PDF Research The Arrival of Digital Publishing by C. Scott Miller

Boston, MA (March 2, 1999) - Adobe officially announces the availability of Acrobat 4.0 and the long-awaited summer release of Adobe InDesign™. Across the Charles River from MIT, the home of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), John Warnock promises Adobe development and support of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) - an emerging W3C specification for a standard vector graphics language for the Web. What does all this mean? It means that a new chapter is being written in the history of publishing technology. We must expand our definition of graphics beyond the two dimensional world of ink on paper. We must see graphic design as problem solving on a larger canvas - a scalable canvas of height, width, motion, and content dimensions - with universal repurposing an ever present consideration. Printing used to be the end product of graphic design. Now it is only one byproduct of many. The term "cross-media" enters the lexicon. A document is recognized as an ephemeral list of instructions that must be applicable to media and purposes both known and unanticipated. What distinguishes Adobe from the competition is its dedication to absolute image quality. What can be perfectly rendered should stay defined as infinitely scalable vectors. What can't should be manipulated from the highest resolution down. Limiting choice is not an option - the palette must expand to include more fonts, more style, more colors, more forms, more ideas. What must be changed must be clearly visible so it can be proofed and changed accordingly. How can we expect to be ready to produce graphics for high definition television, greater bandwidth, and eCommerce's crushing demand unless we have major league tools to address the challenges ahead? Hence Adobe's Professional Publishing Platform. How can we author and manipulate documents in high resolution with programming features that aid internet navigation and data processing? Enter Adobe InDesign. How can we be sure that projects that are designed for multiple purposes, will also perform at the highest standards demanded for quality printing? Proof on-screen in high-resolution Acrobat PDFs and print proofs on select color inkjets using Adobe PressReady. What does it all mean? New opportunities to address new challenges with new and great tools. The results are better quality documents with more flexibility to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving publishing environment. For further information, e-mail Performance Graphics at miller@performancegraphics.com or visit Performance Graphics' website, "PDF Research Companion", at http://www.performancegraphics.com. Return to PDF Research Companion home page. a production of Performance Graphics ©1998 The Miller De Wulf Corporation