Software - Web-to-print

Digital asset management, an enabling technology, is pushing today's commercial printers into the role of tomorrow's information managers. Digital asset management. Unarguably, when these three words are strung together, whether on a trade show floor or at a business luncheon, commercial printers take notice. Grover Daniels II, president of Boston-based Daniels Printing, has a theory on this phenomenon. "The printer is the conduit for the delivery of content, whether the delivery vehicle is print or digital in nature," he professes. Daniels, a fourth-generation commercial printer, prefers to describe his family business as a full-service information provider that will comprise three interrelated business units: commercial

The third installment of Printing Impressions' year-long examination of CIP3 puts the spotlight on Screen (USA) and the relationship between Taiga SPACE and CIP3's PPF, and examines the CIP3 perspective of one very satisfied Screen technology user. Ask George Fiel what is so significant about CIP3, and, after arching his eyebrows slightly and looking you squarely in the eye—as if to pose the question: "What planet have you been living on?"—he will give you an answer that is insightful, if not virtually celebratory in nature. So, George, what do you think of CIP3? Go ahead, let us have it. "CIP3 will be universally adopted—it is, without question,

Preflighting is gaining momentum. You see it absorbed into comprehensive workflow solutions by major prepress vendors; you read about its growing compatibility with PDF, PostScript and other file formats; and you hear about the latest upgrades in preflighting tools, ranging from preview enhancements to the actual repair of bad fonts and colors within a file. What's the catalyst for all this? Mary Sommerset, senior product manager for preflighting at Extensis, makes the following observation: "Ask prepress operators what the single most useful thing a software company can do for them and the answer, a majority of the time, will be to help their customers

Catalog printers, pay close attention: XML—an enhancement of HTML or a redefined, simplified version of SGML, depending on how you view it—is one document manipulation language you need to know, and know well. XML will be your friend. Why? Extensible Markup Language (XML) allows users to define their own structure and tags, completely tailored to a particular document. XML is considered a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)—the 20-year-old, far too complex, yet far too vital to lose an ounce of respect for—document language. HTML is an application of SGML. For commercial printers, notably high-end catalog printers that repurpose wares onto glitzy

More than a few observers have noted a pause in the adoption of new digital media by printing companies. They claim that a surprising number are hesitant to install ISDN or T-1 lines, acquire Internet capability, and develop FTP sites, Web pages and e-mail. I've seen no data to support the notion that there is a slowdown in the pace of adoption, but if true, the reluctance should surprise no one. Prepress HellMany printers were burned by their entry into digital prepress during the 1980s and early in this decade. They went through what a printer in Oklahoma memorably described to me as "prepress

One of the fun things that columnists get to do is write their predictions for the new year. I've never done it before because I think it's generally a fool's game. As the playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote, "You can only predict things after they've happened." Still, predicting is fun. If you let me make it more of a trends analysis than a hard-and-fast statement of something that will happen in 1998, I'm willing to join the prediction party. Let's look at the major new media issues that will be transformed during 1998: Internet/WebIt was big in 1996 and 1997, and there's absolutely no reason for the

The second installment of Printing Impressions' year-long CIP3 report profiles the activities of Scitex, most notably its InkPRO, and shares the prepress technology provider's take on full digital workflow integration. At Scitex America, Leigh Kimmelman believes that CIP3, in theory, is conceptually sound in its mission to automate production processes from prepress to postpress. As product marketing manager for output imaging systems, Kimmelman must track CIP3 activities and increase market awareness of the latest Scitex CIP3 technologies. Kimmelman has been one busy guy, as has his CIP3 European counterpart, Les Bovenlander, marketing manager/commercial printers, for Scitex. Bovenlander is instrumental in overseeing the implementation of Scitex's CIP3

Whether the issue is tracking the status of 4,000 color images for a massive catalog or managing a vault of more than 100,000 images, text and fonts for a sophisticated prepress operation, the secret to success is securing an ingenious workflow. If one word could describe the prepress fervor of 1997—the motivating factor in the development of sophisticated software tools for expediting everything from imposition to job ticketing—that word would be workflow. Workflow, workflow, workflow—that was the single most effective, overused and yet understated buzz- word for 1997. Large commercial printers were implementing extensive technological investments to enhance prepress to postpress workflow, midsize commercial

Once upon a time, electronic desktop publishing seemed miraculous. No more awkward cameras, no more messy paste-ups. Put all of your work on a disk, then overnight a package to the printer. Simple. Nowadays, electronic desktop is trite. Everybody's got it. Everybody's using it. And the ability to accept a disk delivered overnight doesn't impress print buyers who want their jobs yesterday. Today's removable media, such as SyQuests and Zips, may boast high memory capacity, but you can't ship them any faster than floppies. If you want quicker delivery, you need the speed of digital file transfer. Digital file transfer performs new miracles in

CIP3 is the International Cooperation for the Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress, launched in 1995 by a team of prepress, press and postpress industry innovators, with German pressmaker Heidelberger Druckmaschinen serving as catalyst. As the industry begins to pay closer attention to CIP3, the consortium—now more than 30 members strong—continues its initiative of establishing an open standard for exchanging digital information from prepress to postpress stages. Each month throughout 1998, Printing Impressions will profile one specific member of the CIP3 consortium, from software developers to digital prepress innovators to press manufacturers to postpress players. Ultimate Technographics, an imposition software pioneer, will launch our