After answering a question last week about Adobe Acrobat, I looked up my
sampler CD and found a couple of ways in which it is being used which
describes best what incredible technology this is which might assist those
librarians who are increasingly encountering it.
Example 1
The Figaro's Concorde Project
This operation involves a national newspaper, a national airlines,
communications, several Macs, a Sun and a PC. The "Figaro" is the largest
French national newspaper. The pages are laid out on one of their Macintosh
Quadras using Quark Xpress and the PostScript files are generated and stored
on one of their Sun servers.
After testing Acrobat, the Figaro's Information Systems people got the idea
of the "Concorde Project". The purpose of this project is to allow the
passengers on Air France's New York to Paris flight on the Concorde
supersonic plane to read the lasted issue of the Figaro as they break through
the sound barrier. This is how it's done :
1) As mentioned above, the PostScript files for each page are saved on a Sun
server.
2) A Macintosh station opens the PostScript file on the Sun server and
distills it.
3) The resulting PDF file is stored in a transfer folder.
4) This PDF file is transferred by modem to a PC in the JFK Airport office of
Air France.
5) Air France opens the PDF file with Acrobat Exchange for Windows and prints
it out on a 600 dpi PostScript laser printer in a A3 format.
6) The issue is distributed to passengers boarding the Concorde leaving for
Paris.
The creation of a PDF version of the newspaper does not require extra work
because the newspaper already has the PostScript files on hand and the
distillation will soon be triggered automatically. The Figaro likes the PDF
file format because it travels unaffected from one platform to another and
because the small file size
saves time and money when transferring the newspaper by modem .
Example 2
Published in London, the Evening Standard is one of three newspapers
published by Associated Newspapers - the other two being: The Daily Mail and
The Mail on Sunday. Associated Newspapers has been working with Adobe's
Acrobat technology for some time now as part of their electronic publishing
strategy.
In conjunction with Adobe, the publisher has completed a very successful
test. Each day as soon as the Evening Standard is published, the electronic
publishing group converts the newspaper into Acrobat Portable Document Format
(PDF), and transmits it from London to Adobe's Corporate Headquarters in
Mountain View, California via ISDN. It is available on Adobe's Acrobat server
for all employees to view and print, as desired. The average transmission
time is less than 10 minutes.
Building on this strategy, Associated Newspapers is now planning to produce a
CD-ROM every month, containing back-copies of the Evening Standard, The Daily
Mail and The Mail on Sunday in Acrobat PDF format. This CD-ROM will be
commercially available as well as being made available to libraries and
Government bodies.
Lord Rothermere, the Chairman of Associated Newspapers lives in Paris, and
now, rather than having to wait several hours for his copy of each newspaper
edition to arrive by plane, the paper is delivered to him almost immediately,
electronically, in Acrobat PDF format.
Associated Newspapers is also planning to deliver their papers electronically
to other news organisations (including television stations), using Acrobat.
Associated Newspapers has developed a software-based artwork delivery system,
called ADS, which significantly improves the efficiency of delivering
advertising artwork to publishers. It is an industry standard in Europe. All
the manuals for this product are available in Acrobat PDF format.
Internally, Associated Newspapers is expanding their use of Acrobat to share
information electronically, faster and more effectively than ever before.
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These descriptions of the examples of usage were copied and pasted from the
disk. Try doing that with a fax. Not to mention photos is glowing colour. And
because the whole thing is digital, the material can be copied and re-copied
without loss of quality. I know that raises copyright issues but then so do
photocopiers and that problem is being sorted out.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:02 PST