Because of all the excitement about corporate developers using NeXTSTEP to build mission-critical custom applications, professional layout artists, designers, and typesetters have waited a long time for their own critical missions to be fulfilled.
For design professionals who took the plunge and chose the NeXT years ago as their publishing platform, the recent appearance of shrinkwrapped publishing applications is both a blessing and a reminder that more is needed. For others, the answer is to mix and match NeXT application capabilities, system enhancements, and development tools Ð to build a modular publishing environment of their own.
"We're seeing the beginning of 'just-in-time' publishing," says Les Krzyzanowski, general manager in Los Angeles for Crestec, an international documentation concern with NeXTs in several offices around the world. "I can access remote networking with a document in L.A., have it translated in Japan, and bulk printed in Taiwan."
Ashton is currently trying to unify his printing solution as well. Crestec has installed three Xerox DocuTech printers in its L.A. office and is working on custom software to drive the new direct-digital printer, which uses a Kurzweil scanner to compress data at 600 dpi instead of a light-sensitive camera and can act as scanner, output device, and copier. "We can get customers to abandon offset for short print runs, up to 1000 copies of a document," says Ashton.
This type of "custom publishing environment" fits in precisely with NeXT's vision of publishing on the platform, according to David LaDuke, NeXT's manager of publishing markets. It supports NeXT's overall marketing strategy of mission-critical custom apps. And because publishing and printing will increasingly rely on networks of high-tech machinery from different manufacturers, says LaDuke, "we'd like to be in the middle of a mixed environment to run prepress Ð file management, cue management, PostScript-error checking, high-resolution image replacement, compression, networking, billing."
NeXT is also pushing the development of third-party modular solutions, like Archetype's Document Engine, so users can build custom DTP software. As shrinkwrapped apps like Pages by Pages and PasteUp become available, NeXT will have to concentrate on making sure that software integrates into publishing environments as seamlessly as any hardware might.
"People love the NeXT," says Sheila Henriques, a designer at Outline Graphic Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. "It gives us a chance to look really good. Presentations are better and we're viewed as a professional studio that's in it for the long haul."
But enthusiasm is tempered by reality. Lee points to the need for a universal separation program and an image-editing program like Photoshop. While waiting for these gaps to be filled, he ports work over to the Mac. Henriques says she has to let art suppliers or a printing house add special effects on images.
Both are also frustrated by the lack of service-bureau support for NeXT files. "I can design until the sun goes down, but if I can't go to a service bureau and get four sheets separated, it's maddening," says Lee.
Andrew Vyrros, design director for several early issues of the BANG (Bay Area NeXT Group) Newsletter, says he "had to do lots of reality checks on the output to make sure everything was all right." He found that service bureaus lacked expertise. Vyrros encountered font-downloading conflicts, disappearing disk space as images forced the NeXT-generated swapfile to huge proportion, and PostScript incompatibilities between the NeXT and RIPs ± even at bureaus that had GatorBox connections to Mac networks.
Designers see the appearance of software like Adobe Illustrator, Appsoft Draw, and Altsys Virtuoso as a validation of their decision to go with the NeXT but feel that additional shrinkwrapped apps will lead to wider acceptance of the platform and more service-bureau support. "As tools become available, the NeXT will become much more attractive for desktop publishing," says Vyros. "In the long run, it will be the superior platform."
"[The client] wanted to go with something more stable and get a few NeXTs for development and see," says Foski. "There's another company in Lubljana that has 30 Macs. They have to kick their RIP to work, run around with disks, troubleshoot a broken network. I told them they didn't want that."
The deal involves a $4.2 million loan from the International Finance Corporation, an affiliate of the World Bank, to remodel the editorial and publishing system of the Delo Group, Slovenia's largest publisher. When changes are complete at the national daily paper, local daily, and 12 magazines, Skeleton Crew hopes to secure more funding to revamp Delo's reproduction house and printing plant.
The editorial system will rely on RightBrain's PasteUp as the DTP tool, a custom redmark system for editor/author interaction, and custom news-feed-capture software to grab wire-service text and images and distribute them within the system.
In an attempt to keep user acceptance as high as possible, Foski is writing code for the redmark software to translate a story's text into Coda language, which can be read by old Linotype typesetting machines that are still in place. He is also writing a Slovenian version of the software that will contain hooks to other software in Delo's operations.
"Programmers know PostScript but they have to think like typographers or editors. You have to port the knowledge of each craft to desktop publishing," Foski says.
NeXT's LaDuke acknowledges that there is "a lot of intelligence of craft out there, but economics of the market haven't allowed shrinkwrapped-app developers to bring it to market. That's why modular development is very important, so people can develop the small stuff and get it linked to what's already out there."
Users might very well be trapped between their own craft requirements and developers' market needs, but the middle ground may prove fertile: Users will have a unique chance to drive this emerging market. Because not all sites can afford systems integrators like Skeleton Crew, developers will be forced to work on shrinkwrapped solutions at the expense of modular solutions, according to Bruce Webster, chief technical officer of Pages Software in San Diego. "No one at NeXT has really made a compelling case for the Objects-R-Us methodology," he says.
A better solution, Webster explains, will be the publication of agreed-upon API standards, so developers all speak the same language. Users will be assured a high degree of functionality in shrinkwrapped apps, a friendly learning curve for customization, and interapplication communication.
This could prove to be a winning strategy for everybody. "We could have lots of headaches communicating between third-party apps. We'll pick the ones that allow us to integrate them with others," says Skeleton Crew's Foski.
Some users, like Sheila Henriques, have concerns that NeXT never dreamed of when it built the first Cube. "The aesthetics of the machine help us because clients expect this look from design studios. We sell image and they want image," she says.
But others know that, in the end, it's not just how the NeXT looks, but how it allows a craftperson to achieve his or her goals. Whether the DTP solution on the NeXT is primarily modular or shrinkwrapped, "it comes down to this," says Sergij Foski: "There are old guys there who have to learn the system and accept it. You can put a NeXT on their desks, but you have to get them to use it. If they push the keyboard away you lose."
Eliot Bergson is the associate editor of NeXTWORLD. He was a typesetter for eight years.