ZDNet reported from Seybold on the battles over XML between Adobe and Quark, while Infoworld covers the latest on BizTalk.

The ZDNet article starts by covering the latest on Macromedia's Flash technology, not mentioning XML at all. Next, it describes eStage, a planned XML-based publishing system from Quark (due in the fourth quarter), and noted that avenue.quark and an XML Import facility would ship with QuarkXPress this year.

Adobe premiered LiveMotion, an SVG authoring tool that will also export to Macromedia's Flash format. Despite this important XML-based application, ZDNet found that "Adobe was notable for not endorsing XML, while Quark and every other major vendor in the Web publishing market seem to be endorsing this standard as the Holy Grail of cross-media publishing."

Meanwhile, Infoworld reported on BizTalk. In an article that was almost an interview with Microsoft's director of business development for the developer's group, Infoworld described BizTalk as the middle ground between messaging and large-scale CORBA and DCOM implementations. Delivery is promised for the second half of 2000.

• Microsoft technologies examined, compared