They codenamed it K2. The name inspires thoughts of climbing tall, almost-unscalable mountains, conquering the unconquerable.
Apropos, or so it would seem. 'They' are the folks at Adobe and 'it' is the recently announced layout software InDesign. The mountain is Quark XPress.
There are few industries where a single company dominates quite so completely as in page design and layout. If you work for a magazine, a newspaper or an advertising firm, you layout pages in Quark. It is pretty much as simple as that.
What is so odd about the impending release of InDesign is the anticipation. Since rumours about the product first emerged more than a year ago, it has been a topic that brings schoolboy grins to the faces of designers and production houses.
Now that InDesign has been officially announced, many feel that it is all over now for Quark. Yet Adobe's Quark-killer is still in beta, not expected to be finished until late this spring and not on shelves until the summer.
It is less the faith in Adobe and more the hatred of Quark that gets people so excited about InDesign. At a publishing technology trade show held last year, the buzz was about Quark's rather bizarre offer to buy out Adobe.
Most show-goers were horrified at the thought, simply because of the contrast between the two companies. Adobe is seen as being attentive to customer needs. They regularly survey users to find out what they want in upcoming product versions and Adobe has good technical support.