Software - Web-to-print

While this cutting-edge technology offers the promise of "speed without compromise," some reluctant customers (who are uncomfortable with the electronic concept) fear that the digital proofing promise is simply too good to be true. How, then, do commercial printers convince them otherwise? BY CHERYL A. ADAMS "Have you looked at a National Geographic that was printed in 1980? Looks great doesn't it, just like today's issue? Only the 2000 issue was produced in a fraction of the time—without compromise in quality and from a source of information that is vast," says John Bassett, director of sales and marketing at Scholin Brothers Printing in

Lieber Vater! In many ways, CIP3 can give thanks to the DRUPA exhibition in Germany. DRUPA 1995 was the event that really brought attention to the CIP3 initiative. DRUPA 2000 will see several conceptual aspects of the initiative realized. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO In late 1993, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen initiated discussions in Germany with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics. The two organizations, later joined by bindery innovator Polar-Mohr, formed the foundation for the CIP3 cooperative—a study group known as CIP3, the International Cooperation for Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress. By DRUPA 1995, the CIP3 movement took official form. Its objective: Facilitate data exchange

BY ALLISON ECKEL The Internet is the new favorite pastime of business, and for good reason. From yard sales to stock sales, modern commerce is evolving and everyone involved is re-examining their current business models with an eye for the realization of the mantra Better, Faster, Cheaper. Commercial printers are rethinking the way they interact with print buyers through e-procurement solutions from such companies as Collabria, Impresse and Noosh. It was only a matter of time before these commercial printers turned to apply these new relationship models to their vendors—the companies in the equipment and consumables distribution channel of the graphic arts industry. As

If you've been following the latest developments in the world of electronic publishing, you've probably come across the abbreviation "XML" (short for eXtended Markup Language). If you've seen it, you're probably confused about it. Most people are—it's very complicated, and there's a lot of imprecise and overly technical information out there. If you haven't heard of XML before, well, I guess you just did. Let's take a look at what XML is, and why it might matter to printers and publishers. Style SheetsDo you know style sheets? We've had them for years now in our desktop applications, from Microsoft Word to PageMaker to QuarkXPress. Style

Where does a 400-lb. gorilla sit? In this era of mega-mergers and high-flying Internet stock valuations, we are hearing some very large numbers. But most of these numbers seem like abstractions. There is the common-sense part of our minds that rebels at multibillion-dollar market valuations of cyber companies with paltry physical assets and no profits whatsoever. Sure the numbers are big, but they seem as relevant to our day-to-day world of laying ink down on paper as those astronomers use to tell us the number of light years to some distant star. But GM—the heavy steel, huge factory and honest-to-goodness tangible antithesis of the cyber

The robotic scanner of yesteryear is long gone. Today's higher optical resolutions, advanced color user interfaces, fully integrated ICC-compatible software and faster scanning speeds are helping the prepress workflow scream. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Does it seem like the scanning market is standing in the conservative corner of digital prepress? Sure, glamorous, big-name PDF workflows are topics of industry discussion and intrinsic analysis, digital halftone proofing and digital platesetting devices duke it out for the time, attention and dollars of prepress executives and print production professionals—but what about the scanning market? Does anything scan-dalous ever happen to these image manipulators? As of

BOSTON—As the new year began, the war of words between Waltham, MA-based Harlequin and Foster City, CA-based Electronics for Imaging (EFI), heated up. On the same day that Harlequin filed a lawsuit in United States District Court here claiming that EFI has violated a federal law that governs false advertising, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled in EFI's favor in its patent infringement lawsuit against Harlequin. The San Francisco court ruled for EFI on all 17 issues raised by Harlequin. EFI officials say the San Francisco court's rulings pave the way for EFI to fully press its infringement case against Harlequin.

Remember when Macs started shipping with nine-gig drives? Although that seemed like a lot of storage space at the time, it sure didn't take long before it was filled to the brim. Today, most printers and prepress shops now use client-server configurations with RAIDS attached to servers to store clients' files, along with a variety of tape and other backup/archival systems. Yet, no matter how big the drive, one thing seems constant: You can never have too much storage capacity. And although drives continue to get cheaper, managing data storage is one of those headaches that never seems to go away. Until now, maybe. The latest

Well, now that we've gotten over the millennium bug, or at least the hangover that accompanies the usual New Year's Eve festivities, we can hopefully focus our attention on the coming year. What will the new year/decade/century/millennium bring? Probably a lot of the same headaches the preceding one(s) bestowed upon us. That is, we can still expect to receive files that are missing fonts, images and other elements that are necessary to print. Of course, pricing and turnaround will continue to be the two legs of the stool expected to flex, while demands on quality remain as rigid as ever. Last year was

In the June 1999 issue of Printing Impressions, an editorial by Editor-in-Chief Mark Michelson notes that he is "more convinced than ever that print will not only be alive, but will prosper, in the next millennium and beyond." While he concedes that "printing production will continue to evolve" and that "some product niches will be forever lost to electronic information dissemination," print will remain strong "because no other medium is as portable, flexible and widely accessible." Editorials like these have been appearing amidst news reports that sales and profit numbers for most printers and publishers continue to be healthy. It's no longer fashionable to