Dan Z. sez: "This whole dynamic is something I find fascinating. Development for Linux automatically extends the options for OSX users... but not for Windows users."

Cygwin makes porting to Windows relatively painless, actually. The Mono project will make it even easier.

Adolph sez: "I thought Quark sticking with OS 7 b/w menus was wierd. However, in the grander scheme of things it makes sense: if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Funny you should mention that -- that's a major symptom of the problem of porting Quark to OS X.

Those aren't OS 7 menus. The widgets in XPress are not Macintosh widgets -- Quark wrote proprietary widgets, and then skinned them to look like the Mac OS. (why? something to do with squeezing a little more power out of the CPU back in the MacSE days, I'd wager)

All that proprietary code makes Quark impossible to port to OS X. It would almost be easier to port the Windows version to OS X.

The real problem, as far as I'm concerned, isn't Quark, it's the printing industry. Most "press monkeys" I've encountered are slightly more tech-savvy than a typical plumber (no offense to plumbers). To these guys, PDFs are fancy-pants new-fangled city-folk technology.

Professional printing could be as simple and platform/software-agnostic as desktop printing (when's the last time your inkjet said "I don't accept InDesign?"), but nobody like Apple or Microsoft has the inclination to tackle the problem.