drupa2008

Haymarket morphs Printweek online

2011-02-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

My copy of Printweek has arrived as hard copy. Thicker paper and a lot of adverts this week, but there are fewer features and the news items are short, linking to detail on the website. Jo's Helpline shows the problem in full, but you have to go to the website for the answer. So the trend seems to be to use the hard copy as promotion for the website. this is the only weekly news publication for the UK print industry so the endorsement for online is significant.

An editorial promises more analysis and longer articles on technology but these could be in a monthly publication. The longterm future of a weekly cycle for news that mostly just links to online detail is uncertain.

The website has also been redesigned with a clearer feed from Twitter. The blogs are not easier to find though, which is a pity. Jo Francis suggests the advert strength in this issue is similar to the time around IPEX 1998 or drupa 2000. It will be interesting to see how this continues, but the time perspective is interesting. I won't update the blog title or the one for IPEX. Probably more posts for drupa now as 2012 is not far off.

There is no mention of video in the print version but there is a section on the website. At IPEX it was clear that some stands had their own direct channel. As Haymarket moves online this is another area to watch.

The website is global in scope with sections linked to other print publications in Australia and Germany. This reflects the reality of web publishing, the audience is global. Printweek is ahead of UK newspapers here. Peter Preston is always complaining about the difficulty of positioning advertising for the audience outside the UK. The Guardian continues to be muddled about an attitude to the web and social media. But Haymarket has a clear direction.

Acrobat X shows Adobe has stopped development for PDF

2010-10-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

As far as I can tell so far there is nothing new with Acrobat X about PDF as such. It is all about Flash, the portfolio intro that can contain PDF as we have known it.

I did look at this when Acrobat 9 came out but it requires that the people you send files to upgrade and i found this was not always the case. I have not come across any examples of portfolios other than Adobe samples.

Maybe my experience on the general web is misleading. There may be organisations with standards on the latest Adobe software where portfolios work well. But I don't see this Flash aspect as moving Acrobat on around the issues of text documents.

There was a project to rewrite PDF as "XML friendly" . MARS was renamed as PDFXML but recently nothing has happened. The Mars blog was last updated in September 2008. Possibly there will be more information when Acrobat.com is fully updated. Buzzword can export as PDF or ePUB, the format for ebooks that reflows on smaller screens. Maybe there is a view about workflows that cover various ways of publishing text and flat graphics. But there is no evidence that PDF has any further to go that would relate to this.

What Developers Should Know About Acrobat X , according to Joel Gerachi, includes a new Portfolio SDK so that Flash Professional Designers can use their existing skills to create “Visual Themes”. This presumably assumes you have a copy of Flash.

Meanwhile the Adobe classic themes around Postscript and PDF are now based on ISO standards. Maybe it is reasonable that Adobe no longer relates to this much in promotion. But there is still activity around hard copy and flat documents. As this is no longer worth promoting or developing from an Adobe perspective, it is worth exploring alternative software either at other price levels or from niche suppliers where there is still an interest.

Draft story for OhmyNews

2010-05-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Draft story for OhmyNews

http://bit.ly/d4RrCp

Starts with Adobe, later what is pre-media?

Bernd Zipper from drupa, still ahead of IPEX

2010-05-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

Only a week to go and still the best stuff is from drupa. Just my opinion.

Notice that the internet is not competition. The print industry can take advantage.

My blog posts will mostly be for the IPEX 2002 blog for the next fortnight or so. I may take space in this blog for the Libre Graphics meeting coming up in Brussels. Just a bit off topic there is an Experimentality link to the City during this week. Mostly when I have visited drupa I also stay in Brussels. Also Koln is the closest to drupa I can find somewhere to stay. Amsterdam is in the mix for the Seybold events. So my particular focus has got me away from the screen on occasions. "The city" however is not very clearly located.

And of course Brussels is not very far from Ghent, the centre of the PDF universe. I may revise that view if Adobe turns up in Birmingham. At the moment there is no stand number on the IPEX site. Lots of annoying Flash of course.

I expect the Libre Graphics meeting to continue research on SVG and everything XML. They may cover the eBook and how to create ePUB. So making sense of IPEX could continue through May at least.

Book from Wikipedia

2010-05-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

This is working in the USA. Not sure what is possible in the UK. But IPEX should offer some comparisons. The technology will show options for short runs. Question remains how to arrange distribution.

Adobe late booking for IPEX

2010-05-08T03:17:00.000-07:00

Printweek has arrived, the hard copy version, and reports that Adobe have booked some space at IPEX. Cannot find the stand number on the IPEX website though.

More on this later when I find out a bit more. I still think Adobe are mostly into web video and soforth. Digital Printer has also arrived and confirms that there are no new PDF features in the recent Creative Suite. Variable printing may be improved through some new standards but the implementation will probably come through companies other than Adobe.

It will be a benefit for Abobe to be there, but mostly as a reminder for the print industry how wide the scope is now for the communications world that Adobe is concerned with. I am not sure what they will have to offer around hard copy.

Adobe at Web 2 event, not really that interested in print

2010-05-06T09:30:00.001-07:00

Background to IPEX, Adobe is somewhere else

Social Media, getting ready for PODi

2010-05-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

It appears that the printing industry is ready for social media. An email from PODi has some detail on IPEX and also promotion for a day course about social media. This will happen May 25th, after IPEX. There is an option for non members, probably very good value. But surely an aspect of social media is that some content is available for free and anyway the public make things up or try to. During IPEX or for the rest of May there could be many suggestions about social media and print in a mix. I am thinking about some new Moo business cards. So far I find I am very reluctant to let go of them. So I may just archive the ones I have now and start again. This blog will try to link to any good examples of free advice. Nothing against the idea of paying for a proper day of course. Premium content is the future, many believe.

This sort of post is based on links outside the UK. The drupa blog will continue mostly with such a scope. The IPEX blog will be more about the UK.

Chrome has a translation feature, Zipcon now seems closer

2010-03-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have found that Google Chrome pops up with "This page is in German, would you like to translate it?"

Perfect for the Forum on ePrint Portals coming up early in May. I hope to find out more from this.

But YouTube is still a problem. Can subtitles just be added. The same page has a YouTube link and it seems to be an old press in the background. Please add a comment if you know what this is about.

Frank Romano speaks : Why I need to learn German

2010-03-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

My main story for OhmyNews about drupa was based on Web To Print as presented by Bernd Zipper. Recent search keeps coming up with my own language problems. So further study follows. Meanwhile..

then follow YouTube suggestions for a start. Several weeks yet before IPEX.

More about vanishing PDF on Adobe blogs

2010-03-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

Still thinking about the CS5 information and the apparent lack of interest in PDF. I have checked out the MARS blog, nothing recent and also Inside PDF , updated last October.

I still think there is not much going on. The potential for disruption in the next few months is significant. If the CS5 launch is all about Flash then the flat pages of hard copy as at IPEX will have a struggle for attention. Apple definitely will not be there. Adobe possibly mostly on other stands.

Adobe - not much to say about Acrobat

2010-03-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

I listened to the sound for the Earnings Call yesterday and have found a transcript today. There will be more detail on CS5 in April but what interests me is Acrobat.or rather PDF. Apparently there will be an Acrobat release later in 2010, linked to Acrobat.com. So CS5 is not much related to PDF or hard copy. Seems mostly about Flash, getting content into video and mobile phones.

Acrobat is still significant. It seems to account for much of the income. Sales pretty steady even though there is no recent release or new features. But the reason I cannot find much speculation about Acrobat 10 could be that there is actually not much happening. On the blogs there are reports about Acrobat Connect as a Flash app for the iPhone. But this is not PDF.

I think the classic print and publishing industry should pay attention to the early part of the statement from Shantanu Narayen

With general availability expected beginning in Q2, 10.1 is the first run time release of the Open Screen project enabling uncompromised web browsing of expressive content, high definition video and rich applications across multiple screens including desktops, smart phones, net books, internet connected DVD, new tablet devices and other consumer electronics.

Postscript sales are flat. PDF is just an income stream, there is not much buzz. There will be a low Adobe profile at IPEX, but they will still be in the background somehow.

Meanwhile Simon Eccles in Digital Printer interviews Dov Isaacs about variable data and PDF/VT. This is interesting enough, but what sort of priority for Adobe? In April there will be more information about Creative Suite 5. I doubt if PDF/VT shows up as high profile. This is just a guess obviously. But the CS5 launch will be interesting for IPEX as a guide to context on just how diverse are the communications options of which print is a part.

The Digital Printer story also mentions the Mars project, now PDFXML. This would be significant id it ever happened, a rewrite of PDF entirely in XML. But it seems very unlikely. I have stopped checking the MARS blog. I think ePUB is the supported format for reflow. That's about it.

It is surprising that cashflow for Acrobat holds up so well. A product that is not developed and not promoted would in many other circumstances experience some price pressure.

Flash for mobiles hard not to notice

2010-01-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Google announcement of Nexus One mobile phone makes a convincing case for Flash and Adobe presentations. I have been finding the Flash emphasis a bit out of proportion but this is beginning to make sense. There is a video on YouTube that is impressive

Flash could be the equivalent of DOS in an earlier time when Apple stuck to their own systems. I am going back and fro in time. The Consumer Electronics show is apparent in the UK through various leaks and blogs etc. Many suggested devices like an e-book or laptop or in between but the phone is also a reader for text. Stanza was a bit of a surprise on the iPhone. I think the e-book takes many forms and the Google push on hardware will help this to spread.

Adobe developments make it even more difficult for IPEX to discuss technology. Most hard copy print organisations are in the era of Postscript. There will be some PDF workflow but there is no Adobe stand shown on the plans. Continues on the IPEX 2002 blog, mostly about the UK. This blog will cover the context. there is a stand for drupa 2012, roughly in the middle near Heidelberg.

Sorry. lost the link to blog where this came from

The tablet idea is not new. Roger Fidler research for Knight Ridder was influential in Korea, mentioned in Media Big Bang - a book I was given by OhmyNews. About four years ago, now even more interesting.

Coping with events - Adobe Classic era coming to an end

2009-12-31T07:38:00.000-08:00

At Online Information I was interested in the Adobe explanation of how they relate to e-books but also found it hard to accept the emphasis on video embeds. The hardware available seems tome to be suited to mostly text. Even InDesign is a bit too much with complex layout. Something like Open Office seems more suitable.

But there is some interest in Flash and video. There may be demand for books with video sometime in the future. A decade is a plausible way to think about this. So I can get my head around the idea that Flash will be widely accepted sometime. Meanwhile the issues around PDF,XML,JDF etc still need some attention so I think this will be the focus for this blog at least till IPEX.

The media archaeologists have a view on events and chronology that is not exactly clear to me. But next year will come up for study eventually.

Guardian reports Frankfurt, online and from San Francisco

2009-10-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

First the facts. Nothing in my print version Guardian this morning that I could find about Google Editions. As reported in the Bookseller daily email a couple of days ago this was announced at the O'Reilley Tools of Change Frankfurt event ( #TOCFrankfurt ) as was the timescale of before the middle of 2010. I have found online a report from Bobbie Johnson in San Francisco. Now a comment. This is not unusual. The Guardian quite often seems to present one view of the world for an online audience and quite another for the print audience who pay for the limitation. Digital news is often not reported in print. The global Kindle is on the business page ahead of Monday availability. The advance news was in a photo caption linked to two pages of knocking copy reprinted from the New Yorker. Oh dear I may be going off topic. Continues on readG blog.

The thing is that my expectation of the Guardian books review section tomorrow having any technology reporting from Frankfurt is quite low. Even the news summary from the Bookseller has vanished. This literary world continues almost unchanged and something like TOC must come as a bit of a shock. Guessing from the available blogs found through Twitter there seems to be some sort of continuing tension.

Eoin Purcell gives more detail on the criticism of TOC from some publishers. As memory serves it was the software fans who first used email but now a lot of people do. So the O'Reilly experience could be interesting even for trade publishers.

I think the Google plans will change the way books are considered. The discussion around this will grow during 2010 and follow Kindle interest over the rest of 2009. There will be lots of interesting copy in the Bookseller. The email service is available free and there is a prize draw if you sign up.

Meanwhile still not much about the #weiss_raum . some links to podcasts but I cannot find free audio translation. The drupa innovation parc was not well reported at the time given the interest in machinery although Web-to-Print has since been widely discussed in UK media. Maybe something similar will happen as Frankfurt is clearly a technology show.

Bookseller and Web 2 , to be continued

2009-10-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

This is not supposed to be a negative post about the Bookseller. I find the daily email is just about perfect as a guide to what is going on, including all things digital. But us bloggers make a contribution as well. such as suggesting to proper journalists that it may not matter if there is no reply to an email. It is surprising what you can find on a blog and usually ok to copy it out.

The O'Reilley TOC blog has a post about "The Good and (and some Bad) of TOC Frankfurt Coverage" that comments on a Bookseller report that included a claim that trade publishere were under-represented at the TOC Frankfurt event and that the agenda was too friendly for pirates and software fans.

Sara Lloyd, digital director of Pan Macmillan, was quoted by the Bookseller as saying "The O'Reilly perspective is quite slanted by the content and market that they serve, and that perspective shines through in their choice of speaker and subject matter. There needs to be a greater understanding of what the differences are between a computer software manual and a fiction bestseller. I'd like to see more of a consumer publishing perspective."

It may be worth mentioning that Cory Doctorow is not just a techie but also a writer of science fiction. His blog at craphound.com reveals that there is a Norwegian PDF of Little Brother for free download from Samlaget. Apparently they bought the rights after downloading a free copy in English.

O'Reilley also organise events about "Web 2" on the west coast. "Tools Of Change" seems like an East Coast version for people with more of a print background. So there could be more wierd stuff to follow.

There are signs of a bit of a gap at the moment. The Bookseller report claims that TOC fail to answer emails and the TOC blog claims that complaints about the TOC agenda are out of proportion. But some dialogue continues. Comments on the TOC blog include information from Sara Lloyd that Pan MacMillan have yet to experience larger sales on mobile than in print as she claims is the case for some O'Reilley titles. Philip Jones states that "The Bookseller has no issue with TOC or its agenda, we are simply responding to publisher concern about what was widely regarded as the set-piece digital conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

Publishers may have concerns about the issues involved and the speed of change rather than TOC as such. A survey ahead of Frankfurt in the printed version of the Bookseller suggested many people expect a "turning point" to digital in 2018. My impression is that #TOCFrankfurt has changed the agenda already.

Meanwhile I cannot find much online about #weiss_raum or "White Space". Anybody near Frankfurt please have a look and write it up. The nature of book production is changing, enough to keep this post on topic for this blog.

ePub found in white space #weiss_raum

2009-10-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

After some browsing and quick translating through Google the tweets so far from #weiss_raum seem to mostly cover InDesign server, web-to-print, and short run digital printing. From epubli an ISBN is only 19.95 Euros so publishing has no mystery at all. I am interested in Abavo as they are specific about ePub. They can start with Framemaker then "XML data automatically processed and transformed via XSLT into XHTML format ePub." (warning this is Google translation but the idea of this is clear enough.

So "pre-media" includes ePub. This is a technology show. I am repeating from previous but this is the end of the day here in Exeter UK.

weiss_raum twitter translation

2009-10-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

It turns out the Twitter term should be weiss_raum. The tag is not finding much so far but suggest starting with http://twitter.com/weiss_raum

I have done a quick Google translate. More later.

# "Creative Book" and the cover Production Tool: On the last day of the exhibition is Adobe's Theme "Kre .. http://bit.ly/82uRG3:31 PM Oct 9th from twitterfeed

# Epubli: The specialty at the Book Fair!: Epubli now offering a special discount for authors: For the Book Fair would cost .. http://bit.ly/13WzwJ1:30 PM Oct 7th from twitterfeed

# Printing - Binding - Storage - delivering: Am 17.10. If the weiss'raum "edition one" means that Pres .. http://bit.ly/2ifXX94:30 PM Oct 5th from twitterfeed

# Not only in terms of pressure, a real expert: the infowerk ag: ag infowerk is a genuine all-rounder and pr .. http://bit.ly/2LrHVA4:31 PM Oct 2nd from twitterfeed

# Schmidkonz - highest quality - hardcover production, short runs from 1 to 100: The Schmidkonz Gm .. http://bit.ly/dUQJw2:31 PM Oct 1st from twitterfeed

# Crossmedial thanks ContentServ: Am 14.10. it says "Online first" in weiss'raum and ContentServ G.. http://bit.ly/VWXEv9:25 AM Oct 28th from web

# Thursday, could 15.10.2009: look in abavo weiss'raum The definition of "Production of the Future" and .. http://bit.ly/Yy94R8:24 AM Oct 21st from web

# The weiss'raum soon opening its doors open in about one months, the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair (14 to 18 .. http://bit.ly/lD7jB6:24 AM Oct 18th from web

# KiNTETiK presents "iBright Web2Print" in weiss'raum on opening day of the Frankfurt Book .. http://bit.ly/BvETf9:24 AM Oct 17th from web

# Your print is in good hands!: The online "print master short" of the Swabian family firm .. http://bit.ly/3wvYrd10:24 AM Oct 16th from web

# Adobe's Theme: "Creative Paper" in weiss'raum at the Frankfurt Book Fair: Trends in Kreate .. http://bit.ly/OyKnN8:25 AM Oct 15th from web

# Effective Web-to-print for big companies!: Cutting Edge, yet agile, the Austrian company celum .. http://bit.ly/4aZg2o8:23 AM Oct 14th from web

# Industry survey: What are the business models of the future: http://bit.ly/15j8na4:15 AM Oct 14th from web

# Now auchFrankfurter Book Fair @ Book_Fair with private Tweet! Where precisely flyer for future online forum http://bit.ly/o4B44:14 AM Oct 14th from web

# Total flexibility with digital media partner at the weiss'raum: Editorial system for cross-media content .. http://bit.ly/bHn1C9:24 AM Oct 10th from web

# FIT FOR FUTURE: Scheel media are an all-rounder and the experts for the production of books of the future!: .. The mitt http://bit.ly/DS15o7:24 AM Oct 9th from twitterfeed

At # 14.10. Prasentiert are trivet.net in weiss'raum: is trivet.net with over 350 installations in deutsc .. http://bit.ly/1Cxtt27:25 PM Sep 7th from web

# Vebesserte transparency flattening with callas pdfAutoOptimizer 2: Just in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair is cal. http://bit.ly/1ayiQx9:24 PM Sep 4th from web

# Shortlisted for the most innovative online book project 2009 by the online magazine announced newBook: Munich .. http://bit.ly/sj0Sa6:24 AM Oct 3rd from twitterfeed

On Demand Books and binding options

2009-10-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

I am finding something through search but nothing recent yet from the #wausraum. A Google translation from DailyNet.de announces that the waus'raum daily booklet will be printed on a Ricoh Pro C900. This has binding options including the Plockmatic BK5010e. Perhaps this is more convincing than the Expresso from Books On Demand (Hall 8 stand L903). In the UK there has been interest in the machine at Blackwells on Charing Cross Road since the London Book Fair. Victor Keegan has tweeted @vickeegan that a four day wait is not instant printing. But this wait is just because there is only one machine in the UK. On Printweek there has been some negative comment about the binding. Blogger Jo Francis has a plan to visit Charing Cross Road later and examine how this settles down. #printweek . In my opinion the print industry should welcome the idea of instant books. The capacity of devices in a bookshop must be limited such that short runs within a reasonable distance are viable.

Links welcome on other printing devices at Frankfurt.

Digital in the present

2009-10-13T02:49:00.000-07:00

Pan Macmillan’s digital director Sara Lloyd has stated that the digital world is the present not the future. This was at the Tools of Change event at Frankfurt as reported on Bookseller.com. It must be true. For one thing I found this Bookseller page without being a subscriber. The Bookseller daily email continues to be a reasonable starting place for this sort of topic.

For another thing Bookseller reporter Catherine Neilan complains about the fallure of the Radisson's wi-fi network. "However, a lively feed is still developing at #TOCFrankfurt."

So the thing that worries me now is how to find more recent info from Bernd Zipper on Twitter. I have not had any luck so far. The weiss'raum (white space) is in Hall 4 Stand A1340. White space is what type fills or leaves as a frame. "weissraum" finds a few tweets but from a couple of days ago. The O'Reilley scope may have got so digital that hard copy is forgotten. Bernd Zipper also designs an innovation parc at drupa, the largest print show. So the workflow issues around e-books could integrate with pre-press. IPEX currently uses the word "pre-media" but I am not sure how much the e-book is a choice in their approach.

From an interview with Zipper ahead of the event

What is your view of the media future?

The now and the future of the media are non-linear. In the past, we had the concept of one-dimensional development along a time shaft determined by technological progress. That is now passé – we are seeing the integration of very different ideas, technologies and contents.

So there is no linear time? This is Tuesday I think.

UK now part of the outside USA Kindle space

2009-10-07T04:33:00.000-07:00

The news about the global Kindle that I can find, except the UK Bookseller, is mostly in the USA and is not seeing this as a UK story. Meanwhile Adobe have a MAX in LA and are not bothering with anything real time in Europe this year. Whatever happens in the USA the web is now enough for others to catch up eventually. Something like that.

Teleread blog continues to have the best guidance I think. Very sound point about epub. Amazon allow PDF, even use it for their guides to the Kindle. So they are not stopping publication in standard formats. Why not epub?

Still not sure if this should be EPUB or ePUB. Would someone check this out during the Frankfurt bookfair? IDPF events link.

I think London publishers will have a hard time taking this in. There used to be a marketing concept known as "the former British empire", several English speaking countries. Some UK publishers want global rights but some agents are spending more time in New York.

This drupa blog seems the best place for this post. The IPEX one is mostly about the UK as it happens, not the global take online. drupa is still the event to conjure with. I am not sure if the next one will be as solid. Comment in Printweek from Andrew Tribute has suggested that attendance at Print09 in Chicago was less than expected. Is this explained by differences in place or is something happening over time? My guess is that IPEX in May 2010 will be more like Print09 than drupa in 2008.

Certainly I think "pre-media" should cover more than getting a text ready for a litho plate. Can a workflow include e-books such as ePUB and whatever strange format required by Amazon?

Adobe not much in Chicago, but Warnock and Geschke at IPEX

2009-09-14T06:13:00.001-07:00

continued from IPEX 2002 blog

As far as I can tell there is no Adobe booth at Print09. But this week it is announced that IPEX regard Warnock and Geschke as Champions of Print. So Postscript and PDF are standards. Ok so far.

Thing is, Adobe seems to be all about Flash. The current Chief Technology Officer is Kevin Lynch, not John Warnock. Recent press releases are about video and digital rights management in Flash. We will all have to download another version in order to watch anything.

IPEX 2010 exists as a Twitter feed. etc but there is not much point pretending it is May already. What is going on at the moment? In Adobe terms print as such has more or less vanished. So there could be disruption ahead.

Geschke and Warnock are still Chairs at Adobe so they must have a view on directions. My impression is that Adobe Classic was traded in for Macromedia. If more evidence supporting this turns up it could be a case study. There are few examples of people so close to technology who make such major decisions.

Time travel validated

2009-09-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Looking back on previous post it is worth mentioning that Total Print Expo has been postponed for this year. so the sense from the website that not much was happening had some basis. Now that Twitter is taking over most of the show events exist at any time to some extent. Can IPEX exist this month, partly in Chicago? On Twitter, who would notice?

Draft stories on IPEX blog

2009-09-08T04:01:00.000-07:00

I have posted about draft stories on the IPEX blog. Am obviously lost in time and space. My guess is that most of the topics for IPEX in 2010 will be fairly clear in Chicago as of quite soon.

Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake imagined being alive in 2010. Is it fiction to do the same? On a blog, will it matter?

Is there any buzz about Total Print Expo?

2009-06-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of activity recently around IPEX, now only a year away. They have several connections with social networking. Also an offer on the ticket price if you book real soon.

What is strange is that Total Print Expo has nothing similar going on. Only a few months to go. attendance at Northprint was less than expected and Heidelberg not only were not there but stated they would probably not be at future small shows. Total Print Expo cannot move much beyond digital without some litho. Meanwhile the LCC Futures Conference will probably include digital publishing and other software aspects of communication. Guessing here of course but the scope for speculation is getting wider without more detail on Total Print Expo as it actually exists.

Which means that time travel is getting easier. The Facebook version of IPEX could start soon and include a lot of info exchange. May 2010 somehow seems closer than October 2009.

White Space, Frankfurt Book Fair starts soon online

2009-05-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

This week I am thinking about the Guardian and the Hay Festival where there is a sponsored promotion for the Sony Reader. It seems to me that the print journalists have yet to report this in full. Also this week there is a Book Expo in New York complete with a Digital Zone. I reported on the London Bookfair for OhmyNews (still on the Science and Technology page) and put some of the talks on YouTube. Something is happening here not only about eBooks but in attitudes to print. The Espresso is a token of a change in digital printing. Exactly when this happened is a bit uncertain, but maybe things will be clearer around the time of Frankfurt.

Stands at Book Expo
Aptara 3166
DNAML 3165
Endless Ideas 3159
Ingram 3162
Kindle 3160
Libre Digital 3164
Overdrive 3158
Sony 3161, 3163

Bernd Zipper organised the drupa Innovation Parc last year, concentrating on "Web-to-Print". Digital publishing is a way to take the content online as well as the admin and pre-press. Part of the problem for print journalists seems to be all the cultural assumptions around print. Frankfurt could be the place to sort some of this out.

The White Space project - "weiss-raum.com" - starts with the design of the printed page, the space for the type. It is not clear yet what will fill this space. the topic is print but mobile devices could be nearby.

Bernd Zipper comments

Many experts predict that print is close to death. I say: print as we have known it in the past is already dead. But print lives and grows. And it does so where print technologies make use of the new opportunities of the internet in production and marketing. Where the printed word is a powerful part of a synergetic media diversity. In the weiss'raum, this can be shown with practical examples already in use, or on the basis of concrete concepts for the future. Here, manufacturers are called upon to provide the crossmedial publication technology, media companies to implement integrated publication, those with an interest in the media and journalists to articulate their requirements. For them, the weiss'raum will be a meeting place and an inspiration.

So when did print "die"? Not very clear but maybe it has already happened as claimed or maybe it will not be recognised until October. The idea that print is now something else, part of communications based online, is attractive if well explained and easy to implement.

Amazon Kindle has moved the perception of print books

2009-05-07T10:42:00.001-07:00

The news about a larger format Kindle is moving the idea of the book and the authority of print. This blog from the New York Times shows the project will be closely studied. Not sure when this will reach students and news organisations outside the UK. But the Web is better positioned and events in the USA could be defining. The 2008 drupa was a "web-to-print" drupa not just for admin but for content as it turns out, or at least the date is roughly the time that something happened.

Fact Checked Time Travel

2009-04-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

OhmyNews have published my second story about the London Book Fair. The first one was about EPUB and the Sony Reader and reported what was said. The second one was about the Blackwell shop on Charing Cross Road where an Espresso bookmachine is now in fulltime operation. My story claimed that this has put digital printing on the Book Fair agenda. I could have mentioned that print companies are usually at the Fair somewhere and digital print has been around for a while. Also Books on Demand have already supported several Espresso sites in other countries. But this is the first one in the UK and it had a good spot in the show, on the route between the two halls.

Where I went a little bit off the evidence was in writing about Total Print Expo just because it will be in the same space a few months later or earlier. I showed some relevance by linking to Andy Tribute in Printweek. Book production is now a possibility for digital printing on some sort of scale. I have started to imagine several trade shows happening at once. How to write this up is not obvious as the OhmyNews editors do check up. It sometimes takes a while to write a story and they need to know how late it is. Fortunately there is Northprint in the same week as the Book Fair so you can imagine Southprint as much the same. Except that there is no Southprint, just Total Print Expo which was previously Digital Print World.

What is interesting is that Heidelberg decided not to pay for a stand at Northprint. They will concentrate on drupa and to a lesser extent IPEX. Total Print Expo is intended to show how litho can still compete for short runs. I did work into my Blackwell story that Heidelberg demonstrated Anicolor in 2008. So I could do a draft story mostly about books around the time of Total Print Expo. At the moment it is unclear if Heidelberg will be there but some sort of web link should be possible.

By the way, a video edit would not be a problem. Total Print Expo is in the part of Earl's Court 2 not used by the Book Fair and then another part as well but the overlap could be for the Sony Reader etc and associated software. From InDesign to EPUB is premedia arguably. Picture shows part of Earl's Court 2 during London book Fair.

Of course the big benefit of moving enough shows together to fill the ground floor at Earl's Court is the access to the seminar rooms upstairs. The Futures Conference organised by the London College of Communications is excellent in most respects except for the walk from Earl's Court 2 to the front of Earl's Court 1 and then back again to the Cromwell Room. An escalator from Total Print World would be most welcome.

OhmyNews have an approach to reporting the Web based on years of experience of broadband. I think they are still three or four years ahead of the UK. So which month it is matters not a lot. I try to report on UK trade shows as it relates to other stories on OhmyNews. So I may try more time travel around shows such as Online Information, BETT and Learning Technology. The idea of the book is still central to the perception of knowledge and information. EPUB is essentially XHTML, better standardised than most Web pages. If loaded onto a mobile device this shows some editorial judgement so deserves some authority. A paperback looks much the same printed as a single copy at a Blackwell bookshop or in the mail from Amazon. A digital press may be close to the warehouse, most people may not know. So what to make of the distinctions between trade and academic publishing, modes one and two knowledge, disciplines and practice? All of this is run together briefly here but I think the technology of book production eventually has a consequence for how knowledge is organised. The Sony Reader is mostly in the High Street branches of Waterstones, not the campus. It is the trade publishers pushing EPUB. Blackwell start single copy printing on Charing Cross Road. So a question at Online Information would be to ask how is journal publishing coping? Scribd had a stand at the Fair but was mentioned in the context of copyright problems. Apparently academics can now publish versions of papers online for a limited audience but publishers have concerns with something like Scribd where the search engines are organised to find stuff and it is easy to read, comment, connect with groups etc. I am looking for direct quotes on this but the previous sentence is roughly what I understand as a concern. The Open Access approach has so far been limited to Science, Medicine and Technology where there is a budget. Social Science and Humanities are still restricted, also likely to have longer time periods of exclusivity as the journals publish less often. My own interest is in business issues where I think a lot of academic writing is now cut off from a Web discussion that remains viable nonetheless.

At BETT there was a Sony stand but the publishers I spoke to in 2008 had limited plans for suitable content. Rights Management is still an issue and they seemed to prefer packages for libraries and organisations. The content is well produced but by January 2009 there could be more stuff available for Stanza on the iPhone or other similar combinations of software and device. How will students regard these various sources of information?

Learning Technologies has an interest in how social networking works online. They are not far behind BETT in technology and have a few weeks to catch up anyway. Although held in different parts of Olympia there is no announced plan to combine them, although it wouild make sense to me.

Why not take "the learning organisation" as a test topic to check out what is avilable online for free, what is of value from a bookshop or journal in a library, what has been shifted from online to bound paper? And what effect this has on how people relate to knowledge? Drafts to be revised on what turns up at Learning Technologies.

I have spent more time recently on Twinity, a virtual Berlin. You can also have an apartment anywhere, such as Earl's Court. This helps to imagine shifts in time. Shifts in place are real of course, you can teleport quite quickly to the Berlin Sony Centre. With this experience I may come up with more time traval stories that make sense for editors. Blog versions may be revised later for OhmyNews.

This post took longer than usual to write, checking email meanwhile it turns out that Stanza has been bought by Amazon. I don't think they will drop support for EPUB. It would take someone else a few weeks to write an alternative. The closed world of the Kindle has to pay the phone bill somehow. Stanza is on another model so may stay fairly open. More later. The news reached me in a daily post from The Bookseller, available free.

The Espresso as shown at the London Book Fair contained a unit with a Konica Minolta badge. Photos enlarged from details.

Extract from recent press release-

Konica Minolta, Clare Revell, Head of Production Print: "Northprint exceeded our expectations, many of the printers that attended were seriously considering investing in digital kit and we had a number of new products and applications to share with them."

Sony Reader at London Book Fair

2009-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

OhmyNews have published my story on this.

Also several videos on YouTube, tagged epub@lbf

More later, show continues.

ODPS , more later

2009-04-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

Found this through email and it seems entirely sensible as a way to find ePUB. I hope to find out more at the London Book Fair.

If it works as suggested and enough publishers get involved it may quite quickly demonstrate how XML workflows can flourish online. Print could do the same with JDF and may need to compare for speed and flexibility as a publishing option.

Notes for slides, LCC 2009

2009-04-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

I have done a draft set of slides for the LCC Futures Conference 2009. Not sure there will be time for me to present at length or at all but there are now four stories on the OhmyNews Archive.

Print Morphs Into Communication 2005

Adobe Skews Away From Print 2006

London College Mixes Communication and Print 2007

LCC Conference Considers the Inevitability of the E-Book 2008

The idea that the name has changed from Print to Communication makes more sense over time and cannot be the basis for another news story.

Last year the editors switched the headlines so that eBooks were the main point although the photos were mostly about Heidelberg and litho for short runs.

Not sure if Heidelberg will be there. See post in IPEX blog.

The Total Print EXpo is about print obviously, but eBooks will be a topic also.

LCC Futures 2009

View more presentations from will789.

Buzzword features ePUB export

2009-03-16T03:59:00.000-07:00

More about collaboration and Adobe. A Twitter alert from Paul Norton links to an Adobe blog. It turns out that Buzzword can now export ePUB, the format for Adobe Digital Editions, the Sony Reader and Stanza for the iPhone.

So first thing to say is that this is fantastic. The eBook is now getting real. "Desktop Publishing" had a limitation that the professionals had design tools quite a bit better than highstreet software. The display in a Sony Reader is not much better than a 1930s paperback, really just a galley of text. Some graphics are possible but they are not the point. So Buzzword seems a good way to create for this environment. It is all some form of html at every stage, as far as I can tell.

Infogrid Pacific have a method for creating ePUB from Open Office. You have to start with their template. I have not compared both yet but I guess the Open Office approach would cope with headings that created a contents for the ePUB. Buzzword is just a section at a time as far as I can discover. But things change and at least there is now a choice of desktop or cloud methods. No ePUB export in Google docs yet that I have found.

Another thing to say is that Adobe seems increasingly strange. The Acrobat dialogue through official websites has almost no discussion on the XML future of PDF as in Mars or XMLPDF. The ePUB format has a lot more publicity, mostly from other companies and small blogs, interested in XML and open standards. A cloud publishing solution for ePUB is worth a bit of promotion, you might think. There seems to be the PDF products that presumably still bring in some income but are not being developed, the Flash future that is heavily promoted, and ePUB that gets a small mention in a blog.

By the way, the Mars Inspector works fine with ePUB as well as XMLPDF. I tried it again to look at the ePUB exported from Buzzword. However it failed to load as apparently it required a previous version of AIR. So I downloaded it again. Same file. What I needed to do was to uninstall it, download a later version of AIR, reinstall the XML zipfile inspector, then it was ok. So Adobe has forced me to download another copy of AIR although what I wanted was working earlier anyway. Most of the time what I want is flat pages of text. Could it be more complicated?

Adobe collaboration, what is going on?

2009-03-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

I am wondering what is going on with Adobe and collaboration. Recently Andrew Tribute suggested in Printweek that upgrades would slow down as more people found that open source had the same functionality as previous software from Microsoft and Adobe. Thinking about upgrading Acrobat for example it seems that the recent versions have been mostly about promoting Flash and online services that turn out to be an extra cost. Collaboration around the flat document may have reached the end of the road as far as new features are concerned.

Meanwhile there are many free services built around flat documents. Scribd works well. They do use Flash but it seems they actually like flat documents. Google sticks with a text style design. Docs can now create PDf and display PDF in a browser window. Adobe are also working on Buzzword and it now exports ePUB. Currently this is a free service and it may turn out like Google Docs, with a charge for higher volumes in organisations.

Meanwhile on Adobe Labs the Flash Collaboration Service is available to developers for free. It includes file sharing, webcam, chat etc. Eventually there could be a subscription involved. So Adobe may move to the clouds and have a different business model.

So why upgrade with Acrobat? Most of what is new in the box could be the advert for the subscription to something else.

Amazon boosts iPhone as eBook

2009-03-08T04:33:00.000-07:00

This drupa2008 blog continues mostly about global events. The IPEX2002 blog is mostly about the UK including responses to what happens in other places. This may get muddled but it seems a reasonable way to continue.

Today the Observer includes a comment by John Naughton on the Amazon offer of Kindle equivalent software for the iPhone. He links to the blog by Quentin Stafford-Fraser where there is a photo of the screen. Stafford-Fraser observes that "This could prove expensive".

I have put a comment on about Stanza and ePUB and the advantages of public domain and Feedbooks for ePUB from blogs. It turns out that he already uses Stanza but as he is married to a novelist has a balanced view on copyright.

I wrote on the ipex2002 blog about how I thought that ePUB would extend the use of Open Source Software beyond production of hard copy. Andrew Tribute has noticed that many sites in the print industry are not upgrading with Adobe and Microsoft products. Open source can now compare for most functions. I think there is more potential for similar developments with online publishing. Amazon on iPhone has a wider consequence.

OhmyNews publishes ePUB story

2009-02-20T02:32:00.000-08:00

OhmyNews have published my story around ePUB. I think the O'Reilly involvement in Bookworm is the significant recent event. Once the programmers get behind ePUB there could be rapid changes.

I am quite confused by Adobe. The OhmyNews editors have allowed the latter part of the text to stand although it mostly repeats my confusion. Apparently Kevin Lynch is now in charge of Acrobat though I have never come across him saying anything about PDF. A sweeping statement there but this is only a blog. Suggest you try your own Google Search. Maybe Acrobat is just a word for something people will pay attention to and actually means Flash. The Adobe Reader on mobile is not the same as the Adobe Reader on the desktop but the technology story is way in the background. PDF is an ISO standard but I think ePUB may be more widely supported eventually because it has input from more sources.

Kindle news in Guardian

2009-02-12T05:48:00.000-08:00

The Guardian Technology page has news about the Kindle, it will not be in the UK anytime soon.

The reasons are mostly about mobile phone aspects. If there is no Kindle in Europe what else will happen? Sony device with something wireless? More downloads of software for phones? More support for ePUB without the Amazon closed world?

Expect more next week from Barcelona. Adobe will probably obsess on Flash video etc. but text is still in there somewhere.

Smashwords hints at integrated workflow

2009-02-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

It may be that the Kindle is not isolated just because ePUB is not supported. Before long there could be a workflow that arrives at most results required. Smashwords have a guide for writers so the next steps must be known by somebody.

ePUB digital rights on Stanza

2009-02-11T03:09:00.000-08:00

Adobe server DRM now links to iPhone with ePUB.

Flash may take a while longer.

ePUB and O'Reilley Labs

2009-02-11T02:14:00.000-08:00

Bookworm supported

Kindle to change world, but no date for the UK

2009-02-11T01:26:00.000-08:00

The Electric Pig has a lot of detail on Kindle 2 and a claim that there will be a release outside the USA but no dates.

Meanwhile the print version of the Guardian that arrived in Exeter today has nothing on the Kindle. Yesterday a very short Reuters report. So the Guardian blog is just for the online audience. How long can this continue? Will the Saturday Review have anything to add or is it just a curiosity?

Plastic Logic support for ePUB

2009-02-10T04:05:00.000-08:00

The full press release includes mention of ePUB and a deal with Adobe on Digital Rights.

So the Digital Editions Reader supports PDF and ePUB on computer screens. Not sure how hard it is to move ePUB on to the Kindle. Other devices support ePUB directly so there should be much more content available.

Guardian blogger suggests piracy

2009-02-10T03:47:00.000-08:00

Bobbie Johnson has suggested that more piracy would encourage a shift to digital publishing. Only on his blog at the moment. Maybe in print tomorrow.

I agree that the promotion for Kindle, Sony Reader etc usually fails to mention the amount of public domain, creative commons etc content that is available. A "free CD" with Charles Dickens etc. is only a taster. Devices that cost a couple of hundred pounds need a story to support them. The ePUB format is based on open standards so should be easy to create. Not quite so yet but this could change.

What will happen with journal articles in Humanities / Social Science? Still very expensive to download a single article from the British Library. University Librbaries used to allow casual visitors to read hard copy but now it is all hidden behind a user id and password. The text around Business Schools is often available somewhere else as a draft or a blog. This connects more easily with practitioners so is more widely read anyway. At least that is my impression. I seem to be going a bit off topic for this blog but that is a good sign. The communications industry is relevant for learning.

Kindle. no news outside USA

2009-02-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

Joe Wikert

The Twitter feed

Newspaper intererest?

2009-02-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

Plastic Logic are expected to show something this week

Red Orbit story

Digital Editions Reader, any news in the UK?

2009-02-09T03:42:00.000-08:00

Blogging and email are working as a way to do reporting without moving very much. I have been told that there is an event in London - Publishing Expo - that could relate to Tools of Changing and Mobile Barcelona. However, looking at the website I find the Adobe agenda is all about Flash and mobility. My guess is that "web publishing" will not have much about ePUB or PDF or the Digital Editions Reader. If you happen to be there and find different, please let me know. For most of Adobe, flat pages of text are just not interesting. My impression.

Then again this is only Monday. Publishing Expo is Wed/Thur , Tools of Change closes Wed so there is scope for blogging and comment.

So far blogsearch reveals that Indie Author has arrived in New York where it is 55 degrees and sunny.

Meanwhile here in Exeter the snow is turning to slush and we are about to concentrate on animation in cinemas.

ePUB the next two weeks

2009-02-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

The ePUB format is not much mentioned as such but there seems to be momentum around eBooks. Today in the Observer Robert McCrum reports that various publishing people who did not wish to be named are fairly happy with their Kindle or Sony Reader. No use for editing or collaborating but then this was never intended.

I have done three stories for OhmyNews - the publisher support for ePUB, the Sony support for ePUB, and the eBook buzz at Online Information. The news on this was Stanza, unexpected success on iPhone as Steve Jobs previously stated most people just like music and video.

Online text publishing will change journalism and it is on this topic that blogging etc. could overlap with proper print journalists. I put a comment on the Barney Cox Printweek blog about Stanza and he not only replied but did another post after more research. I try to encourage the Hunky Mouse and others at Newswireless to report about Online Information. No success so far but Stanza may interest them at some point. Victor Keegan has written about a "quiet revolution" but this was on the technology pages, not quite the same authority as the section for book reviews.

An Adobe email says the Digial Editions Reader 1.7 will be promoted at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference in New York City and at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain. So there should be some reporting from both events. This blog will link as I am staying in Exeter.

Haymarket moves Marketing Direct online

2009-01-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

Below is the text of a story for OhmyNews. Not yet edited or published.

subhead
Dissonance issues emerge for editor brands

Haymarket have announced that from February the magazine Marketing Direct will only be published online. Haymarket publish a range of media business magazines and started in print over fifty years ago. Editor Noelle McElhatton wrote in an editorial that "As online is the present and the future for direct marketing, so too it is for publishing." The decision comes at a time of continuing decline in many print circulations and discussion about the future of news organisations. Haymarket is deeply involved in the UK printing industry as publisher of Printweek and Printing World. Tensions in the new balance between print and online can surface in discussion around the range of Haymarket titles.

Direct Marketing has traditionally covered direct mail, print sent through the post. The claim to be direct assumes that the message is on target, uniquely sent to people who will benefit. The perception of "junk mail" is a consequence of sending out too much print and over time has reduced the effectiveness of this form of promotion. However the anxiety around "spam" emails is on another level and there is not yet an industry around preventing print from reaching a letterbox.

The final print version of Marketing Direct includes a report on a discussion about the branding of direct marketing. The expectation has already moved beyond just print in the mail. Gail Dudleston from twentysix quoted a definition from the Wikipedia - "sending messages to consumers using direct mail, telemarketing, email, faxing, couponing and DRTV." She claims this view needs an update and describes the "heavy end of digital marketing- site build, web optimisation and the rest - that DM agencies are not percieved to be doing well at". DRTV is an extension of TV with targeting through subscription information.

The move online will contribute to a change in the branding of direct marketing. The final issue came with an insert for courses from the Institute of Direct Marketing. This outlines the knowledge around database marketing - data quality, statistics and testing etc, - that transfers fairly directly to the management of a website.

Haymarket started as Cornmarket in 1957 with a hardback Directory of Opportunities for Graduates. The name changed to include "Hay" in 1964 with an investment from the print group Hazell Watson & Viney. Since buying Printing World and changing the publication to a monthly, Haymarket now publish in Printweek the only UK print news on a weekly basis. Recently this too has added blogs to the website and in December offered the first webcast on the topic of web-to-print, ordering print from a website.

The differences in opinion around print are clearer in Printing World. The January printed version features a report that print is "more engaging" than other media. Print scored well for "seriousness", dependability and quality of information. Online scored worse for credibility and trust. However in an editorial Alison Carter announced that Printing world will no longer include news as this can be found on printweek.com ansd there is an intention to move Printbuyer content online in the near future. This used to be a distinct publication but was recently merged with Printing World. Carter writes that the move to a website will "allow the media-buying fraternity to enjoy the benefits of an online community".

The term "editor brand" comes from The Guardian as explained on their website about sponsorship-

Faced with an increasing choice of what media to consume editor brands become increasingly important, as they are brands that consumers feel loyal to and choose to consume regularly. An easy way to identify Editor brands is to see if they pass the ‘I am a…’ test. I am a Radio 4 viewer, I am a Guardian reader and so on. They succeed in spite of and perhaps because of, the increasing volumes of media.

However in my opinion there is a problem when editors allow conflicting streams of messaging. Most people in the printing industry and related media recognise that they read Printweek and expect comprehensive information on print technology. It is reassuring to expect some support for print in general but then the online coverage can be confusing, especially as Haymarket is seen to move their own operations. The website brandrepublic has elements from each of their magazines so may eventually demonstrate a coherent view. Currently there appears to be some dissonance in Haymarket as an editor brand.

The Guardian has similar problems in reporting the situation of newspapers and news organisations. The printed Media Section this week had a headline claim that "Circulation slide has not yet become a freefall." All the numbers were about print sales without any information on the newspaper websites. A 5.6% drop in newspaper sales for the year to December was presented as if this might be better than expected. Jim Bilton concluded that "gloom and unpredictability do not mean doom. There is still quite a bit of life left in printed news." However on another page Jeff Jarvis reported that Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times has stated in an email that "the paper's online advertising revenue is now sufficient to cover the Times's entire editorial payroll, print and online."

Jarvis blogs at Buzzmachine and is positive about the transition for news organisations towords the Web.

In the LA Times revelation, I see hope: the possibility that online revenue could support digital journalism for a city. The enterprise will be smaller, but it could well be more profitable than its print forebears today and - here's the real news - it would grow from there. Imagine that: news as a growth industry again.

This contrasts with claims that journalism is under threat from amateurs and bloggers. The Guardian still often features a comical take on citizen journalism that may be comforting for some print journalists but I find it lacking in balance given that there is almost no informed coverage of citizen journalism except on the technology pages. The dissonance for the Guardian editor brand is around the absence of information on how they are actually moving online and the variety of takes on user contributions.

Here again Jarvis has a view I find unusual in the Guardian when he describes how a news organisation could develop with less print -

It could operate more efficiently by working in collaborative networks with the community.

Later this year HarperCollins will publish a book by Jarvis titled "What Would Google Do?". Newspapers is only one aspect of this but the topic may be enough to alarm some literary critics. Andrew Keen's book about the "Cult of the Amateur" has been widely reviewed in the UK but there has been almost nothing about "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger. I have yet to see anything in the Guardian for example. A possible explanation is that this was only published in New York though it is available through Amazon UK. The dissonance issue could get more intense if the printed book review section continues to ignore issues in a way that contrasts with claims on the Guardian website.

Haymarket moves Marketing Direct online

2009-01-08T05:57:00.000-08:00

Mailing shot arrived this morning by post, encloses a fairly slim magazine - Marketing Direct - and announcement that this will be online from next month, February.

So what is the Haymarket take on print? What to make of editorial in Printweek and Printing World?

Haymarket, in print and online

2009-01-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

Coming back to study print after the break. It seems likely that Haymarket and other publishers will face some starker choices in how they respond to online and how they present this. Printweek 19th December has a very short piece on the Web-to-Print webcast - printweek.com/webcast - really just a link to the website. But it is a fact that the webcast happened. I found it a day or two late because I was using Firefox. Assume Microsoft for this purpose. But it did work eventually and the point about the timeliness of Web-to-Print was well made.

There is less about Web-To-Print as such in the predictions section of Printweek (2 Jan page 14) but Barney Cox mentions "efficient online infrastructure to receive jobs". Although Jo Francis refers to the printing industry and "the image of a blighted, apocolyptic wasteland" there is not much about the context of online growth as a component of communications.

The January Printing World has a report on stats from Heidelberg's Print Media Academuy showing that advertising on TV scores badly for "intrusiveness" and that print scores well for "seriousness"- dependability and quality of information. The conclusion is that "online clearly has some way to go to gain credibility and trust as an information source."

However a different view could be based on Haymarket decisions as explained by Alison Carter in an Editor's Letter (p3). While news analysis will continue in Printing World the actual news items will in future be available only on printweek.com. Also "the print community will be serviced through the website's interactive forums." My guess is that the quality of the information will be fairly high.

In another blog about the Guardian I have started to use the term "editor brand dissonance". This is where the editor brand loses some strength as the audience cannot cope with the contradictions. In the case of the Guardian they make strong claims online about support for web culture, while in print the professional writers continue to be less than polite about bloggers and citizen journalism. Just my impression of course. Your experience may be different.

Anyway the point is that I cannot see how Haymarket could continue indefinitely to move publishing online while continuing an editorial about the lasting strength of print. Part of the muddle is what is meant by "pre-media"? With the latest Creative suite for example an InDesign page can be saved as Flash. So what sort of people will be doing this?

My own summary of 2008 has one main point. This was the year of the Web-to-Print drupa. This may become clearer over time. Simon Nias writes (page 16, Jan 2) that the story he would like to write about in 2009 would be that JDF is "finally embraced by everyone". As far as I can remember there was almost no mention of JDF during the webcast on Web-to-Print. For most people there will just be a database somewhere in the cloud behind the browser. Someone in production will understand the JDF but it is not going to be a recognised word like to Google.

Resolution for the next drupa - spend more time in the innovation parc. Meanwhile try to follow the links online.

Is Adobe in a cloud?

2008-12-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

More on this next year. My impression of the recent statements is that Adobe seems to be concentrating on income from upgrades for Creative Suite. Not much about cloud computing. This explains why Adobe is rarely mentioned in stories about the Cloud.

The business model could be very different.

Printweek webcast, a new era in magazines

2008-12-17T04:58:00.000-08:00

The webcast was actually a couple of days ago. I was looking forward to it and made a special trip to LifeBytes to make sure of adequate bandwidth. Unfortunately my experience was that the site just stopped on page one. Turns out this was a Firefox problem. "Works best with Internet Explorer" was dropped as a phrase into the Printweek report. There is your clue. They should have said "We don't support Firefox" right up front. May be just me of course. But suggest you try the Microsoft site for copy of IE before trying the first Printweek webcast.

Unless you are concerned about security. In which case, check the blogs first for recent information.

Anyway, back on topic.

The webcast is full of useful information on Web-to-Print. Well worth 50 minutes time for anyone working in print or publishing. I will come back to the content later. Meanwhile a few main points-

No mention at all of the Job Definition Format (JDF) . I have spoken to several coders who say their systems are compliant with XML but often not the JDF spec. There is no sign of Adobe promoting the features in Acrobat that allow JDF to be created. So maybe the way forward is to mention "Web-To-Print" as sales talk and then worry about JDF when the job reaches production. Long ago the "enquiries" from print reps often had to be rewritten to make any kind of production sense. Maybe the role of JDF in a computerised workflow is much the same.

Similarly I think that Software as a Service(SAS) is not that easy to understand. Later in the webcast there is mention of The Cloud. Sounds a lot simpler.

Main takeaway is that this a breakthrough for Printweek and Haymarket. The question is what will they do next about the print / online mix for magazines? Apparently there is a generation under 26 where interest in print is quite low. So the suggestion is to advertise print to an older generation through Saga magazine. I am not making this up, listen to the whole webcast for details. Nothing against Saga magazine by the way. They feature stories about Prince and other artists I follow.

But what about the future media for people who read Printweek?

web-to-print from drupa to Haymarket

2008-12-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow there will be a webcast from Printweek all about web-to-print. Chaired by Matt Whipp, the editor of Printweek.com.

So the Web is now seen as something in the service of print. It can result in orders for service providers and is also part of the publishing mix. How very sensible, but it seems to have taken rather a long time to reach this level of acceptance.

Reports from drupa earlier this year did not emphaise the web-to-print claims coming from the innovation parc. There is still an interest in the big metal machinery. Perhaps in the context of 500 years of more or less the same approach a few months is not of much weight. There is still time for 2008 to be recorded as the "web-to-print" drupa. See OhmyNews for example. "I stand by my story" says blogger.

I think the interesting aspect will be how far Haymarket moves towards the Web with titles other than Printweek. I still find the branding quite confusing. Brand Republic is a website but Revolution is a magazine in print like Marketing, direct mail and various other words. Eventually there could be an online brand that is recognised directly from promotional print.

On 5 December there was a Printweek interview with Felix Dennis of Butler, Tanner and Dennis. He was asked if print will be around for another 100 years? He avoided a direct answer but if the question is about whether the Web is now part of the mix the answer is probably yes. A Printweek webcast is as close as needs be to a defining event.

Online Information, see Exetreme blog

2008-12-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

I will be at Online Information this week.

Posts mostly to the Exetreme blog as this is on my card.

Cards by Moo by the way. Last year this is mostly what I was asked about.

JDF video found on Adobe website

2008-11-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to find out about an online video resource to explain the JDF options in Acrobat. An earlier one found on YouTube is now no longer available. The Acrobat users events may cover this but I missed the sound on a recent broadcast and the agenda seems to be heading towards Flash for knowledge workers. My guess is that most people in offices still require print sometimes, so the JDF intent feature would be interesting.

A recent blog post alerted me to a list of CS4 videos and through this I found a video on JDF for CS3. Start here then follow Indesign - Exporting and Publishing - Creating JDF job definitions. (Can't find a direct link, right click just gets "about Flash" etc etc)

The odd thing is that new features like export to Flash have got links from the blog, the JDF is just in a list of videos you may like to find. My guess is that most people who use InDesign are mostly interested in printed pages. The JDF from Acrobat feature is almost never explained.

I am beginning to think that Adobe are slightly desperate to move everything into Flash. They may think Adobe Classic - Postscript and PDF etc, documents as we know them - is about to be so widely available that the margins will vanish. The Acrobat Users broadcast for the UK recently promoted the Flash intro way of presenting a menu in a portfolio. Personally I still think the text list is ok and see no reason to force people I snd a portfolio into upgrading just to get past the menu. On Buzzword I find it is just annoying the way the icons for each person sharing the document chanbge shape and display of text information. This style may be fun on a Mac when you only need one software at a time but if you are trying to maintain a list then a boring old text box is easier to follow.

So not sure if I am off topic yet. My main interest remains in Adobe Classic, even as there are several other sources for this sort of application. Adobe Flash, what I used to call Adobe Max, is not so essential. It may be interesting later but my suggestion to Adobe would be to remember what the current customers thought they were interested in to start with.

Adobe and Cloud Computing

2008-10-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

I have updated the Acrobat Services dotcom site after the Microsoft announcements. as far as I can tell, Microsoft has now accepted the Cloud but nobody is sure how this will work out. My comment aspect is that Adobe seem to be ignored in most of the reporting. Amazon is mentioned on services for developers, Google for Apps. But nothing on Buzzword etc. This is worth mentioning as I find Buzzword off the scale if you take Windows Live as a base for word processing. Maybe I have not found the right bit. I try to keep an open mind.

I did a check Google search just on Adobe and cloud and found Tim O'Reilley on the radar. No mention of Adobe until the last bit where he links to the panel for a Web 2 conference coming up. Kevin Lynch, Adobe Chief Technology Officer, will be there.

Maybe things will become clear. My first guess is that the problems for Adobe and Microsoft are much the same.

Acrobat Services UK site updated on ePUB edit

2008-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

I have added a story about the use of the PDFXML tools for ePUB. this could extend to editing or at least getting used to the ePUB format.

I think the UK site is a fair enough place for this sort of thing, XML for hard copy or at least flat documents made up mostly of text. I realise you could put video into ePUB but I actually don't think this is the point. The Sony Reader has about the design capability of a 1930s paperback. Page after page of text. which is what a lot of people want. And especially in the UK, the bandwidth is well suited to this. Doubtless in California high definition video arrives fast on any screen and Flash is making sense. But I think Adobe Classic still has some scope in the UK.

There is still some mystery about PDFXML. I don't understand why it is not promoted more. Maybe ePUB will get some interest and then the idea of an XML zip file will get more attention.

Also I don't understand why Adobe are switching DRM to Digital Editions as far as e-books are concerned. It appears that Livecycle can still control access to PDF but how this might work with e-books I don't know. Maybe the products and markets have been segmented so much that the users will have to work out quite a lot of things through blogs.

OhmyNews switch my headlines on Total Print story

2008-10-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

OhmyNews have published my story about the Total Print show and LCC conference but they have switched the headlines to put the emphasis on the e-book. I still think the news from the show was the Heidelberg effort to present litho as still relevant. But clearly the online interest is in e-books. The info from Frankfurt has been picked out in the OhmyNews intro.

So what I take from this is that the Web joins things up quite quickly. We do not have to wait for the next London bookfair, might as well look at Frankfurt online. Maybe think of all the UK shows as if they are happening all the time. The BETT and Online Information websites are comprehensive and link to social networks. Learning Technology much the same.

The best report on Frankfurt I can find is from the blog for ePUB Books. Clearly based on actually being there. Apparently Sony expect the Reader to sell in millions. Most of the other hard information is that nothing much was denied. Suggest careful study as a guide to what is possible.

Publisher's Weekly and XML

2008-10-18T05:51:00.001-07:00

Quick scan of Google News finds this on XML from Frankfurt. More on ePUB later. The thing is, JDF is XML as well and PDFXML is possible. So my point is that the print world need to be on XML speed to keep up. The Total Print show did have the technology available but I'm not sure of the timescale people are thinking about.

I'm near Tottenham Court Road at the moment. Both Waterstones and Sony Centre are sold out of the Sony Reader.

Heidelberg presents litho as digital workflow

2008-10-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

I am still not sure what to make of the Total Print show. It clearly is different to Digital Print World as Heidelberg is there but the discussion at the lunchtime debate was mostly about digital. Gareth Ward pointed out that the setup costs for litho have been reduced with the anicolor shown by Heidelberg, but the run length mentioned was still 1000. Other times there is talk of 500 or 200. It may be my lack of imagination but I can't see this kind of equipment being used for 200 sheets.

"Short-run" seems to be used as a word in association with personalisation or variable data. The value of the timeliness and targeted content is greater than the setup costs. Litho has not got an easy way to compete with this although sections can be combined in a book of selections with a personalised cover from some other device.

Heidelberg show the Prinect workflow system as causing much of the improvement in makeready times. It also works with most digital presses and finishing equipment, not just their own. The Heidelberg emphasis on JDF is the strongest at the show. It is part of several other workflow products, but not strongly promoted as such.

The Fuji Jetpress 720 is present through a video. The claimed runlength is around 2000 where litho costs would be a reason not to use inkjet. There will be some test installations in Japan during 2009 but the UK may have to wait till IPEX 2010.

More later on web-to-print. There are some examples.

The show is not as busy as it could be. Tomorrow is the last day.

Meanwhile I think that ePUB and devices like the Kindle and Sony Reader will get a boost at Frankfurt. Print is still the leading way for books to be published, but the workflow may need to get more personalised and closer to instant.

Run lengths, litho and inkjet

2008-10-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

Total Print is now intended as a show to cover litho as well as digital. The name change from Digital Print World may indicate a loss of focus on other aspects of digital technology. Web design as pre-media, for example. But for the show organisers the return of Heidelberg must be welcome.

However it is not making sense to me that the Heidelberg Anicolor machines can do 15,000 sheets an hour but are also claimed to be suitable to compete with digital for short runs. What is a short run? I can't see why litho would compete on five or ten.

Another new exhibitor is Fujifilm. I can't find a weblink for the Printweek Technology Report but here is a link to a comment by Barney Cox where some issues are raised about future inkjet. In the Technology Report, Barney Cox sums up the info from Drupa and quotes Fuji claims that the Jet Press 720 will be competitive with litho on runs up to 5000. This seems much more like the run length at which Heidelberg would be concerned. The 720 is not available till 2010. There may be a photograph or video at Total Print. So my guess is that Heidelberg are there to investigate and get ready.

Comments welcome on what is a short run.

By the way, will anyone from Haymarket turn up at the LCC Futures conference this year and explain the web strategy for magazines?

ePUB, draft for after Frankfurt

2008-10-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

I have done a couple of stories on ePUB and the Sony Reader for OhmyNews

Sony opens Reader to ePUB

Penguin targets Sony Reader

There will be a presentation at the Frankfurt Bookfair, Thursday next week.

(I will be at Total Print in London but print and publishing are connected, see fiction attempt on blog for IPEX2002)

Main facts seem to be

Stats on sales, 71% up year to July
See details on history

Two million downloads from Feedbooks . They seem to be a major source for content. They can create ePUB from a blog feed or newspaper etc.

So far nothing about the iPhone or Stanza. This may come up though. Stanza allows ePUB files to be read on an iPhone or iPod. Forbes reported that there have been 395,000 downloads compared to estimated Kindle sales of 380,000. Link found through Teleread, where most info on this sort of thing turns up.

I am not sure people will read for so long on a small backlit screen as they would on a Sony Reader or Kindle. If they do, they may regret it later.

Any other info welcome, probably another story for OhmyNews around the 20th.

The stats page has some links for Japan and Korea but not very recent. Suggestions on this would also be helpful.

In the Cloud with Steve Ballmer

2008-10-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

In London and Paris last week Steve Ballmer spoke about Cloud Computing. something will happen around the time of a developer conference at the end of this month.

I have done a story for Acrobat Services dotcom. Also updated my blog on Live Spaces. I am still not sure how this works. Previously I tried it out a bit but my hotmail identity fell over through disuse. This time around my Gmail email was accepted but some of my previous text is no longer available to edit. I think the texts may be online somewhere. The blog is definitely. But the look of it is no different to what Blogger offers.

To be continued.

Imagined Reader Proposal

2008-10-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

From Guardian Talk

Victor Keegan has written about the Sony Reader and other devices coming along next year.

This was on a Thursday. But not much yet on a Saturday in the bookish bit, or on a Monday where newspaper circulation numbers continue to be considered as a mystery.

I would like to suggest a whatif from some time in the future. Say the Guardian guarantees Â£500 million over five years for Man Roland to develop a device with a screen size like the Berliner or G2 in colour of course and with Web access. Guardian fans sign a 24 month contract to spend around a pound a day and get a free prototype.

I could develop a detailed proposal on a modest budget if one could be found. Not too silly. Man Roland already has some research.

Draft stories around Online Information

2008-10-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

I try to keep a Google Doc updated with drafts of stories for OhmyNews. Let me know if you would like a look. It is a bit of a muddle but works ok once the editors are involved. Often they do not have to intervene much, it just takes a better shape for the occasion.

Latest addition

update 2nd October

British Library have announced that Adobe Digital Editions will be required next year to access their journal service. Support for Acrobat Reader will vanish. Digital Rights Management will be in Digital Editions, not Acrobat. I do not think the reasons behind this have been well explained. No mention of Flash on the British Library site that stands out. The effect will be to force Flash on all BL customers. Do they realise what else it is capable of? Trying to hold on to Adobe Classic will not be possible after such an event so after Online Information will be a time to consider Adobe Max.

Possible headlines,

During November
Journal Publishers continue to ignore video

My guess is that the academic content promoted at Olympia will be in the same form as ever

Early December
British Library forces researchers to install Flash

Version 10 of Flash is probably out sometime around the rest of this year. Expect at least some sort of speculation in time for the Max events. I find it difficult to follow and explain, especially in real time and space. Exeter City Council still avoid Flash on their site and for staff browsing.

Creative Destruction

2008-09-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

The stock markets are a bit alarming at the moment. I am trying to remember what Schumpeter had to say about "creative destruction". Something about phases of technology innovation when times are good. One problem is that everything seems to have been driven by finance during the time I can remember. An economy based on production is a bit far off, but maybe in the future as well as in the past.

Anyway, this came to mind through a blog post from Jo Francis repeated in print in Printweek.

For more than a decade now people have been talking to me about the likelihood of a major "correction" in print supply and demand. Looking at the restructuring going on among papermakers, and with news of print company failures emerging on an almost daily basis, I wonder if world events will hasten the arrival of this mythical correction point now?

A technology shift could be towards the Web and digital communication, with print still included. Something like that seems to me the sort of direction that could happen.

In a Printweek story about the closure of the Leeds Heidelberg office there is a quote from George Clarke-

"The print market has contracted since the three UK divisions were created in 1975. Then, there were 14,000 potential customers, today there are 3,500."

A correction in supply and demand has already started so the scope for technology change is something to consider.

Kevin Lynch interview, Adobe Classic, Adobe Max

2008-09-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am more and more convinced there is a bit of a break in time going on. The information coming out about Creative suite 4 seemed mostly about Flash and the Web. Now there is an interview with Kevin Lynch. I have read the first bit fairly closely and will come back to it. Several mentions for Flash 4, not yet in full release, and almost nothing about PDF.

The reasoning seems to be about the growth of mobile devices, cloud computing, and social context. Loading the story required getting past an advert page and then waiting for the text to move about the screen as the Flash advertising loaded from all directions. I still think there is a viable something around a page design more or less based on text. Adobe Classic continues even though Adobe Max is the future.

It is again suggested that design should be for the small screen as on a phone. It may just be my declining eyesight that influences me. I tried out an ad link for Acrobat and it went off into animation with icons swirling about as if each one was a new feature. My guess is that the Acrobat users will just be confused.

It also seems to me that the cloud computing approach has a different business model. What will be the costs of packaged software when similar services are available online? Contribute is still so much a seat, probably a block on any scale of operation compared to Google sites. There is an alternative in Adobe Labs but what will the price be? The version of Creative Suite with InDesign is almost as much as any other but if this stuff is really out of date and gets no promotion or buzz, then when will the prices start to drop?

MARS is now PDFXML as a file label

2008-09-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

The MARS blog reveals a new name and an update. More next week.

Briefly, I think this is a major event. The interest around Creative Suite will be mostly about Flash i guess but there is still a lot of activity around data and flat documents.

Sony Reader, more hints

2008-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

I have started to track Google Blogsearch on the Sony Reader. The relevance for the printing industry is that if an XML format like ePub can reach a device easily enough, then print workflows will need to be just as quick or at least not too slow. JDF could help with this.

Joe Wickert has done some study on Google Trends and thinks the Sony Reader is doing well for interest. But bear in mind that the Amazon Kindle is only available in the USA so finding out more about it is a waste of time for most people. Amazon support for ePub could change things. Joe Wickert also has heard about a Sony announcement in New York on Oct 2nd that may be about wireless or something. This is speculation but could be true as here in the UK people like myself are buying the current model and we realise it will soon be out of date.

ePub publishing, first start your blog

2008-09-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

Experiments continue. The creation of ePub is going to become easier, no question.

Best available solution courtesy of Feedbooks. They will create a book in several formats from an RSS feed. Seems to work ok. Sample of this blog.

ePUB, SVG, LaTex workflow in outline

2008-09-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Adobe blogs usually offer something, if not what you are looking for. Bill McCoy writes about Hindawi and the use of EPUB for journals. I hope to find out more about how this is done. Graphics in SVG, starts with LaTex. Samples

The Sony Reader is now in Exeter

2008-09-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

The Sony Reader is now in Exeter. Both branches of Waterstones have a display. I did a quick report on the "wifi Exeter" blog and a story for OhmyNews.

It turns out that when Sony say it supports Word what they mean is that it supports RTF (rich text files). Actually you need a local copy of Word to make the switch. Saving as RTF in Open Office works just as well, just drag and drop into the Sony Reader. So this is "good enough" for the moment. Understanding the creation of an ePub can wait a while.

I have found out a bit more through the Teleread blog.

A commint from Mike Cane links to this tutorial. For some people this could be clarity enough.

I have also found more from Adobe. A blog connects to a ePub check so this great once you get started.

There is a Digital Publishing Technology Centre written for developers. The guidance on what you actually do the get an ePub from Indesign is a link to another blog. I may have shown this link before. it is the point where I get stuck.

Meanwhile Adobe have announced an announcement about CS4 and some detail about online Photoshop from a phone. However there is no release yet for a MARS plug-in for Acrobat 9, predicted on the MARS blog for early August.

So perhaps the idea of an "XML friendly" version of PDF has been forgotten and ePUB is the suggestion for text reflow on small screens. This impression comes over through various blogs but I think there could be some clarity from Adobe with a bit more of a profile. So far as I know there has been no statement from Adobe UK around the Waterstones launch for the Sony Reader. Adobe Digital Editions is rarely explained.

ePUB from html - Book Glutton ok so far

2008-08-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Through the Wikipedia I have found Book Glutton and a handy service to create ePUB from html. I saved some test text in Open Office as html and then tried it. Headline in a different size, one word in bold.

This is how it looks as epub in Adobe Digital Editions. the bold is ok but it lost the size difference for the top line. OK as html in Firefox. So i think i will use bold for headings and just accept that the type is all the same size.

Acrobat.com has accepted the two files to store but it claims they cannot be displayed. Links should work so comment welcome.

the html

the epub

More later on what Adobe is doing, as and when it becomes just a bit more clear. The formats now are such that open source is well worth a look for comparison.

ePub from InDesign, could it be more intuitive?

2008-08-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

On September 4th Waterstones in the UK will be stocking the Sony Reader. That includes Exeter, where I live. Often this blog is about distant places such as Ghent where the PDF standards come from. It will be interesting for me that local can connect with significant technology such as consumer electronics to display ePub.

I have booked some time on Sept 4th at Life Bytes, an internet resource opposite the Odeon on Sidwell Street. Advertised as "late afternoon", by which time there should be something working over the cable. The Kindle is not available in the UK anyway and there is no date as far as I know. So it still makes some sense to download files to a desktop and then cable to a device.

LifeBytes has a copy of the current InDesign and I have tried out the option to create ePUB. There is a file but no formatting. I might as well be working with Notepad, which by the way I often do. The menus are not that easy to follow. XHTML is shown under multimedia or something like that ( I am writing this at home so memory is not exact). So perhaps this idea of losing all formatting would make sense if you wanted to work in Dreamweaver. All I want to do is show a text with some formatting on a Sony Reader.

So it is good to have found a blog entry about Digital Editions even though I cannot follow all of it. The good news is that the formatting was intended to disappear so the explanation is not that I made some simple error in trying to use InDesign.

Text styling: only Character Styles, Paragraph Styles, and Object Styles are exported to ePub. All freehand styling is discarded. This means that if you want a single word or phrase in bold type, you need to create a character style (i.e. bold_text), and apply this character style to all of the text that you need to be bold. If you then decided that you want some of those words bold and italic, then you must create a second style to apply to those select words to be turned bold and italic.

Layout could be just a bit more complicated

Layout: when threading together text fields, they will always be exported in the correct order. However, they will also always be in one flow. All of the layout editing that you have done to place the text boxes with respect to each other or the page is discarded. You will have to style the layout of the ePub manually, after export.

But is still possible if you look inside the zip file

After exporting the eBook to ePub format, you can manually edit its content and styling. This is easy to do, because ePub format is really a zip file. To edit these components, follow these steps:

1. Using a zip compression/decompression tool, extract the contents of the ePub archive to a known location.
2. Apply the required edits to the individual components
3. Re-archive all of the components. The order of the files in the archive matters. In order to comply to the ePub specification, add the mimetype file first, and make sure that it is not compressed. Next, add the META-INF and the OEBPS directories to an archive.
4. Make sure that the extension of the archive file is .epub, not .zip.

Note that the XHTML files, chapter list (OPF file) and the CSS stylesheet can be found in OEBPS directory.

Fortunately the Sony Reader also supports Adobe Digital Editions(ADE) and PDF. What seems to happen is that a PDF file is seamlessly converted into Flash Paper as it used to be known. There is still no news on a MARS plugin for Acrobat 9 (expected July or early August according to the MARS blog.)So there appears to be no urgency in a more XML friendly version of PDF. If it is possible to move from PDF to Flash, could it be easier to create ePUB from text or word processing?

I have had a quick browse of open source approaches. More on this in a later post. Possible workflow- import open doc to Scribus, click the "save as ePUB" button.

Clearly life is more complicated than that, but I hope to have more clues by Sept 4th.

John Dvorak on Adobe and Linux

2008-08-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

John Dvorak has suggested that Adobe could do more with Linux as part of the situation around Microsoft and Silverlight. One thing that strikes me is that Dvorak must think that such a move is possible.

Previously it seems to have been considered that Linux may work on a server but is not ready for the desktop. As there are already a range of open source applications as presented at the Libre Graphics meeting, it seems possible to argue that they could soon compare with many of the functions from suites for creatives.

Perhaps the latest features would be missing or harder to implement. However I am still interested in the kind of capability associated with Adobe Classic - Postscript and PDF from long ago at the start of "desktop publishing". Well, maybe PDF is more recent but I will come back to some dates another time.

The ePUB format seems to be such that open source could cope with it. This could be one area where the Linux desktop was "good enough".

Fujifilm at Total Print

2008-08-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

The Total Print site states that Fujifilm will be there but i can;t find anything else through Google News. Their inkjet is not expected to exist till 2010 but they also offer workflow. I have changed the story on WWWatford to include something with the Heidelberg aspect. It seems more likely to me that Heidelberg is there to get ready for the next phase of digital printing. I cannot see how litho can compete for the short runs typical of the kit that has been at this show so far. But the inkjet shown at drupa could compare on B2.

All the talk of workflow can be represented more simply as PDF and JDF. This could be boring but has not yet become commonplace.

This post will be updated or links shown in the comments. The text here will become a story for OhmyNews around the time of Total Print.

ePUB, EPUB, or .epub? to be continued

2008-08-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

This post is a version of a draft of a story for OhmyNews around the time of the Online Information show in December. The comments will show links to later posts.

Last year I was invited to join the publishing panel when someone was a bit late. this year I hope to just ask questions. Such as what is XHTML? Why do they call it .epub or whatever? Why would InDesign lose all my formatting when I try to save as EPUB? Co I have to learn about Cascading Style Sheets? Could this be a bit more simple?

Similar questions for the London College of Communication Futures Conference in October at the time of Total Print so there should be some clues.

The Sony Reader will be available in the UK next month and even though there seems more US interest in the Kindle, there is no UK Kindle and also Waterstones still has credibility in the book world. Before December there could be interest in this area enough for somebody to explain how ePUB is open to most writers.

Meanwhile PDF is another option. There may be an explanation to be found on how Adobe thinks about all this. Still no MARS plugin for Acrobat 9 as far as I know. Possibly Adobe is so segmented marketingwise that it is left to users to make choices and a pattern will emerge later.

Previously, story for OhmyNews

Sony Reader Opens to EPUB Format for Digital Books

Microsoft validates Flash

2008-08-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

The summer is not over but I am trying to engage again with where technology is heading. I find Acrobat 9 fairly confusing still. Maybe the launch was at an odd time of year but there may be more to it. So far my impression is that there is not much new around PDF as such, the direction is still Flash.

Found a story in the Register explaining what Microsoft may intend. This could explain why Adobe is pushing Flash so urgently. A technology company usually works with technology that is not quite ready to be robust. A suitable version will emerge as the user requirement takes shape. I realise that most of the technology around PDF as in Adobe Classic is now very reliable and easy to clone as it should be for an ISO standard.

However I still find that there are few people using the Job Definition Format features in Acrobat. eBooks are still not recognised as such though there is masses of text online. I think this area is worth staying with for a while so have in mind the Online Information Show as a target date to have worked out more about flat text documents etc. Video is still a concern, but more for next year starting with BETT. The UK students are engaging with video, animation and all things Flash. The readers of Information World Review are still concerned with books and journals, my guess. And the Total Print Show may be going back to litho. Not sure about this.

I am also still confused as to what Adobe intends around MARS and the Digital Editions Reader. I had thought that an XML rewrite for PDF would be a sensible direction. Nothing much is happening however. Sony have announced support for EPUB in their Reader, available in the UK next month. XHTML, don't really understand it but this sounds good. Even if the tools are not available widely to create an eBook, PDF will also load in the Reader. The Kindle is more like a phone but the Reader seems enough like a book to make a point.

This post may seem to have gone off topic but the conclusion seems to be that whatever Adobe is trying to do might make more sense next year. Meanwhile most of the time i will be going back to text.

Jim King blog continues

2008-08-02T01:49:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.adobe.com/insidepdf/

This blog is not dead, but has been resting.

An update on standards and an explanation on why text is sometimes hard to extract. My own problem last week was that a cut and paste ended up with random characters i had never seen before. A font problem I should think.

So what about XHTML and why should we try out the Adobe Digital Editions? More on this after summer holidays.

Web-to-Print, let us not be too limiting about this

2008-07-09T02:55:00.000-07:00

I have been looking at the paper from drupa, including a technology guide to web-to-print. The description insists that the copy is produced from a website. To simply attach a PDF to an email would be a primitive effort.

So I realise I am living in the past yet again. It still seems a possible way of working however. The print customer could know enough or be trained such that they produce a PDF with print ready choices. The JDF intent is then all that needs to follow.

Meanwhile I am on my third set of Moo cards. These are created online as a spinoff from Flickr and other sites. You get a choice of three fonts and the paper sizes are fixed though I have two, large ones for business and smaller ones for social networking, now a term owned by the Web and no longer part of business. Something like that. To be clarified in a future post.

So maybe the people who attend the Certitec briefings on Acrobat 9 will not need to know too much about print production. I still think they should be offered the choice though.

Certitec guide to Acrobat 9 - anything on JDF?

2008-07-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

One of the things I discovered at drupa was that there might be videos later about the JDF features in Acrobat 9. So far nothing can be found, but maybe later.

I still think of PDF as an extension of Postscript so that a connection with print is seldom far away. Maybe this release is more of a way to introduce Flash content but I still think that "knowledge workers" need to order print once in a while so they might as well realise that Acrobat includes a mass of pre-press capability. This includes starting off at least the intent of a JDF ticket, the standard for automating print production. It can also be used for the print service provider to communicate requirements on how the PDF should be created.

My impression with the release of 8 was that Adobe did almost nothing to promote this feature. Maybe it is down to print service providers to mention it more often. In 9 the main development seems to be that the JDF content can be exported as html so is easier to access.

With 9, the meetings explaining new features are organised by Certitec and the speaker is Jon Bessant. 21st August in London and 27th in Cardiff. One session in the morning, one in the afternoon - both much the same. Starting with collaboration in Microsoft Office, new services in Acrobat.com, forms design - in other words all the office features for "knowledge workers", situations where PDF on screen might remove the need for paper altogether. The Flash inside PDF as if there was not enough Flash online anyway, and how to create a portfolio that wraps your PDF in Flash and forces your friends to upgrade to 9. Just before the news on ISO standards there is just time for publishing and prepress.

This might be your chance to ask about JDF. Jon Bessant used to work in support for a print service provider coping with the occasional technical issue caused by the way that PDF files are sometimes originated. So it may be possible to lead him on to a discussion of potential benefits from a JDF workflow. But this may not be in the original script to any great extent. So if you do plan to be there it could be worth a bit of study and working out what you would like to hear explained. I could be way wrong of course on what people are interested in. I just notice that JDF, although not a new feature, is no better understood now that before the previous release.

Has Adobe stopped investing in PDF?

2008-07-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

This question "has Adobe stopped investing in PDF?" may seem a bit unfair and sensational but as a blogger I am trying to get attention and so far there seems to be very little interest in MARS.

There is some news on the Matthew Hardy MARS blog

Mars for Adobe Acrobat 9

Adobe Acrobat 9 has just been announced and an update to the Mars plug-in with full Acrobat 9 compliance will be released towards the end of July or early August. Mars continues to be a stand-alone plug-in for Adobe Acrobat, but Acrobat 9 now has built-in knowledge of Mars and will redirect users to our Adobe Labs Mars page when a Mars file is encountered by someone who does not have the Mars plug-in installed.

Posted by Matthew Hardy on June 30, 2008 10:40 AM

So the plug-in will be out about a month after the main release. That is good. But the pace is not really on the same scale as the promotion around AIR or FLEX. This could be because web developers are not interested in PDF as a format unless it can cope with animation and video. My impression of what the corporate audience is used to may be way out of date. Possibly both changing PDF to cope with Flash and rewriting as XML friendly was too much for the time available.

But it could also be that PDF as known before 9, without the Flash, is such a commodity standard that there is no return on the costs of a rewrite and the associated replacement costs. Ideas around XML just seem to have been around for too long to be seen as something with momentum. Could the MARS plugin have been released around the time of 8?

Meanwhile Flash is wonderful of course. Don't get me wrong. I like watching video. But previously I have got used to a release of Acrobat being about PDF as such. Something seems to be changing such that it is now seen as a promotion for Flash. For example I did a portfolio and loaded it onto Acrobat.com. It now has a front cover reading "best viewed with Acrobat 9". This is true, the contents page is now Flash.

Marketing theory suggests that products can be seen as "cash cows" and "rising stars". There are other categories but these are the two that spring to mind. So if PDF is not worth much investment as development or promotion the next question is how the price levels are likely to go. There is very little chance of an "Acrobat Classic", something like 6 at a lower price. But there are options that offer most of the features now known about and they could do well.

MARS - still seeking public input

2008-06-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

Joel Geraci, Acrobat Technical Evangelist for Adobe, has commented on a previous post-

We are continuing to develop the Mars technology but it is still in a prerelease stage and are still actively seeking public input.

A new version of the Mars plug-in that supports Acrobat 9 and Reader 9 will be available soon.

This is very welcome but I am puzzled why there is not more interest in this. Maybe many people have moved on to Flash etc. and I am living in the past. Still, from the two Seybold conferences held in Amsterdam I can remember much interest in XML and PDF. The keynote by David Brailsford outlined some of the benefits of improved connections.

However, doing some searching found this from a 2001 interview with John Warnock

Zipper: There's a discussion at the moment about the technical future of PDF, and there's a close connection to XML. So I have to ask: Shouldn't PDF be totally encoded in XML? Do you see a chance for that?

Warnock: I don't see why. We have done all of the technical due diligence and, clearly, you can code PDF into XML. Does that make it easier to make an implementation? Not really. Does it add value in terms of file size? No, it probably costs file size. Could you have a single-threaded, hierarchically structured XML document that's a PDF file? Never, because the graphics rendering and the logical organization of a document sometimes are orthogonal.
John Warnock

So you have to have a structure for the graphics and a structure for the logical organization of the document, and when you have two trees and they have to point to each other, the XML syntax doesn't help you in any way.

We've gone through that discussion and we've asked, of what benefit is it to the user for this all to be in XML? Does it make any part of the problem easier? And the answer comes back, no. Does it add any value? Well, yes; you can say, "It's all in XML." But so what? The only benefit that may have would be a marketing benefit.

So maybe there never was an intention to be "XML friendly" with PDF. It still seems a good idea to me. How hard is it to take XML sources and create PDF? My impression is that such things are possible but not as easy as it could be.

As a blogger there is some basis for asking questions. So at the Futures conference the LCC organise alongside Total Print I will try to find out what people think about PDF and XML. the Online Information show is another occasion when there is a panel about publishing. Adobe will not be there, but PDf is a topic. My guess is that most people there still think about information with a print analogy in mind. So XML to PDF could be a large proportion of what is of interest.

London Miami wherever

2008-06-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

Checking out Acrobat Users in case there is something on MARS. Nothing yet so I have left a question. Most of the meetings seems to be online. I thought I would have known about an actual meeting in the UK. I live in Exeter but can get to London sometimes.

The London page seems to be about Miami. Have a look and see what you think.

Apparently the link to London is

Flights from London with British Airways start at around £340 return.

Is it just me or is the Adobe take on a local group just a bit unusual?

Still no news about Mars, not much on JDF

2008-06-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

Still no news on Mars though I have tried to contact Adobe such as I can. I have changed the Acrobat Services UK site to link again to this blog.

After publication of the OhmyNews story from drupa there was a correction from Dov Isaacs. There are more live sites with PDF Print Engine than I had realised. So this is citizen journalism working as it should, better information correcting error.

So what to make of the lack of any response at all to various statements about MARS? Also by the way, how come the proper journalists are not very much concerned as far as I can tell. Most of what I can find is based more or less on press releases. But given the release of betas and the discussion on Adobe Labs it seems to me there is a question about why nothing is followed up on release of 9 and why there is no explanation.

Also, so far, no detail about JDF. What I gathered at drupa is that in 9 it is possible to export JDF info as html so it could be viewed more easily or even printed out to paper.....JDF has been there since 7 but very few people know about it. My impression is that the Adobe marketing belief is that knowledge workers are just waiting to combine all their personal videos into a portfolio. The idea they may sometimes have a print requirement is just out of date. Oh dear I feel a rave mode coming on.

Back on topic, surely somewhere there is some news about Mars?

No news on MARS so Acrobat 9 is a mystery so far

2008-06-26T05:31:00.000-07:00

I don't understand it. As far as I can tell there is no news about MARS, the XML friendly rewrite of PDF that was launched soon after the release of Acrobat 8. Version 9 is now available with lots of Flash but my current thought is to understand where things come from before rushing into video etc. I like YouTube by the way, but most PDFs I know about in organisations are mostly about text and graphics as in flat, usually a rectangle that stays the same size.

In live time more or less, let us check the blogs.

Mars blog updated Oct 3 2007. Inside PDF updated Jan 28th.

Other info about MARS? Can't find any.

My speculation, Adobe expect the world of PDF to become a commodity very soon so something Flash is urgent. However it still might repay some attention. Going from XML sources to something that can be published is almost a universal concern.

It was strange that Microsoft announced support for ODF as of 2009. What will actually happen is yet to be seen but it could be that XML formats as open standards are just accepted as inevitable. Which is ok except for a PDF format that was written before XML was around.

Meanwhile in Google Docs the new support for reading a PDF is working ok. Not sure how it is done, appears not to be Flash. But text selection is possible and right click copies a graphic of the page. Just need a crop tool somewhere. My impression of Google Docs is that they are actually interested in documents as most people undersand them. the idea that a web page has to start with a Flash animation or video is not shared by everybody.

Anyway, main point, any news about MARS out there?

New channel on World TV

2008-06-15T07:34:00.001-07:00

I have added a channel for world TV about drupa.

Called "web2drupa"

these channels just collect a selection of video. this is all from YouTube so far. One of my own from the dip stage. The possibility is to combine context and selections from various sources. I plan to do more of this sort of thing. It seesm ok to express a point of view when the material could be combined in other ways if someone else has a different intention.

OhmyNews story published- the "web to print drupa" is on the record

2008-06-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

Story now published. There are usually a couple of thousand people read a technology story. I am not sure where they come from. OhmyNews in English is not as well known as it could be. i think many of the readers are from Korea and Japan with an interest in learning English as a language. As mentioned previously, citizen journalism is well advanced in Korea as they have had broadband for several years. It is good to get print as part of the related discussion.

I have put some more photos on Flickr, including large sizes as Creative Commons. So far I have not found much reporting on the dip. Printweek in the UK has concentrated on sales of big metal machines, obviously part of what drupa is about.

A couple of smaller versions-

The slide about XML would make more sense if Adobe had followed up the MARS project with a new version of PDF. Workflows are possible at the moment but I think there is
a real possibility that XPS will be considered. Microsoft are not the most obvious choice for open source fans but the interest in XML workflows is enough to prompt a look at the tools available.

drupa story sent to OhmyNews

2008-06-10T04:28:00.001-07:00

I have now sent in my story, not yet edited but here is a link to current version.

I have tried to include several photos. Not sure how many will survive. This one of the CIP4 Award judges is not in focus really but is good enough for a blog.

Much better YouTube video from drupa

2008-06-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

Now found an interview with Stephan Jaeggi, one of the judges for the CIP4 awards.

Also Olaf Drummer from Callas on standards. What he wants is for ordering print to be as easy as ordering a book on Amazon. One day the proofing process will be no harder than a look inside a book, possibly. Drummer talks only briefly about archiving standards but this is an area where procedures need to scale so something similar may work for print.

Rainer Prosi from CIP4 and Heidelberg describes the current situation with the JDF standards. That is "Job Definition Format". In German so if this makes no sense the Stephan Jaeggi one is short enough to convince you that JDF is doing well.

A typological gremlin somewhere has created the title "http://www.at-drupa.de/?p=95" when it should read "Interview with Dov Isaacs of Adobe" or something like that. Dov is well known from the technical bulletin boards tirelessly answering questions on why nothing appears to be working. Here he explains the new Adobe PDF Print Engine and reveals some technical limitations of Postscript that may be news for some people.

It is encouraging to discover through YouTube that Dov was there and that Adobe is still concerned about print. Somehow I got the impression that drupa was about Creative Suite and moving everything into Flash.

web2print drupa on TouTube

2008-06-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have loaded a couple of videos from my low quality camera. At least it is a way to find better ones and to test out the tags - "web2print" , "cip4" , "awards" , "drupa" .
More links in later posts.

Reasonable point made about Acrobat 9

2008-06-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

You know what?

PC World may have a point

A couple of releses ago it was possible to put Quicktime into PDF. Not many people did. Corporates like flat documents mostly. Last time around the Quicktime capability was less mentioned.

Anyway this has been a test of web access just behind the Grand Place. Video follows later on how to find it.

Magritte Museum could be inkjet

2008-06-07T03:40:00.000-07:00

Still in Brussels. There is a building in progress covered in what might be inkjet, very wide format and several joins. More on this later when I can sort out my photos. Meanwhile this is Creative Commons licenced from haveacupoftea. You don't get the scale from this but it shows the idea. Meanwhile the film museum seems a bit deserted. Opens summer 2008 it is claimed. Magritte Museum next year.

More next week

2008-06-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

More detail to come but am now setting off to Brussels for a few days on the way back to UK. So nothing on this blog till early next week.

But the "web to print" drupa seems to be still making sense. People liked my Moo business cards though I read in the Seybold report sample version drupa special that social networking print spinoffs have been for young people so far, not business to business. So plenty of scope left. Sorry can't credit source at this time, all paper packed away and this keyboard is next to the pool table so not really the spot for filing. One euro for thirty minutes web access.

Founder launch FIT 5 in English

2008-06-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

Beijing Founder Electronics are launching an English language version of FIT, desk top publishing software similar to quark and InDesign. FIT is well established in China and has been supported over many years. It seems the aim is to find a price level that will interest knowledge workers, the kind of people who use office software. Professional pre-press could also be interested. FIT is used by many newspapers.

There are no animation features but then, maybe there is still a requirement for documents with mostly text.

Hall 5, B24 more online later. FIT 5.0 will only be available as a download.

MARS mystery

2008-06-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

MARS blog reveals nothing re Acrobat 9.

Is this strange or what? What I gather at drupa is that 9 is all about Flash.

"2008 is the web to print drupa" - Bernd Zipper

2008-06-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

I have just heard a claim that this is the "web to print drupa". Seems ok to me. More on this later. I have found the press office and a solid letter from OhmyNews has got me in here. But longer posts will wait till later.

By the way, the audiences for the talks in the dip are quite small. If you are anywhere near they are worth checking out. The problem may be the Flash style nature of the scren display so it is quite hard to keep up with topics and times. A few sheets of paper might help. Just my opinion.

Adobe launches online version of Acrobat

2008-06-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Not sure what Acrobat 9 and the online options are about but it includes Buzzword and Store. Acrobat seems to be a word for anything new. Not much about Mars I can find so presumably the file format is the same.

I am now in Cologne, there is web access in the hotel, but I think I will take a look at the Dom etc and find out more about Acrobat tomorrow. More on the Adobe site.

another example from the YouTube drupa

2008-06-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

Clearly something like this cannot be afforded all that often.

JDF tutorial on YouTube , Adobe is on the case

2008-06-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Gaining confidence in the YouTube drupa I have done a bit of searching and found this-

Viewed 270 times, not that many, so is there little interest or could something be done to promote this? Control of print production. Surely some more print customers would benefit from knowing more about this?

This is the YouTube drupa

2008-06-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Xerox leads, others may follow. If there is something to say it will turn up on YouTube.

So this is not the JDF drupa one more time. Inkjet started with Epson surely, some time ago. Hard to see this as news.

This is the drupa with an online equivalent event, mostly through video.