On 14 December 2005 Quark surprised the market by announcing that it had acquired the business and assets of A Lowly Apprentice Production, Inc. (ALAP), which had for years independently produced popular QuarkXPress xtensions and even Acrobat and InDesign plug-ins. Immediately following the acquisition, many of ALAP’s technologies became part of QuarkXPress 7, which debuted in public beta the following month and was released as box product in Spring 2006. Not all of ALAP’s tools and technologies found their way into the QuarkXPress 7 box, however, leading many fans to wonder whether Quark would update or discontinue the popular xtensions.

In October 2006 the Quark Print Collection collected formerly ALAP extensions Item Marks, MarkIt, and Imposer for QuarkXPress, as well as the Imposer plug-in for Adobe Acrobat 7. The QuarkXPress xtensions were updated for version 7, demonstrating that Quark was committed to the future of ALAP technologies both as bundled and separate QuarkXPress enhancements.

Today, Quark announced the future of Quark ALAP XPert Tools Pro line of xtensions—FindChange, ItemStyles, BoxTools, Align, PageSets, Print, Pilot, Toolbars, and eight more. They’re free. Or at least they will be free beginning the week of 2 April 2007.

“This suite of tools directly answers customers’ needs and enables simply better design,” said Terry Welty, Quark senior vice president of Corporate Marketing. “There’s tremendous value in these XTensions. Making them available at no charge is our way of saying thanks to QuarkXPress 7 customers.”

Included in Quark XPert Tools Pro are the following xtensions:

• XPert Align — Align items with other items or the page.
• XPert BoxTools — Ease the process of adjusting the size and placement of items, text, and graphics.
• XPert FindChange — Gain comprehensive control for finding any type of item.
• XPert Guides — Create and edit on-screen guides with precise control.
• XPert ImageInfo — Access information about pictures and the capabilities for modifying pictures placed in QuarkXPress projects.
• XPert ItemMarks — Create crop marks and registration marks for individual items and pages.
• XPert ItemStyles — Save item attributes such as color, frame style, line width, picture scale, and text inset as style sheets that you can apply to any item from a palette.
• XPert Layers — Locate, select, and modify items by layer and work with QuarkXPress items easily.
• XPert PageSets — Save settings in the New Document dialog box as a style. .
• XPert Paste — Paste an item to the same X-Y coordinates of the original on a different page or spread.
• XPert Pilot — See thumbnail previews of pages and spreads in an open project so you can instantly jump to an area you need to work on without knowing what page it is on.
• XPert Print — Print or export QuarkXPress pages and spreads as EPS files.
• XPert Scale — Scale QuarkXPress documents, items, groups, and contents, similar to the way drawing programs scale objects.
• XPert TextLink — Use an intuitive palette to link and unlink text boxes and text paths.
• XPert Toolbars — Create custom palettes for quick access to any QuarkXPress function.
• XPert Type — Access common text formatting options quickly and make changes by dragging and dropping or clicking arrows.

During the week of 2 April 2007, Quark XPert Tools Pro will posted to the [1] Quark Website as a free download for all QuarkXPress 7 users.