New feature to allow simultaneous collaboration on layouts, promising workflow improvements in news design.

[1] In a column online at Editor & Publisher, columnist Mark Fitzgerald accents a feature in the yet-to-be-released QuarkXPress 7 that breaks, as the title says, the One File=One Layout equation.

XPress 7’s “Composition Zones” allow definition of permissions-based editing, meaning a layout can have more than one creator working on content while keeping the layout sacrosanct, in a fashion which sounds similar to the operation of such programs as Adobe’e InCopy. These changes can be made by a group of creators simultaneously, and are reportedly updated to the layout as they are made.

Louis A. Landa, formerly of the Boulder, CO Daily Camera and latterly Quark’s manager of customer initiatives, illustrated the benefit this way:

I’d be doing a caption or something, and somebody would say, ‘C’mon, c’mon, I need that page,’” he said. “When I was a newspaper designer, it would have been wonderful to take a piece of the page, and say, ‘Here, you work on this part, while I work on this.’

The column also touches on other touted improvements coming in XPress 7, such as JDF, and mentioned the recent Quark rebranding, though not the controversy amongst creatives over other similar logos which may, presumably, have been seen to be outside of the scope of the commentary.