Redtie will talk about Web2Print at Northprint.

At the drupa Innovation Parc it was said that 2008 was the Web To Print drupa.

Perhaps this was not noticed enough at the time, given the interest in machinery.

But at Northprint there is no Heidelberg.

Could there be a Total Print Expo without Heidelberg?

An interesting interview in Printweek included (content quoted in full for purposes of review and comment)

Daniel Danielli, Editor, Printweek - On a different topic, Heidelberg UK is not exhibiting at Northprint and you didn’t exhibit at Grafitalia – have you reviewed your exhibitions strategy?

Jürgen Rautert, Heidelberg Sales - Yes. To put it bluntly, I hate the amount of money we have been spending at exhibitions, it is too much. Drupa is something very special, so it’s hard to reduce our spend there, but we have drastically cut back on shows in the US and we will reduce at Ipex, but we will be there. We will reduce the number of minor shows we attend around the world, as we would rather use our showrooms to demonstrate our products. I don’t think it’s fair any more to spend the kind of money we were spending 10 years ago, because in the end the customer pays. It is the same for exhibitions as it is in every other field of business – the minor players in the niches will continue and a few of the bigger ones will continue, but the medium-sized fairs will disappear from the industry. That’s my prediction.

So if Heidelberg is not at Northprint, will they be at Total Print Expo in October? This is not supposed to be "Southprint" but a continuation of Digital Print World with added litho or whatever meets the requirement. In 2008 Heidelberg showed how Anicolor coped with short runs. I thought this was exactly what a trade show is supposed to be about. Nearby Fuji showed a video about inkjet. Whatever run length you had in mind the Heidelberg stand showed actual production. See my story for OhmyNews. (The editors switched the headline to e-books, I thought the Heidelberg arrival at a digital show was the main news.)

Unless they see Total Print World as a niche show they may value, it will probably revert back to appearing to be a digital show. So what would that mean? It could mean that this was a show about "short runs" and only digital is still worth promoting. I used to think that Heidelberg would continue to attend as the comparison with inkjet would make more sense. the kit announced at drupa is expected to be better known later this year and leading up to IPEX 2010. What is a "short run"? 2,000 would cover quite a lot of print. People I spoke to in 2008 could not make much sense of the Heidelberg claims that Anicolor was suitable for runs less than 50. Just my impression, this is just a blog. But in future the case for litho comparisons will be more compelling as a topic.

Debate will wait for IPEX or even drupa but things change meanwhile. The London Bookfair will include a digital area with a stand for Easypress Technologies. The current interest is in ePUB but the Atomik Dynamic Publisher also supplies print ready PDF. So this relates to the drupa Innovation Parc and web-to-print. Life would be easier if the bookfair used all of the upstairs at Earl's Court and left some space in Earl's Court 2 for a print show such as Total Print Expo. The software companies could all be upstairs whatever they suggested as output. A major gain could be that the London College of Communications Futures Conference would still be upstairs but with a direct link to Total Print Expo. The arrangement where you have to walk round the whole building to find the stairs makes no sense at all. Easy to imagine on a blog. Expect more travel in time and space.

This blog will continue as IPEX 2002 even though 2010 is not far away. It is mostly about the UK, including the world of books and newspapers. The drupa2008 blog is more about global technology developments. This may turn out to be confusing but I have decided to avoid starting another blog when possible. More cross reference may help. There may be shifting opinions and quite a lot off topic, but coherence may appear in a later version.

This is a blog so it seems ok to borrow material from other sources and then add a comment. This week in Printweek Andrew Tribute has suggested that print companies may switch to Open Source Software and avoid the upgrade costs from Adobe and Microsoft. He mentions Scribus, as well as Xclamation and Passeportout. It is a significant event that Printweek can publish such an opinion. Perhaps Adobe is not seen as being central to the print industry as was once the case. I cannot find a stand booked at IPEX for example. Since buying Macromedia the promotion energy has been around Flash, what I call Adobe (FLSH). this move away from Adobe Classic could suggest that the products around Postscript and PDF are becoming commoditised or easily replicated. So Andrew Tribute is probably right to claim that most of page layout and PDF workflow could be managed with Open Source Software.

However, what I also think is that there is an implication for publishing that may be less comforting for the printing industry. Andrew Tribute wrote for WhatTheyThink in November 2008 about the E-Reader such as from Amazon or Sony - "I’m afraid at this time I am hardly impressed with these e-readers. I think the success they are having is more for the computer geek area where people want the latest technology." A PDF is available from Attributes download page. The Sony Reader has support for the ePUB format, also supported by many publishers and the Adobe Digital Editions Reader. A surprising development has been the scale of downloads of the Stanza Reader for i-Phone and i-Pod, much larger numbers than sales of the Kindle. So the ePUB format is already easy to access for a fairly large audience. It is based on open standards, starting with XHTML. Andrew Tribute observes that "Today there is awide availability of expert low-cost programmers who have skills to customise OSS and build it into an integrated network. (By the way, "low-cost" programmers relates to the total cost of the project compared to some license fees, open source supporters do charge a reasonable rate for a day's work) Main point, starting with an Open Document in Open Office, a print ready PDF is not the only option.

I think the print industry should also be more public in support for the Job Definition Format (JDF) another XML-friendly set of standards. Sean Smyth earlier reported in Printweek on Hunkeler Innovation that "I did not hear the word JDF in two days". JDF is not too technical to explain in general terms. Perhaps "web-to-print" is more exciting and the JDF version can come later in the flow. But there are going to be some fast publishing methods online. Print needs a workflow that compares, and ways to present it.

Giving up now.

Disappointing to say the least. There should be something later if only slides.

I may have not done something I should have done. Refreshed a few times and logged on again once. My information at the moment is that nothing happened after the welcome screen.

My basic take remains the same. It is interesting that Printweek are prepared to try this. The Web is part of the mix, according to UK print journalists. That is a development.

So this is about half an hour into the advertised time. I can ask a question and provide feedback. But there is no record of either I can access. I have no idea who else is in the audience or what they might be thinking.

Would you like to talk to each other?

I think we should have the option.

no posts because nothing is happening

Twitter, what is that about?

Surely people have more to do than a moment by moment update on things that don't matter much for other people?

Still no change on the Printweek webcast but the opening slide is interesting.

Liveblogging from the Printweek webcast.

I think it should have started about five minutes ago. If nothing is posted here for the next hour, that could mean something is happening.

Scope for websites. The blogs started to take over around or after 2002 when they got so much easier to update. The websites became stuck as claims of some possibility or other. Forget the homepage said Jeff Jarvis at some point but I kept updating it to hang on to credibility. There should have been a database of stories, not just a constant rewrite. Still, they all exist somewhere so an archive should be possible. Stuff comes around. Next month Personal Computer World is promising a guide to databases.

The Total Print event has confirmed in my mind that print is now part of a digital scene. I tried to make litho interesting as news but this only worked to an extent. The editors of OhmyNews have switched the headlines on my story so that the e-book aspect is the priority. Seems reasonable for their audience.

So let us assume that WWWatford has arrived. It was intended as a destination for the UK print industry, like Cairo for Windows. The Heidelberg presentation was as good as this could get. Prinect and computer to plate. Litho could not be much more available. Web-to-print was all over the show. What the speed is for the UK industry to implement this sort of thing, that is another question. There may be more consolidation before there is much investment. Recent Printweek editorials have been frank about the level of investment that would make much sense, for example in capacity for magazines. The WWWatford site will continue to look at UK print with the global context getting easier to link in as attention turns to IPEX. Assume next year's Total Print much the same as this. The LCC conference was mostly about games and the Web so there is a discussion possible about how this fits with the display area.

The Acrobat Services sites are complicated by the Adobe introduction to Acrobat of all things Flash. It is no longer just about PDF. On balance I think most people are still mostly interested in PDF when they think about Acrobat but this is not the marketing view from Adobe. They seem to be giving up on Adobe Classic as if it is getting too easy for others to supply Postscript clones or PDF creation. Adobe Max is expected to be much more future proof. I think the UK is not really ready for much of this, partly because of bandwidth. So I intend to keep the UK site pretty much to Adobe Classic in themes, - flat pages, hard copy, documents as organisations are used to them. Also the Digital Editions Reader and ePUB. The PDFXML approach will be included but there is almost no support from Adobe in promoting this. At least with ePUB there is a group of people with an interest in reaching a wider audience.

The dotcom site is best thought of "in a cloud". That is where Adobe seem to be heading. It already includes some news about Google. Docs can save PDF and I also like Scribd. Their design makes good use of Flash but they seem to be interested in text as well. there may even be mention of Microsoft. The cloud beckons.

Remaining aspects of Flash will turn up as part of animX, a site about digital animation. I am interested in such content, just slow to believe it is a priority for people who are used to PDF.

"Earls Court in Outer Space", possible title for a future episode of Dr Who. I have been thinking about forms of fiction as a way to make more sense of things. Also time travel is unavoidable. This blog is about 2002 after all and the issues for UK print and publishing seem not to have changed very much. Also travel in actual space would be interesting as the Frankfurt bookfair is the same week as Total Print! So my first plot premise is that in the future there will be an integrated kind of show in London, "total communication" perhaps when the LCC gets used to not being LCP. This is some way off of course.




Diagrams show Earl's Court with a print and publishing event at the same time. Ground floor for anything heavy, print kit in Earl's Court 2 but connected to the books in Earl's Court 1. Upstairs for the agents near the Conference Centre, and pre-media, software any equipment that is fairly light. The LCC Futures Conference is in some other space at the back. Yes, there had to be a point to all this. the escalator will go straight to the LCC conference with a direct walking route from Earl's Court 2. Think about it. Next week you may find yourself walking all the way round Earl's Court to go up a level and walk back almost as far as where you started.

Anyway, back to the fiction. UK authors have started to vanish, but then reappear. Terry Pratchett is back again but still no sign of Doris Lessing. Then new texts appear on the Web in similar styles such as they may have written. The website is traced to Canada and there appears to be a connection with a Toronto agent played by Dan Ackroyd. Believe me, he will take the part. All he has to do is to explain that he is in contact with aliens and they have a method of producing books. Terry Pratchett was easy to clone but Doris Lessing is a bit more difficult.

Enter Doctor Who, played by Christopher Eccleston. He manages to negotiate a deal with Dan Ackroyd so that Doris Lessing returns to the UK and several authors agree to let the aliens have all digital rights while they keep hard copy rights for the UK. Also the entire building of Earl's Court and anyone in it during the show gets a trip round the planet earth. Only Christopher Eccleston can manage the confident grin as he hurries off to the next adventure. There could be a sequel depending on how the deal turns out.

Link to Doctor Who show and gif (animated)

Not sure about Adobe having reached a new stage with the release of AIR. It could be a significant date but this can only be clear later. I have found some evidence that Postscript is not promoted that often. The webpage still refers to Acrobat 6 so may not have been changed that often. The industry quotes about the PDF Print Engine are from 2006, maybe around the time of IPEX. There could well be an update during drupa but my impression is that most of the time this phase is more or less over.

I am just restarting to post to the PDF and print blogs. Yesterday I found out that Adobe have issued AIR as version 1 so it is not just an idea. My impression is that Adobe has actually turned into Macromedia. Adobe Classic is hard to find. Maybe Max is a better word than Macromedia, still used for an event. Acrobat is not just PDF, not even PDF in terms of what they will tell you about.

This blog from 2002 is probably going to be speculative and open to revision, based on guesswork and memory. The drupa2008 blog will appear to be more considered and based on reliable information. Not that Adobe explain much till the products are released. Digital Editions Reader? A complete mystery. That is why Scribd makes a lot of sense. I have done a test page.

The Scribd design gives the impression that they actually like documents. The Adobe site currently has so much animated production numbers that on low bandwidth such as we have in most of the UK everything grinds to a halt. All I want to do is get off the home page to somewhere with some information in a text format I can copy out. The medium is so much the message and always about how engaging Flash is. Enough already.

Every so often something happens that suggests 2002 IPEX is still a suitable place for some things. I remember towards the end of IPEX the BT speakers had aday off ill from the presentation theatre and the Adobe people got into a stride. One of their guests spoke about Acrobat for comment and markup. There was some additional programming involved. Later I discovered this was not widely taken up because the costs revolved copies of Acrobat on every desktop. Apparently the architiects found the prices ok when approving a large builing and Pfizer could afford any number of copies to speed up approval by the relevant authorities, but somehow the print industry was mostly left behind.



No sign of Adobe at Digital Print World. Artwork Systems were there though, with a Web based approval system. They charge for the server software but the browser level requires nothing but Java. Maybe 20 or 30 copies of Acrobat could be had for the same sort of price but this model makes a lot more sense if a large number of print customers are involved.

More on Digital Print World in a story for OhmyNews.

it has happened again

the swicki is taking over more space

so some padding is needed

these US companies! Who needs them?

they just put themselves forward

install something and something else pops up

we just changed the code so it looks even bigger

that's because it is bigger

still, i'm sure there is a way round it

Printweek has reported that NewsTec is cancelled.

This has been for newspapers. My guess is that few expect many new presses to be bought. In December 2005, Jeff Jarvis wrote about "the last presses" in his blog and for the Guardian.

You know what? Maybe he has got a point. There, value added blogging. Not just repeating a link.

So if the newspaper discussion has been moved from 2009 to 2010 it is reasonable to assume technology scope will include blogs, video etc for "news organisations" as Jeff Jarvis describes them.

Printweek has a new and improved website where the comments relate to the news. The previous Printing World site was a bit sketchy as a discussion board. I have added a comment to the report on the latest ABC figures for UK newspaper circulation. The report seems more aware of the issues than some stories in magazines about print. What is the general take on media within Haymarket?, I wonder. They seem still dedicated to hard copy. Only time will tell.

A new blog has been started for drupa 2008

http://drupa2008.blogspot.com

Very similar to this one, but convincingly forward looking.

I have put a new page on the WWWatford website. Since I started blogging the websites have been updated less frequently but they have become more like a blog or sequence of opinion. The page added is a draft for drupa in 2008 and quotes an article in Printing World about JDF being accepted over the next couple of years.

This kind of time travel is a way to try to keep up with the Adobe approach to pushing Acrobat online and towards Flash. the UK print industry is not going quite as quickly and this may also be true in other places.

A relevant comment from 'Good Morning Silicon Valley', on the news that Google will now be selling small ads for US newspapers-

For the newspaper industry, which failed to understand where its future lay back before Craigslist had a CEO and Google was still run out of a Stanford dorm room, and has been suffering miserably for it ever since, the program is a way to make some money off inventory that would typically be filled with worthless house ads. But it also proffers a dubious bargain: it will bolster the newspapers' flagging advertising revenues, but it may undercut their existing advertising relationships and, more importantly, rates in the process. Says Publishing 2.0: "Handing the reins over to Google’s efficient direct response advertising machine will only hasten the realization that the Web is much more efficient than print at driving action and response."

Will this sort of thing work in the UK? Probably sometime soon. Though the official moment will only be recognised when you read it in a newspaper.

The Guardian Review on Saturday included a few paragraphs from the Bookseller on the inside back cover about the prospects for e-books, or an 'e-reading device'. Joel Rickett remembers the mistaken hopes for the CD-Rom in the '90s and suggests that publishers are now very cautious. There is no mention of Google or Google Books as such but news that Random House and Harper Collins are investing in digital versions of their titles. This may be to ensure the text can be found by search engines in a manner the publisher controls. Probably Joel Rickett reflects industry opinion in suggesting that although all publishers "are frantically planning for the tipping point when an e-reading device really takes off, predictions for the book's trade's 'iPod moment' range from two to five years."

In my view the process has already gone some way. Many people find text online that may or may not be regarded as a book equivalent. Last week I had a look at the new version of Acrobat from Adobe. Most of their presentation is about the benefits of Acrobat Connect for collaboration beyond the limits of the document. This conferencing suite used to be known as Breeze from Macromedia and is mostly based on Flash. Lots of video and animated Powerpoint etc. I am still in shock about this as I am used to editing text or adding comments to a fixed page. Maybe this is something I will get used to eventually but it is a point of departure for Acrobat as a PDF product. Over the last ten years or so PDF has represented on screen the layout of a printed page. Adobe seem to think we should be moving away from this. I will try to keep an open mind but the arrival of Acrobat 8 is for me a defining moment in realising what I liked about all the previous versions. Apparently the new version of a Reader will be in Flash but can accept PDF as an input. I have had a look at the beta. Maybe some people will prefer this. A small download if you already have Flash, but there is no way to copy out text to combine with something else. An engagement platform? I don't think so.

Have a look at this ad c/o YouTube



This strikes me as mostly an ad for Flash. The type is all over the place. With previous versions of Adobe there was often a White Paper or something similar in a PDF format. This sort of thing is now harder to find.

Enough on where Adobe might be going. The main point is that an 'iPod moment' for books has already happened.

I have now done a Google custom search engine for JDF, the Job Definition Format.

I thought about changing the current balance, PDF-ISO9000-quality-learning , but I don't think JDF is yet as interesting in terms of people looking for it. So the JDF one will stay as a side project for a while. The stats show at least 10 time as many searches on PDF as JDF.