The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing articles from August 1993

The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing archives from August 1993

PageMaker 5.0: ready to meet the demands of professionals? (summary of feature article) (Brief Article)
August 16, 1993... The market-leading desktop publishing program since its introduction in 1985, PageMaker has recently suffered an image crisis, as the professional publishing crowd defected to Quark Xpress. Although Aldus still owned the Windows retail channel,...

Building an editorial system for newsletters. (summary of feature article) (Brief Article)
August 16, 1993... What does it take to build a small workgroup solution for creating and producing newsletters or journals? To complement our review of PageMaker, we describe here the other pieces we use to create a small editorial/production system based on...

AMD keeps heat on Intel. (Advanced Micro Devices) (Commentary)
August 16, 1993... The virulent legal battle between Intel and former second-source AMD took another zigzag turn in May. The U.S. District Court ruled that Intel, in withholding certain press releases and other documents from AMD's counsel, had prevented AMD from...

Aldus takes on Quark: competing for the high-end market. (includes related article on Aldus PageMaker's market tiers)
August 16, 1993... Aldus PageMaker has long been synonymous with desktop publishing. It was Aldus's founder, Paul Brainerd, who coined the term "desktop publishing" in 1985 and PageMaker itself defined for most people what desktop publishing was all about....

PageMaker 5.0 faces the challenge of Seybold's grueling test drive. (includes related article on commercial printing guide, how to make better composition, PageMaker's styles, Aldus' Developers Co-op, Grants Program) (Software Review) (Evaluation)
August 16, 1993... PageMaker 5.0: The version of the best-selling page layout program whose primary goal was to achieve parity with its chief competitor, Quark Xpress. With that goal in mind, Aldus has packed in more than 100 new or improved features compared...

PageMaker vs. Xpress. (Software Review) (Evaluation)
August 16, 1993... Earlier this year, Aldus put out a white paper listing 80 ways that PageMaker 5.0 would be superior to Xpress 3.1. However, time marches on, and shortly after Aldus shipped PageMaker 5.0 for Windows, Quark shipped Xpress 3.2 for Macintosh (see...

Building an editorial system for newsletters. (Software Review) (Evaluation)
August 16, 1993... In our in-depth look at PageMaker this month, we examine how well PageMaker handles a variety of page makeup tasks. But PageMaker by itself is not a complete editorial/production solution for an operation that involves multiple people. In fact,...

Farallon joins document sharing shootout. (Replica document processing package) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Microsoftware vendor Farallon Computer has entered the electronic delivery market with Replica, a light-weight document viewer aimed at ad-hoc, internal distribution of business documents. The Windows-based Replica competes head- to-head with...

WordPerfect unveils forms package for PC. (InForms) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... WordPerfect has jumped into the forms software business with an impressive package for the pc, called InForms. The initial version, already released, runs under Windows. A Macintosh version will follow later this year. InForms appears to be...

Interleaf goes to Phoenix for Level 2; PostScript interpreter for WorldView. (The Latest Word) (Brief Article)
August 16, 1993... Bolstering the PostScript support of its WorldView electronic document viewer, Interleaf plans to incorporate the PhoenixPage Level 2 PostScript interpreter into WorldView, under a strategic partnership between Interleaf and Phoenix...

Canon unveils LBP-NX: 600 dpi, 17 pages/min. (The Latest Word)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Canon has a new 600-dpi laser print engine. Like its predecessors - - the LBP-BX, introduced in September 1992, and the LBP-EX, released in March -- the LBP-NX 600 offers true 600-dpi resolution and utilizes Canon's EP cartridge system with...

Sturdy and portable hard disk cards to go. (Ranger Plug 'n' Go Technologies) (The Latest Word)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Ranger Plug 'n' Go Technologies has released a line of transportable ide hard disk cards that we recently had a chance to test. We found the drive useful, reliable and adequately fast. The hard disk cards can be connected to any pc's parallel...

Microtek ups resolution, adds Scooter scanner. (The Latest Word)(Brief Article) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Microtek is introducing the ScanMaker IIer, a high-resolution color flatbed scanner costing $1,799. The new device offers 24-bit-per-pixel color and eight-bit gray-scale and black-and-white scans. The resolution, 1,200x600, can be...

Apple unveils Newton, AV Macs at Macworld. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... It has been a busy few weeks for Apple as the company announced yet more price cuts in its product lines, implemented some corporate restructuring plans designed to help its fledgling bottom line, and finally, officially released the...

Apple design flair shows in new accessories. (Personal LaserWriter 300, Portable StyleWriter) (The Latest Word ) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Apple may be facing decreasing margins because of pressure from pcs, but one way that it maintains higher prices is through exceptional product design. A series of products introduced in June illustrate Apple's attention to detail in the look...

Corel adds royalty-free photos, SCSI controller. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... At Macworld Boston on Aug. 2, Corel launched two new products aimed at the cd-rom market. Corel Scsi for the Macintosh is a set of controller cards for 8-bit, 16-bit and Micro Channel buses, which supports cd-rom, worm, erasable and...

WorldFont for Windows supports 30 languages. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Data-Cal, which serves the pc market through a catalog business from its offices in Arizona, Germany and England, is offering version 2.0 of the WorldFont program for Windows. It includes international character sets for 22 languages, plus a...

E Ware delivers digital sticky notes. (ENote 2.0) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... E Ware, a division of Visual Communications, has released version 2 of ENote, a pop-up messaging system for Windows. Although we hadn't come across earlier versions of this product, we found the demo at PC Expo too "neat" to ignore. ENote...

Quark ships Xpress 3.2 for Mac with EfiColor. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... In mid-July, Quark shipped the long-awaited version 3.2 of Xpress. This is the version that has EfiColor and metric color tags, gamut alarm and two modes of mapping out-of-gamut colors (one for photos, another for bar charts). We covered many...

New products featured at Digital World. (Adobe System Inc.'s Adobe Premier 3.0 desktop video software) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... One of the more popular attractions at this year's Digital World conference was the demo center. Hundreds of attenders flocked to the center to get a look at and try out some of the newest goodies including a compression chip from C-Cube and...

Apple wins support for OpenDoc. (This Month in the Main Library)
August 16, 1993... IBM, Novell and Borland have joined with Apple in promoting OpenDoc, a new compound document architecture developed by Apple. OpenDoc, which was originally called Amber, is a specification for creating document editing systems that utilize many...

IBM extends PowerPC at the low end. (This Month in the Main Library)
August 16, 1993... IBM announced that it will develop a line of low-cost, low-power chips based on the PowerPC architecture. The new 400-series chips will use the same instructions as the top-line 600-series cpus, but will not have all of the features....

Apple to license Mac technology. (This Month in the Main Library)
August 16, 1993... Apple and Novell reportedly have begun a project, code-named Star Trek, to create a combined operating system. The new software would run on '486 pcs, would be based on Novell's DR DOS and would use Apple's QuickDraw graphics and Finder....

General Parametrics offers fast color printer. (Spectra*Star GT) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... General Parametrics has introduced what it calls the fastest plain-paper color printer on the market -- the SpectraStar GT. Based on thermal technology, it prints at 2 pages per minute and costs $4,495. It uses a 33-mhz 80960CA risc processor...

Xing Picture Prowler goes commercial. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Xing Technology has released the Picture Prowler image management program to the mass market. The Windows utility, first shipped in June 1992 to oems, is now bundled with Sigma Designs' WinMovie and WinMach products. The retail price will...

Shareware shareware. (Coyote Data's Oasis CD-ROM) (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Shareware shareware. Coyote Data has produced the Oasis cd-rom containing 6,700 shareware (or "try before you buy") programs and files. None of them are games; all are business apps and utilities. As is only fitting, the disc is itself sold as...

Novell to network multimedia. (Novell acquires Fluent Inc.) (The Latest Word)
August 16, 1993... Novell to network multimedia. Novell has acquired Massachusetts-based Fluent, Inc., through a $17.5 million purchase of its outstanding shares. Novell will leverage Fluent's netware-based software products to deliver full-motion video over...

Illustrator 5.0 shipped. (Adobe Systems Inc.) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Illustrator 5.0 shipped. Adobe is now shipping version 5.0 of its Illustrator drawing program. The new version, which we covered in our Seybold Special Report from our Boston seminar (see Vol. 1, No. 2), features plug-in filters that enable...

Leaf, EFI in joint HDR deal. (Electronics for Imaging; Leaf Systems Inc.) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Leaf, EFI in joint HDR deal. Leaf Systems and Electronics for Imaging have announced a joint development project under which EFI's Cachet color editing software will import and read 48-bit files based on Leaf's High Dynamic Range (HDR)...

Handmade interprets PostScript. (Handmade Software's Image Alchemy PS) (The Latest Word)(Briefly... ) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Handmade interprets PostScript. Handmade Software has announced the availability of Image Alchemy PS for translating PostScript files into any of 60 supported image file formats, including some that support a wide variety of output devices. It...

LaserMaster adds 36" color printer. (DisplayMaker printer, LaserMaster DisplayJet image processor) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... LaserMaster adds 36* color printer. LaserMaster is shipping its new 36*-wide DisplayMaker color ink-jet printer imaging PostScript files on continuous-feed paper. It prints at 300 or 150 dpi on coated gloss or matte paper or translucent...

Color printer market triples. (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Color printer market triples. The International Data Corporation has released a study that says sales in the color nonimpact printer market tripled in 1992 compared to 1991. Revenue from the market represented 9.2% of the total U.S. printer...

Ambra launches line. (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Ambra launches line. Add another computer company to the list. Ambra Computer Corporation of Raleigh, NC, released its first product line at Macworld this month. The line includes 16 pcs, servers and workstations, including a dual Pentium-based...

FullWrite acquired again. (Akimbo Systems) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... FullWrite acquired again. Akimbo Systems of Somerville, MA, is the latest company to acquire the rights to the FullWrite Professional word processor program. The Mac-based program was developed by Ann Arbor Softworks in 1988, but Softworks was...

Colorbus uses CPSI level 2. (Cyclone print server; Configurable PostScript Interpreter Level 2) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Colorbus uses CPSI Level 2. Colorbus has announced that its Cyclone network print server will use Adobe's Configurable PostScript Interpreter Level 2. The Cyclone is a 400-dpi print server for Canon Color Laser Copiers that runs on the Silicon...

Nth releases Adacta Editor. (The Latest Word)(Briefly...) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... Nth releases Adacta Editor. Nth graphics has released a new raster-to-vector conversion package, Adacta Editor, that performs interactive, semi-automatic and automatic vectorization of images and drawings. Running under Windows, Adacta Editor...

Aldus forms advisory board. (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Aldus forms advisory board. Aldus has formed a 12-member advisory board of prepress experts from the U.S. and Canada. The group will meet twice a year to discuss desktop technology in the prepress world. Some of the board members include Paul...

Aldus joins in seminars. (Power Publishing desktop publishing seminar) (The Latest Word)(Briefly...)
August 16, 1993... Aldus joins in seminars. Aldus has announced that it will participate in the Power Publishing color seminars hosted by the Power Publishing Alliance. The Alliance, formed in May, includes Adobe Systems, Dell Computer and SuperMac Technology....

Avery Label Printer for Windows fills a niche. (Software Review) (Trials & tribulations)(Evaluation)
August 16, 1993... Avery Dennison has developed a thermal label printer that works in the Windows environment. Overall, the Avery Label Printer is nice to have around the office, especially if you need one professional-looking label in a few seconds (four or...

JPEG: Still Image Data Compression Standard.
August 16, 1993... JPEG's goriest details. Jpeg compression works pretty well for still images, and most of the world will get along fine without knowing how it works. But for those who are curious, or who intend to develop an implementation, Jpeg: Still Image...

How to Make Sure What You See is What You Get.
August 16, 1993... PostScript bug book. Systems of Merritt has published a special edition of Peter Fink's booklet, How to Make Sure What You See Is What You Get. The new edition is printed in color (on Presstek's Heidelberg GTO-DI press) and also contains new...

Aldus acquires video editing developer. (acquires Company of Science and Art) (The Latest Word)
August 16, 1993... Aldus continues to expand through acquisitions, last month acquiring The Company of Science & Art (CoSA), developer of CoSA After Effects, a digital video post-editing program. CoSA will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Aldus. Aldus will...

The Font Bureau releases 28 new fonts. (The Latest Word) (Product Announcement)
August 16, 1993... The Font bureau recently released 28 new PostScript Type 1 fonts for the Macintosh. The new release is the eleventh for The Font Bureau, whose retail typefaces now total 128. The new offerings include HipHop, Elli, BadTyp, Agenda, SamSans,...