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QuarkXPress ("Quark") is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and published by them.
QuarkXPress is used by individual designers and large publishing houses, primarily to produce any kind of layout, from flyers to complex page layouts required by magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and similar printed materials. It is one of two products (the other being Adobe InDesign) that dominate that market space.
The first version of QuarkXPress was released in 1987 for the Macintosh. A Microsoft Windows version followed in 1992. In the 1990s, QuarkXPress quickly became widely used by professional page designers, the typesetting industry and printers. In particular, the Mac version of 3.3 (released in 1996) was seen as stable and trouble-free, working seamlessly with Adobe's Postscript fonts as well as with Apple's TrueType fonts.
QuarkXPress early on incorporated an application programming interface called XTensions which allows third-party developers to create custom add-on features to the desktop application. Introduced in 1989, Xtensions, along with Apple Computer's Hypercard, were among the first examples of a developer allowing others to create software add-ons for their application.
Having gained a marketshare of approximately 90% in the 1990s, Quark was criticized for having overly long innovation cycles and being too expensive, which encouraged Adobe to launch Adobe InDesign in 1999.
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