DENVER - March 29, 2005 - Quark Inc. today announced its membership in the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG), an international assembly of graphic arts professionals established to create, test, and disseminate best practices and specifications for publishing workflows. “Ghent PDF Workgroup has done an excellent job in creating PDF output specifications for real-world production environments. The significant level of real user involvement in Ghent PDF Workgroup is the reason Quark joined. We’re dedicated to supporting industry open standards that are important to our customer,” said Jürgen Kurz, senior vice president of product development. “As an active member of the Ghent PDF Workgroup, we look forward to communicating with representatives of the global graphic arts community — not only about today’s specifications, but also about future standards and practices that will shape the graphic arts workflows of the future.” Quark is key addition to vendor member roster Saskia Desmet, GWG executive director, said that Quark’s membership in the GWG is critical and highly appreciated. “Quark is an integral part of the publishing landscape, and no publishing consortium is complete without its participation,” she says. “Quark’s valuable input, representing its years of experience and the interests of vast numbers of PDF publishers, arms the GWG with tremendously helpful, relevant data for the world’s PDF community.” As a result of Quark’s anticipated contributions, GWG will be able to develop more comprehensive specifications and best practice guidelines — and all more rapidly. GWG opened membership to solution vendors in April 2004, and many prominent organizations have joined since that time. What are GWG specifications? In the world of GWG, a specification is a set of guidelines to which a PDF file should conform. A practical example of a guideline could be the color spaces allowed in a PDF file or the image resolution required for images in a PDF file. GWG defines a number of different specifications. Multiple specifications exist to support different market segments, different output processes, or different workflows. As a practical example, a magazine advertisement workflow will have totally different guidelines than a newspaper workflow. Enhancing the existing (ISO PDF/X) standards with practical, vertical market specifications and best practices allows for more secure and productive digital workflows. GWG comprises user representatives and vendors, who share ideas and test methods for the most practical, accurate, and convenient exchange of print-ready files between creators and producers of print.