As predicted back in September, Quark has launched Quark Publishing System (QPS) version 7 at Ifra. As well as upgrading the product for QuarkXPress 7 and QuarkCopyDesk 7, Quark says the new release has been “completely re-engineered using proven open standards” — in particular, Java. It provides real-time collaboration in page production between story editors and layout designers, and includes QPS Web Editor for editing stories via a web connection while still being able to check the layout via a page preview.
euro.quark.com/qps7
Archive for October, 2007
Content management specialist Mediasurface has integrated its Morello Web Content Management system with WoodWing Software’s Smart Newspaper product. The combined offering has Smart Newspapers dealing with content planning, gathering, selecting and editing and publishing to print, while Morello allows the content to be published instantly to multiple websites and online channels directly from within WoodWing’s editorial environment.
www.mediasurface.com
www.woodwing.com
Sansui Software’s PublishNow! ad booking, production and proofing system, which runs on Adobe InDesign Server, is to be enhanced by a module called PublishNow! Interactive that lets you make text, styling, colour and layout changes through a web browser. The module is aimed at workflows in which last-minute ad changes are commonplace.
www.sansuisoftware.com
Picture agency Alamy has reached its 10 millionth image. To celebrate, it is offering an extra 10% commission to photographers whose pictures are bought today through Alamy.
www.alamy.com
When several items or objects in a page layout overlap, invariably the one that you want to edit is sitting behind another. Luckily, both QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign provide simple methods for selecting objects behind other objects.
In QuarkXPress, hold down the Command-Opt-Shift (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Windows) keys and click on the item that’s in front of the others. With each subsequent click, QuarkXPress selects the next item further back in the stack until it reaches the back, whereupon the next click selects the front item again. When an obscured item is selected, you can move it using the cursor keys, apply colours to it, and select, retype and restyle text inside it if it’s a text box. You can also, of course, bring it to the front using the F5 key.
In Adobe InDesign, hold down the Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) keys and click on the object that’s in front of the others. With each subsequent click, InDesign selects the next object further back in the stack until it reaches the back, whereupon the next click selects the front item again. Alternatively, you can select the front object, then repeatedly press Command-Opt-[ (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-[ (Windows) to select each subsequent object behind, or hold down the Shift key as well to select each subsequent object in front.
When an obscured InDesign object is selected, you can move it using the cursor keys or by carefully clicking and dragging on the object's centre handle. You can also apply colours and object styles, but selecting text inside an obscured text frame is virtually impossible in InDesign because this usually requires an additional click with the Type tool. You can bring the selected object to the front using Command-Shift-] (Mac) or Ctrl-Shift-] (Windows).
InDesign CS3 also provides a set of buttons for selecting objects behind other objects, but these buttons have baffling pictograms that few people can remember easily. Just use the keyboard modifiers above instead.
Small workgroup models of Konica Minolta’s bizhub range of network printers have been announced by the company. The bizhub C30P can produce 30cpm in colour, 35cpm in mono, and supports add-on finishing units and a duplexing option. The smaller bizhub C10P outputs at up to 5cpm in colour, 20cpm in mono. Both printers come with drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux, and feature built-in calibration functionality. No pricing has been revealed yet.
www.konicaminolta.co.uk
Adobe has acquired Virtual Ubiquity, a company that developed an web-based, collaborative and graphically rich word processor called Buzzword. The product was itself developed using Adobe Flex and delivered using Flash, and Adobe expects to drive development further through its AIR platform to enable Buzzword to edit documents on your desktop as well as online. Buzzword currently exports to RTF and Microsoft Word formats, and Adobe says it has plans to add PDF and ODF export in the near future. The company also wants to integrate the product into Acrobat Connect.
www.adobe.com/go/buzzwordfaq
Adobe is inviting the public to try out its online service called Share, which is currently at beta test stage. Share lets you send files to people without having to attach them to your emails. It’s not exactly revolutionary in concept: basically, you upload your files to an Adobe server and email the files’ URL to your colleagues. The public beta also offers a basic level of security that allows you to restrict your ’shared’ files to specific people, who in turn must be registered Share users. If the files are not confidential, then anyone who gets hold of the URL can read your ’shared’ files, and they don’t have to register on the system. Such rudimentary security and its fairly open sign-in routine restricts the usefulness of Share in certain confidential scenarios, but we would like to see if the final release will seamlessly support web-based PDF approval workflows for colleagues and clients who don’t use this feature of Acrobat because they don’t have webmaster access over their companies’ own servers.
Try it out for yourself at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/share
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