AppleScript Pro Drops QuarkXPress Training

by , 12:45 PM EST, January 17th, 2007

Scripting Matters, known for its annual AppleScript Pro training events, is dropping scripting for QuarkXPress from the learning series. The time that has been spent in prior years discussing AppleScript and QuarkXPress will now be devoted to the page layout application's competitor, Adobe InDesign.

Ray Robertson, co-leader at Scripting Matters, stated "Dropping QuarkXPress is mainly an economic decision. Interest in automating it with AppleScript has dropped dramatically over the past three years. Meanwhile, the numbers of scripters using InDesign and wanting to learn more has greatly increased."

Historically, QuarkXPress has been seen as the ultimate in scriptable professional page layout applications, so dropping it in favor of teaching InDesign scripting marks a major change in needs from end users. InDesign's AppleScript support, however, has been expanding with each progressive release. As of now, according to Scripting Matters' Shane Stanely, Adobe InDesign is "99 percent scriptable."

The fact that this year AppleScript Pro is being hosted in Denver Colorado, also home to Quark, could be seen as a statement against QuarkXPress. Mr. Robinson, however, said that's not the case. "QuarkXPress is the grand-daddy of scriptable DTP applications, and the timing of this for our Denver sessions is just coincidence."

Mr. Robinson also said that Quark is welcome to send a representative to the week long training series, and that Scripting Matters would consider making time for a demonstration of QuarkXPress Server.

The five day AppleScript Pro training series is being held at the Denver Newspaper Agency in Denver, Colorado, from June 11 through June 15. Additional information is available at the AppleScript Pro Web site.