QuarkXPress 8 is now available for immediate purchase and delivery, fulfilling Quark’s promise a couple of months ago that the product would begin shipping before the end of July 2008. Continue reading ‘QuarkXPress 8 shipping / 60-day trial available’
Archive for July, 2008
ASUS has launched a 22-inch widescreen LCD monitor that fits the ‘ultra-slim’ tag, being only 4.5cm thick. The ASUS LS221H supports WSXGA+ resolution (1680×1050 pixels), with a quoted contrast ratio of 4000:1, 300nits brightness, and 170° (horizontal)/160° (vertical) viewing angles. The company has an eye on consumer and point-of-sale video markets, providing D-SUB and HDMI inputs, but the price of £270 inc VAT should make it attractive for editorial, design and layout work in the cash-strapped freelance arena.
http://uk.asus.com
ANL and NI recycle 2,000 trees from London streets
Published 23 July 2008 industry news Leave a CommentPrintWeek is reporting that Associated Newspapers Ltd and News International have collected and recycled 120 tonnes of discarded free newspapers from London’s streets in the first six months of this year. This is said to be equivalent to 2,000 trees. The recycling scheme was imposed on the two newspaper publishers by Westminster Council, which had been complaining throughout 2007 that the fierce readership war between ANL (London Lite) and NI (thelondonpaper) had led to excessive litter. Rather than risk losing their right to distribute the free newspapers on the street, the two publishers agreed to install 70 recycling bins across London’s West End and pay for them to be emptied. The PrintWeek article does not mention ANL’s morning freesheet, Metro.
www.printweek.com/PrintWeekDaily/News/833062/London-freesheet-recycling-scheme-bags-120-tonnes-waste
Quark has “acquired the assets” of In.vision Research Corporation, the software developer that produced the XPress Author for Microsoft Word element of Quark’s Dynamic Publishing Solution. The purchase should allow Quark to further integrate Word-generated XML functionality into all its products.
www.quark.com/invision
Having helped save British book printers Butler & Tanner from extinction earlier this year, magazine publisher and poet Felix Dennis plans to relaunch the company on 1 August 2008 under the brand Butler, Tanner & Dennis. The printers will begin trading with a workforce of 80, which is expected to increase “in the months to come”, according to an open letter to previous employees. Dennis says he chose to acquire the company, thereby preventing it from going out of business, because it had made a fine job of printing his 2007 poetry book, Island of Dreams. As chairman of the reformed company, he hopes to encourage quality book publishers to reduce their carbon footprint by printing in the UK rather than in the far east. Go Felix!
QuarkXPress 8 Xperience Design Global Tour
Wed 27 August 2008 - Mercure Point Hotel, Edinburgh
Thu 28 August 2008 - Bridgewater Hotel, Manchester
Tue 2 September 2008 - Watershed, Bristol
Thu 3 September 2008 - Riverside Studios, London
Tue 16 September 2008 - Morrison Hotel, Dublin
Touring workshop to let users try out QuarkXPress 8
http://euro.quark.com/en/about/events/QuarkXPress8
Total Print! Expo 2008 (incorporating Digital Print World)
Tue 14 – Thu 16 October 2008
Earl’s Court 2, London
Show aimed at the short-run print market
www.totalprintexpo.com
Creative Pro Expo & Mac Live Expo 2008
Thu 23 – Sat 25 October 2008
National Hall, Olympia, London
Joint Mac and cross-platform show for creative professionals
www.macliveexpo.co.uk
Publishing Expo 2009
Wed 11 – Thu 12 February 2009
Olympia, London
Seminars, workshops and expo event for magazine publishers
www.publishingexpo.co.uk
Focus On Imaging 2009
Sun 22 – Wed 25 February 2009
NEC, Birmingham
Europe’s biggest annual imaging show for photographers
www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk
London Book Fair 2009
Mon 20 – Wed 22 April 2009
Olympia, London
Spring forum for booksellers, publishers, librarians and book production services
www.londonbookfair.co.uk
Sign & Digital UK
Tue 28 – Thu 30 April 2009
NEC, Birmingham
Show for signwriters and digital printers
www.signuk.com
Pfeiffer Consulting has produced a report that says QuarkXPress 8 allows users to work three times faster than was possible using earlier versions. Pfeiffer ran 25 productivity tests along the lines of ‘import a picture and change its crop’ and ‘update some style sheets’ and found that version 8 could complete tasks in a fraction of the time they used to. While the report seems to suggest that version 7 wasn’t much of an improvement over 6.5 (contrary to Quark’s claims at the version 7 launch), we concur that version 8 really is a big improvement in terms of speed and ease of use. A summary of the report can be downloaded from here.
http://8.quark.com/en/pfeiffer_report.html
The International Standards Organisation has published the PDF 1.7 format as ISO 32000-1:2008 (Document management – Portable document format – Part 1: PDF 1.7). This is the result of Adobe relinquishing details of the PDF format to the ISO. Future versions of PDF will be published as ISO standards. However, despite the ISO’s ambiguous press release, the organisation will almost certainly not be developing the software itself. You can obtain the standard from here. It costs 370 Swiss Francs (£182).
www.iso.org
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