DESKTOP PUBLISHING leaders Quark Inc intends to give upstart Adobe a run for its money with the release of Quark Xpress 8 this autumn.

Quark, which was once once lambasted for its ill-founded arrogance, and uncaring customer support as the only feasible solution for professional publishers, now has to play constant catch-up with Adobe's Indesign challenger.

And the same applies for Adobe, which constantly updates features to mirror new Quark functionality. Ah... we love a bit of competition to wake up a sleeping giant.

The next iteration of the Quark marque looks set to go tooth and nail for Indesign, but also has its eye fixed on the rest of Adobe's Creative Suite (CS3).

According to Apple Insider, the next upgrade will include image editing tools which will reduce the amount of times users will need to resort to Photoshop, and vector graphics tools which will cut Illustrator out of the picture (pun intended).

Current version 7 users will get a free upgrade when it happens, so if you're thinking of getting Quark, now might be the time to snap up a cut-price version and avoid the inevitable price hike.

There are loads more details and pretty pictures of the new set-up here.