quarkXpress 6.5

If you are unwilling or unable to upgrade QuarkXPress, consider installing Snow Leopard (with Rosetta) into Parallels 7 in Lion:

[click on images to enlarge]

And now Mountain Lion:

Full Snow Leopard installation instructions into Parallels 7 are here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

Hi Alec,

QuarkXPress 6.5 is a PowerPC-based application. This means it either needs a PowerPC based Mac (G4, G5) or Rosetta, the emulator provided by Apple, if runnign on an Intel based Mac.

OS X Lion and Mountain Lion do not provide Rosetta anymore.

You need to either downgrade your OS X (e.g. to Snow Leopard) or upgrade QuarkXPress to version 9 (version 9.3 is current). See system requirements (e.g. you will need an Intel based Mac) here: http://www.quark.com/Products/QuarkXPress/system_requirements.aspx

Regards
Matthias

So, based on your explanation to Alec Farmer, I will be able to install Quark 6.5 on my iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.8? Are there any known difficulties (slow, disabled features, etc)?

Only if it's possible. If your Mac came with Lion or Mountain Lion, you cannot install Snow Leopard directly at all. You would need to run it in a VM, as Michael showed in his post.