Seybold SF Publishing '98
from a PDF Perspective
by C. Scott Miller, editor of the PDF Research
Companion
If there is any conference that is a "must-see" for
Portable Document Format (PDF) evangelists, it is Seybold's.
Where else can you spend an entire "PDF Day" in seminars,
listen to world-class experts expound on pre-press and
internet issues, peruse an Exhibit area called "PDF Workflow
Pavilion - It Works!", and pick the brains of scores of
Exchange plug-in developers? In addition, Seybold has become
the face-to-face meeting ground for digital publishers
worldwide with 1998-99 conferences spreading to Miami,
Birmingham (U.K.), Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Boston, and San
Francisco.
Let's take a closer look at some of the highlights of
Seybold San Francisco/Publishing '98 this September.
Keynote Addresses
Two of the keynotes this year featured a stark contrast.
What was important at one was what was said - at the other,
what was left unsaid. It speaks to the significance of the
conference that both Apple and Microsoft sent their
respective "warlords" to give addresses. Steve Jobs (Apple)
- apparently in support of Adobe's rejection of a Quark
takeover bid - passed his keynote address baton to Adobe to
preview its K2 (code-name) beta page layout program. With
PDF becoming a pre-press standard, many are anticipating
that K2 will do for PDF file creation in the next decade
what Quark Xpress has done for Postscript in the past
decade. Will sales of K2 eclipse Quark over time? Let's see
how Apple's adoption of PDF for its Mac OSX Extended
QuickDraw affects the digital publishing landscape.
By comparison, Steve Balmer (newly promoted President of
Microsoft) paid Adobe the ultimate compliment - during his
hour-long keynote address he never mentioned PDF once!
There to reinforce the notion that Microsoft is a major
player in digital publishing, he asked the audience for a
show of hands of how many were using Windows machines for
publishing applications (about 1/3 of the audience). He
takes that as endorsement for the new direction in
publishing Microsoft has been taking lately, since as little
as two years ago there would probably have been very few
Windows users in evidence at a Seybold conference.
There are two other possible explanations for this
apparent endorsement. First, ... what choice is there?
Publishing has grown into an enterprise-wide phenomenon and
corporations are pre-disposed to Windows because of their
non-publishing applications. As a result, inhouse Mac
publishers (the traditional Seybold demographic) are being
forced to migrate to Windows machines whether they like it
or not. Second, the audience at Seybold is de-emphasizing
interest in desktop publishing to pre-press technology and
becoming more interested in the simultaneous conversion,
manipulation and distribution of digital documents through
all publishing workflows. Now, at Seybold, more Windows
software vendors and users have been enfranchised into the
publishing revolution than ever before.
With more than half of the audience aware and interested
in PDF-related issues - certainly a significance not lost on
the President of Microsoft - he never mentioned it once.
Could it be that they don't want to cede any more ground to
Adobe? Do they think they can capture "publishing" without
simultaneously addressing print issues? Is Microsoft
soul-searching in reaction to Dept. of Justice inquiries?
Maybe Microsoft is planning an "end-around" by getting the
WWW Consortium (W3C) to include features of their VML
(Vector Markup Language) format in opposition to Adobe's
PGML (Precision Graphics Markup Language) format in the next
generation of approved WWW standards. Only time will tell.
However, it would be helpful if Microsoft would be upfront
and either address or endorse the PDF standard in its
presentations.
Conferences, Pavilions, and Exhibits
The array of conference topics discussed concerning PDF
ranged from PDF: A Look Inside, to Acrobat in
Action, to Working with PDF Today. Andy Tribute
of Seybold Publications and Thad McIllroy or Arcadia House
hosted an entire PDF Day of speeches, panel
discussions, demonstrations and developer pitches. Sandee
Cohen (New School for Social Research in N.Y.C.) ran a
four-hour tutorial on Acrobat and PDF: Beyond the Basics.
The interest in PDF and future iterations of PDF related
software was broad and deep. At the PDF Workflow Pavilion
- It Works! an entire workflow from designers desk
through to final print was depicted and supported by the
contributing seven sponsors (Adobe, AGFA, Apple, CREO,
Extensis, Scitex, and Tektronix). Michael Jahn of AGFA was
in town promoting the latest development trends in pre-press
workflows. Helios demonstrated PDF Handshake EtherShare
software for pre-press processing of PDF files.
Adobe's booth had a Developers Pavilion that was
filled with 3 aisles of plug-in software developers
demonstrating new tools for automating production of or
adding value to PDF documents. Included were BCL Computers
(Redwing), Callas Software (MadeToPrint XT), TechnoDesign
(PDF Design XTension), Advertising Communications
International (Digital Ad Delivery), Computerised Document
Control (PDFfusion), Infodata/Ambia (Re:Mark), Ultimate
Technologies (On-Q Server), Documentum (FrameLink), Digital
Applications (StampPDF), to name a few.
So if you are interested in PDF on more than a casual
basis, if you have some ideas about new things you would
like to learn about it, or if you want to influence others
in the direction its development should go, then GO to the
next Seybold Conference near you. You can register to attend
the keynote addresses and exhibition floor at no charge and
can spend a full day getting first-hand information about
this exciting publishing phenomenon. Visit http://www.seyboldseminars.com
for the latest information - and, incidentally, do a search
on "PDF" to get some great, late-breaking information
on-line.
------------------------
C. Scott Miller, a Guest Contributor to PurePDF, is
President of Performance Graphics, an award-winning Los
Angeles area corporate graphic design and consulting
company. He is also editor of The
PDF Research Companion website
(http://www.performancegraphics.com) which contains
additional PDF research information, links specific to the
needs of graphic designers, and an extensive "How-to..."
library of PDF related techniques.
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