September in Chicago

Time and space have made another step change as I begin to hear about Graph Expo. Print and the web are moving at a different pace. The September Digital Printer has arrived with news about the innovation parc at drupa and an advance on Xerox at Graph Expo in Chicago. Laurel Brunner attended an advance Xerox briefing in Rochester. I am forced to conclude that actual trade fairs are about to lose connection with the web when she observes that Graph Expo is a "US regional trade show" such as "it is not often that we bother to write about". Apparently Chicago is provincial in the run up to drupa.

However there is news online from XPSland. A search of Google News and Google blogsearch reveals that software is available for the corporate office from Zoran and Software Imaging. The XML Paper approach will have made more progress by the time of drupa and the section on PDF and XML production. There is a new Adobe blog from Jim King that will be relevant.

What surprised me was the lack of any news about Adobe or the MARS project to rewrite the PDF file structure. Has Adobe got such a strong position that XPS can be ignored? Then looking at the Adobe list of press releases it turns out that there was no attempt to get reporting on anything related to Graph Expo. Instead there is a release about growing interest in the Adobe Media Player for video etc. There is no information on a release date or any new technical detail. The story seems just to link in to IBC, a video show in Amsterdam.

So my take on this is that Adobe has more or less given up on the world of print. It is the video web that is interesting. They genuinely believe the shift has already happened. Something will be revealed at drupa but the Web is not going to stand still for six months or so. I am already aware of a sense of time travel during future events. Maybe there will be just one long moment between Graph Expo and drupa that should be regarded as coherent.

There are still some events in real time and space. My guess is that there will be more about the Media Player during MAX, later this month also as it happens in Chicago.