LAYOUT : the newsletter of page design

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!

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

HP Labs is running a beta programme for a magazine production and fulfilment service called MagCloud. You upload your PDF for free, then HP prints it ‘on demand’ when someone wants a copy, and sells it online for you. Once HP had recouped the production costs, you start to earn money on any further sales. MagCloud sounds similar to some book publishing schemes that lock authors into a digital printing-on-demand retail agreement. This would take control and profitability out of your hands, but it would also protect you from high production costs that you might not otherwise ever recoup alone. When HP reveals more information, we can tell you about it.
Thanks to Adam Dewitz (Print CEO Blog) for the heads up.

The publisher of Britain’s biggest circulation magazine is going to be closed by its parent company, News International. News Magazines currently produces SkyMag for Sky subscribers (more than 7m circulation), the Sunday Times travel supplement, and a women’s magazine called Love It! At a time when magazines are struggling to maintain readership, it’s quite amazing that the publisher of the most successful magazine in the UK can’t make an honest profit. But then, the editorial appeared to comprise dull press releases and non-interviews with stars, so perhaps it was inevitable after all. The company was not helped by having the worst web site in the world.
www.newsmagazines.co.uk

PrintWeek has reported from DRUPA that one exhibitor, Taiwan Lung Meng Tech, has invented a type of paper made from stone rather than wood pulp. Known as ‘rich mineral paper’ or RMP, it is composed of limestone powder and a non-toxic resin. It is said to be environmentally friendlier in its manufacture than conventional paper, and the product has some interesting properties such as not getting wet - you can even write on it under water with a pencil.
http://community.printweek.com/blogs/printgeek/archive/2008/06/09/drupa-stone-age.aspx
www.taiwanlm.com.tw

Newspaper circulation is increasing worldwide, but not in the UK or most of Europe, according to a report issued by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Goteborg, Sweden. While the global sales of paid-for newspapers rose by +2.57 percent in 2007, the circulation of paid-for dailies in the UK had contracted -3.46 percent. Looking back over the last five years, UK sales had slumped by -10.14 percent. Elsewhere in Europe, despite increases in a number of countries such as Bulgaria and Moldova, most Western European countries were suffering a decline in sales of paid-for titles. Overall, European circulation figures fell by -2.37 percent in 2007 and by -5.91 percent over the past five years.

On the other hand, free daily newspapers continued their expansion, especially in Europe where they now account for almost a quarter of all newspaper circulation. The three largest free dailies in the world are all European: Leggo in Italy (1.95 million copies), Metro in the UK (1.37 million copies) and 20 Minutos in Spain (1 million copies).

The WAN report also confirms that print remains the world’s most popular advertising medium, consuming 40 percent of the expediture in the advertising market.

www.wan-press.org/article17377.html

At the commencement of DRUPA, Screen Europe was showing off the world’s first inkjet-based digital press to work with ordinary cut sheet paper rather than reels or specially formulated inkjet stock. The Truepress Jet SX uses water-based inks on either coated or uncoated paper, and is said to be capable of printing up to 1,600 sheets per hour. This kind of speed, and its support for regular cut-sheet stock, puts it on a reasonable par with small offset litho presses, but with the added bonus of variable printing (it will incorporate Adobe PDF Print Engine 2). The first Truepress Jet SX units should be available next year.
www.screen.co.jp/ga_dtp/en/news/pdf/NR080529E.pdf

Adobe has revealed that version 2 of its PDF Print Engine will soon be made available to printer manufacturers and print providers. The original PDF Print Engine allowed end-to-end workflows that managed layout documents in native PDF format, right through to output (no PostScript, no transparency flattening). Version 2 improves support for variable data printing (VDP) and in particular for the emerging PDF/VT standard.
www.adobe.com/products/pdfprintengine