Monitor Adopts Quark Computer System

STARTING today, The Christian Science Monitor will begin a transition to a new computer-editing system.

``The new system will allow us to introduce new features for our readers on a more timely basis and produce the paper more efficiently,'' Monitor Editor David Cook says. ``We are grateful for this important step.''

The Monitor will use the new Quark Publishing System (QPS) right away to produce its feature pages, with news, opinion, and editorial pages to follow in a few months.

The introduction of QPS is part of a plan by the Christian Science Publishing Society to replace outmoded 15-year-old equipment with a new editing system to be used by all its publications. The Society is the publishing arm of The First Church of Christ, Scientist. The new system is being purchased through a lease at a cost of $1.3 million and is an asset of the Publishing Society.

The monthly Christian Science Journal and foreign-language Christian Science Heralds, as well as the weekly Christian Science Sentinel, will move onto the system in the future.

QPS uses networked Apple Macintosh computers to allow editors to operate on the same computer system used by makeup operators and graphic designers. For the past six years, editors have edited on one computer system; makeup operators then had to move the text electronically to another system to assemble the pages.

The new system will eliminate duplicated work and streamline the process of producing the paper, making it easier to introduce new features and make design changes.

The Christian Science Monitor has for the past two years been a test site for QPS and produced the first pages ever printed using the system. For the past few months, The Home Forum pages have been published using QPS, which is produced by Quark Inc. of Denver, Colo.