I’m encouraged by it. Not that I’m in the mood to see Quark do a comeback, mind. I share the opinion of a local friend that it’s useful to have a minority platform (we were jawing about OSs, Win vs OS X to be particular).

Quark is a textbook example of what complacency can do to a firm. After Quark passed PageMaker, not only did PM not really play catch-up, no powerful company moved forward to fill the breach at #2. So Quark rested on its laurels, developed what they wanted rather than what the market wanted, and acted as though they were really well aware of the fact that for a long time, they were the only game in town.

Of course, that’s common knowledge by now. I said that to say this: Quark was vulnerable, and it was only a matter of time before someone outflanked them. Quark was ripe for dethroning by Adobe and InDesign.

That said, I think that Quark is too ornery to go away. When I find a volunteer opportunity to layout a quarterly newsletter for a non-profit (Sierra Club) and find that they recently moved from PM to InDesign, then that seems to be a big sign that a real tectonic movement is taking place.

I think Quark is on the way to becoming the minority platform. That they are so publicly fighting a battle to prove thier vitality (QuarkVista, the reports that have been filed here) means that maybe they know that to have some position in the market, they’ve got to do this.

Now, Adobe doesn’t seem to need a goad to innovate. They seem to do that as a matter of course. So having Quark as an active #2 will provide insurance that if ever they do forget thier bread-n-butter, all they have to do is look over thier shoulders to remember why they have to be better, and, if they forget that, then there’s a strong #2 waiting ot take over.

I mean, a recent Quark rumor holds that release 7 is aiming for an “InDesign-like look and feel”. When Quark has to play catchup to InDesign, that’s a sure sign the rules have changed, I think.

I responded in a new post here.