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authorNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
committerNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
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+\centerline{\bf Landmarks in Electronic Publishing}
+\medskip
+\noindent
+This two-day conference. held at the University of Durham 13--14 April, was
+a new venture for the BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group. In
+the five years since the Group was formed, with the exception of EP86
+in Nottingham, which was not strictly a Group conference, all meetings
+have been in London and have lasted one day or less. This conference
+`Landmarks in Electronic Publishing' was not only a longer meeting,
+but a residential one with more time for people to talk amongst
+themselves. In this sense it was extremely valuable, quite apart from
+the formal lectures.
+
+The first speaker was Glenn Reid of Adobe Systems, giving a
+`Perspective on the \PS{} Language'. He began by giving a brief
+history of Adobe and describing the page-description languages out of
+which \PS{} grew. Then he summarized the principal features of
+\PS{}, that it is an interpreted language, purely in seven-bit
+ASCII (and therefore humanly readable) with a low execution overhead.
+It is stack-based, all data types are represented by single objects,
+programs can be arbitrarily complex and there is no buffering.
+Primitives are redefinable and there is late binding of names, making
+a very flexible language.
+
+Glenn Reid then went on to expand on the typographical features of
+\PS{}, outline fonts with rotation, sizing (although no hints on
+hints!), kerning, ligatures etc, and the graphics features, now
+increasingly familiar to all in the field. Finally Glenn talked about
+current developments: music, Kanji and vertical setting, and Display
+\PS{}. In summary, a useful perspective on \PS{} as it is
+today, but no real indication that Adobe are likely to `go public'
+and make even a full specification of \PS{} generally available.
+
+Glenn Reid was followed by William Roberts of Queen Mary College,
+London, on `\PS{} is not for Publishers'. My initial reaction was
+that perhaps this should have been `printers' rather than
+`publishers', but the main drift of William Roberts's talk was
+that there is little point in submitting books, journal papers etc to
+publishers in \PS{} form because publishers' editors cannot then
+edit the files. This is a viewpoint that only those authors who wish
+to impose thier own style on publishers will dissent from and
+certainly publishers should be supplied with source files.
+
+William Roberts's second point was that, good as \PS{} is, its
+implementation by many programmers in standard packages leaves a lot
+to be desired and writers of DTP packages should produce much better
+\PS{}.
+
+A rather different view of the \PS{} culture was put by Richard
+Patterson of Hyphen Editorial Systems, who spoke on `Cloning
+\PS{}'. His first comment was `don't do it', but he went on to
+explain why, and to a much lesser extent, how, Hyphen had done it. The
+Hyphen clone is aimed at the typesetting (high-resolution) market;
+Richard Patterson gave an interesting summary of the developments in
+computer graphics during the sixties and seventies (in which the
+printing industry took no interest whatsoever), but which John Warnock of
+Adobe built upon to create \PS{}. By chance, Linotype happened to
+fix on \PS{} for their Linotronic typesetters and found
+themselves leading the market. Suddenly the printing industry, having
+had its head in the sand for several years, was all for \PS{}.
+However, a faster interpreter was really needed, particularly for
+newspapers, and therefore Hyphen's clone filled a market niche.
+Adobe `hints' are really only important for low-resolution devices and
+therefore, as Hyphen were aiming at high-resolution devices, it was
+not necessary to take account of these. Finally the speaker made a
+plea for a standard product. He accepted that Adobe had a firm hold on
+the market, but felt that they should therefore take responsibility
+for \PS{} as a language, much in the way that AT\&T had done for
+UNIX. The Adobe books give a specification (although Adobe may change
+this at any time), but not a method of implementation.
+
+Alan Francis of Page description compared \PS{} and the Graphics
+Metafile (CGM). CGM has been developed as an interchange format over
+several years and it was interesting to see a detailed comparison with
+\PS{}. It was obvious that both have a place and although in
+many ways \PS{} is more powerful, CGM is much more concise and
+therefore better for transferring between systems and for storing.
+Because of its more flexible typography \PS{} is the answer for
+controlling output devices.
+
+The final speaker on the first day was James Gosling of Sun
+Microsystems on the NeWS Window System. This is not intended to be a
+\PS{} clone, but carries out all the functions of one so that
+\PS{} files can viewed on the screen. It was also developed with
+networking in mind so that relatively small \PS{} files could be
+transferred rather than large graphics files (Pixels are bad for
+you!). Unlike \PS{} however, or rather as an extension of
+\PS{}, NeWS is object oriented and screen attributes such as
+buttons, menus etc are defined as a hierarchy. James Gosling went on
+to discuss the merits or otherwise of true \wysiwyg\ and the problems
+of font hints at screen resolutions (80\,dpi). He explained how Sun
+approached the problem, although he emphasized that this did not
+necessarily mean that Adobe approached it in the same way. His
+explanation provoked some lively comment from the audience.
+
+At the end of the talks there was a panel session where members of the
+audience were able to ask specific questions, but also to build
+on what had been said through the day. At last someone managed
+to hint what `hints' are! The \PS{} fonts are encoded as outline
+information: this enables them to be reasonably concise, besides
+making it child's play to rotate, shear, or otherwise distort the
+coordinate system in which they are based. But, while this is
+tolerable on high resolution devices (say over 700-1000\,dpi), on low
+resolution devices, like laser printers, it leads characters of rather
+poorer quality. Basically, typefaces just don't work like that, and
+even the odd pixel here or there can lead to the character on the
+page diverging from its ideal. That's where hints come in (they used
+to be called `Adobe font magic', but `hints' sounds more
+professional). They try to make allowances for the lower resolution.
+They also make allowances for the fact that correct scaling of a
+typeface is distinctly non-linear. A 10 point Times New Roman (as
+designed by Morison), is not merely magnified to obtain a 20\,pt
+version. All sorts of subtle changes (should) come into play. The
+hints try to effect these changes. The only complaint one could have
+about the discussion period was that it was too short. Just as it got
+interesting, food and drink intervened.
+
+The second day was begun with the election of the Group's Chairman
+and committee. David Harris was elected to take David Brailsford's
+place on the committee, and three new members were elected to serve
+on the committee: Paul Bacsich of the OU, Maria Tuck of the
+Independent, and Cathy Booth of Exeter University.
+
+As will by now be clear, the emphasis on the first day
+was on \PS{}, while that on the second day was more general,
+although covering implementation of integrated systems. The first
+speaker was William Newman of Xerox EuroPARC. His topic was `Document
+Representations: Designing for Designers' and was really a summary of
+work carried out at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) during the
+1970's. It was fascinating for two reasons; firstly the emphasis on
+design criteria is one which is often overlooked, while secondly, and
+in many ways sadly, it is astonishing how far Xerox had reached over
+ten years ago and how little of that achievement ever reached the
+market place, at least directly. Perhaps the most telling point in
+William Newman's talk was when he said that he really did not see why
+it was necessary to wait for a page to come out of a laserprinter; he
+didn't have to in 1974 --- so much for progress! Nonetheless, it is
+almost certain that had the PARC work not taken place, many of today's
+products would not exist. A final look into the future covered areas
+such as multimedia documents and the use of audio and video as part of
+information systems, areas where no-one has a great deal of
+experience.
+
+Paul Bacsich described the implementation and integration of the EP
+system at the Open University. And integration is the important part
+of the implementation. The solution has been to use Ethernet to link
+Suns, Vaxes and Apple Mac clusters (themselves communicating via
+Appletalk and connected via a Kinetics box). Software intgration has
+been at least partially achieved by the use of Microsoft Word and its
+Rich Text Format. Problems still exist, which is not surprising in view
+of the aim to incorporate into the EP integration the setting of
+maths, chemistry and music, as well as non-Latin texts, and to try and
+have these handled in as consistent a way as possible. It was an
+intriguing view of the problems involved in such an operation and it
+will be interesting to see how the situation develops. (Editorial
+note: the September meeting will be at the Open University, so you
+can go and see for yourself.)
+
+The establishment of `The Independent' has been interesting, not only
+from a sociological point of view, but also in the technical context
+of Eddie Shah's ventures. Chris Hugh-Jones gave a very clear
+explanation of how the paper functions (when compared to a more
+conventional operation), together with a description of how the paper
+came into being. An Atex system is used, just as by a number of other
+papers, but everything is only keyed once. Journalists, Sub-Editors,
+Editors etc all have access to the files and in this way the paper can
+be designed on the screen with no delay in output once a page has been
+finalized. Composed pages are then faxed to different parts of the
+country for printing and distribution. Chris Hugh-Jones also talked
+about the Magazine, produced on Saturdays. The text is handled using
+Quark Xpress (which produces one or two typographical problems, for
+example in hyphenation) and then sent to the Scitex colour graphics
+work stations for merging with the graphics, which have been scanned
+in. Finally, Chris Hugh-Jones discussed the future. The Independent
+may well be ahead of the rest of the national press in its production
+techniques, but the suppliers to the newspaper industry are still some
+way behind those to the graphic arts industry.
+
+Cathy Booth of the University of Exeter talked about teaching
+electronic document preparation as part of a
+modular degree course. One of the problems is that students start with
+such varying levels of knowledge and competence in computing. However,
+the use of two types of program provides the students with an insight
+into what is better for different types of publication. She chose
+the markup system \PCTeX, and the contrasting direct manipulation
+system, Pagemaker. The use of videos and projects helped considerably.
+Nonetheless, the biggest problem was the lack of resources, at least
+in relative terms as this kind of course is one which ideally requires
+as much hands-on experience as possible. The biggest triumph was the
+quality of some of the students' projects.
+
+The final speaker was Ted Johnson, who is an Aldus Fellow, which means
+that he has a free role to investigate directions in which Aldus is
+likely to move. He reviewed Aldus's place in the market and their
+future options. He described four areas (or directions), technical
+publishing, word processing, interactive drawing, and creative
+flexibility, into which Aldus could move, although they are to a
+certain extent exclusive. Possible solutions rejected have been (a) to
+abandon the market and (b) to provide everything for everyone. This
+leaves splitting production lines as a short-term option, e.g.~the
+development of Freehand as a separate product from Pagemaker. A more
+long term development is object-oriented implementation, so that
+object classes can be tested independently of the specific
+application, with the aim of producing zero-defect software. Another
+benefit would be cross-product object sharing, so that once defects
+are fixed for one product they are fixed for all. A final implication
+would be that object subclasses could be created for different market
+segments with customization by software vendors, VAR's, systems
+integrators, corporate information services departments, or even the
+sophisticated user. Essentially then the user would either buy a
+single customized product or a library from which he can put together
+his own product.
+
+To sum up the conference is difficult. The range of people there was
+broad, from academia, through the commercial publishing world to the
+corporate. The speakers, taken together, provided an interesting
+overview of how EP has developed over the last few years and how it
+is likely to develop. There were no announcements of great
+break-throughs, but that was hardly to be expected. Perhaps the most
+important aspect of the meeting was the time spent informally (and the
+social arrangements for the conference were excellent, for which the
+local organiser, Roger Gawley, must take the major responsibility) and
+the opportunity for discussion. As always, there were many familiar
+faces, but this time there were a significant number of not so familiar
+faces, and the opportunity for discussions with different people, or
+even with the same people in a different place, meant that the general
+view was that this sort of meeting should happen again.
+
+\smallskip
+\rightline{\sl David W Penfold}
+
+
+