The two firms will kick off the partnership by offering cut-price copies of Enfocus' Instant PDF software to members of QuarkAlliance, Quark's user network.

Patrick Van Dam, Enfocus executive vice president of sales and marketing, said the link-up was "an excellent way to jump-start the adoption of certified PDF by the designer community."

Quark senior vice president of software development Jrgen Kurtz said that consistency in certified PDFs was "one of the next major hurdles facing the publishing industry."

He added that the DTP specialist, which faces growing competition from Adobe's InDesign software, would "continue to work with companies that will help win this battle for the publishing professional."