easy for au-
thors to preview how their
work will look on different
devices and media (such
as HTML5, iPad apps,
iPhones, and websites).
Authors and editors on
the go need access to these
same tools through a Web
browser. Quark’s Web cli-
ent is robust; it tracks
changes and can show
them through redlining,
and it provides styling pal-
ettes for style sheets.
Publishers (both commer-
cial and in-house) have ex-
isting infrastructures that
News (from pg.1)
must be supported. Quark
Publishing Platform is to-
tally modular and currently
supports all the most com-
monly used Web servic-
es and servers. It can con-
nect into content manage-
ment systems of any kind
and can output to any ren-
dering engine, including
QuarkXPress or InDesign.
Publishers must keep track
of where and when sto-
ries are used and changed.
Quark Publishing Platform
keeps track of every chunk
of XML, tracking where
it’s been published and
where it next needs to go.
Publishers don’t want to
work with more solution
providers than necessary.
Quark offers a one-source
solution, unlike any other
company.
Time is of the essence, so
Quark Publishing Plat-
form can automatically
deliver content to mobile
devices, websites, work-
groups, and so forth, based
on the end user’s interests
and role in the process.
To learn more about
its vast array of inputs,
processes, and outputs,
see the story at
www.tinyurl.com/9oduryt.
ly on Mac hardware, es-
sentially turning your Mac
into a high-end PC.
For users that need to run
OS X and Windows at the
same time, however, virtu-
alization soware is a bet-
ter option, and Parallels 8
($80) was the overall win-
ner there.
VirtualBox was an accept-
able option for basic virtu-
alization needs, and its free
price tag is a nice bonus.
Check out the complete
benchmark results here:
www.tinyurl.com/8os9jcy
Create Math Equations
Here are two professional
options for creating math-
ematical equations and no-
tations. Both include doz-
ens of fonts, hundreds of
symbols, and many tem-
plates needed to produce
professional equations.
You can create equations
by clicking on objects in
a palette or by using key-
board commands. ey
can export the equations
for use in any application,
including QuarkXPress
and InDesign:
Design Science’s
MathType 6.7 ($97) is the
full-featured, profession-
al version of the Equation
Editor in Microso Word.
Uniquely, you can copy
thousands of free equa-
tions from Wikipedia and
copy equations from TeX
or LaTeX into MathType.
MathType exports in GIF,
EPS, TeX, MathML, WMF,
and PICT formats.
InfoLogic’s MathMagic 8
($69) has an interface sim-
ilar to the Equation Editor
sofTwaRe (from pg.1)
in Microso Word. Math-
Magic exports to EPS, GIF,
JPEG, PICT, TeX, and PDF
formats. MathMagic is also
available as a plug-in for
InDesign or XTension for
QuarkXPress, with prices
ranging from $200 to $695.
For short-term projects, a
one-month license is avail-
able for $15 or a six-month
license for $45.
www.mathtype.com
www.mathmagic.com
Don’t Quit Too Soon
If you tend to accidental-
ly quit programs by hitting
Command-Q instead of Com-
mand-W
, you might want to
use CommandQ. is OS
X utility ($3.99) length-
ens the quitting process to
avoid untimely Skype dis-
connects, lost iChat con-
versations, un-submitted
Web forms, and other un-
expected closures.
CommandQ forces you to
hold the
Command-Q combo
down for a predetermined
amount of time before an
app will quit, and you can
also choose a custom key-
stroke to perform the quit.
Get it at
www.tinyurl.com/9mzsn5s.
Measure Items
in Photos
Measured ($2.99, App Store)
is an app for your iPhone
or iPad that can accurate-
ly measure items in pictures
you take, without using a
ruler or tape measure—ex-
cellent for planning signage!
You snap a photo, step
heel-to-toe partway to
the object, then snap an-
other photo. Using your
shoe size, the app extrap-
olates the size of objects in
Design Tools Monthly
™
• Issue #237 • Acme Printing • www.AcmePrintingUSA.com