Easypress Technologies is a British company specialised in developing XML-based solutions for publishing. It is the provider of EPUB services. Easypress Technologies also has considerable expertise in Alfresco consulting. Driven by an XML/DITA functionality layer, Atomik Dynamic Publisher, lies at the foundation of their EPUB services.
The most simple and easy-to-understand concept of cross-media publishing is for a writer to create his content in a text editor, have this sent back and forth to an editor by e-mail to correct the copy, take the end-result and pour it into InDesign or QuarkXPress for printed output and into Dreamweaver for web output. Needless to say this process doesn’t work when the organisation grows beyond the two people depicted in this “workflow”.
As soon as the number of parties involved grows, so does the need for a robust system that can manage the workflow and the documents themselves. In an Adobe environment the creative part of the cross-media publishing process is currently provided for by InDesign CS4/CS5 and Dreamweaver CS4/CS5 with Adobe’s Device Manager application as a means to check how the design will look when output to various different output channels — the web, an iPhone, a Blackberry PDA.
In Quark’s world, Quark Publishing System (QPS) is the link between the all-creative process driven by QuarkXPress 8 users and the production process (content creation and output) controlled by editors and (mostly in-house) writers. The almost unbreakable link between the creative part and the production part is exemplified by a product like QuarkCopyDesk, which shares some layout functionality with QuarkXPress.
While Quark supports dynamic publishing using QPS as the publishing management engine, Adobe solutions still take the traditional publishing paradigm as its point of departure. The workflow capabilities of Adobe systems are therefore built upon the ability to simultaneously design and edit a document. The cross-media output capabilities always start at the layout document while web-based content is regarded as an output channel secondary in nature to that traditional output channel: print.
In traditional editorial workflow systems, content can be created before the design or vice versa, but when content is created first, the design may change afterwards and the content supplier may have to go through additional correction rounds to remain in synch with the copyfit requirements of the publication’s page layout.
To make Dynamic Publishing an efficient process, the functionality traditional editorial systems deliver to in-house users must extend to external users. Workgroup-based and remote publishing of documents such as technical manuals, annual reports, brochures and journals are becoming increasingly important, creating a need for solutions that streamline the collaboration of external design and content suppliers.
XML Architecture
Atomik Dynamic Publisher is a workflow system based on XML and on the Alfresco document management system. Alfresco was started by Documentum founder John Newton in 2005, and is one of the most robust document management systems today. Atomik Dynamic Publisher can work with QuarkXPress Server and InDesign Server. It uses the server for rendering its documents in real-time. Writers only need a suitable web browser, and don’t need explicitly InCopy or QuarkCopyDesk.
The workflow concept embraced by Atomik Dynamic Publisher is based on the concept of a coherent or conceptual whole (chapter, section, story…). In order for Atomik Dynamic Publisher to function, a layout must be built in QuarkXPress or InDesign first.
The layout elements can then be named so they can be identified as editable text boxes automatically by the system or they can manually be made editable/uneditable either on a box by box basis, by user group, or as a document or system default.
Once an editor has checked-out the document, it is completely locked for all other users (e.g. designers can’t change shapes), because the designed document and its content are kept together in one QuarkXPress / InDesign file containing editable text and image boxes throughout its publishing cycle.
In consumer-type publishing workflow the layout document is broken up in small chunks (e.g. articles) which can be continuously and simultaneously edited and further designed during the publishing cycle. This is far more complex to manage and requires all involved parties to continuously know the state of a document’s layout and content (hence the need for palettes, dedicated copy editing software, etc.).
However, if a layout design department would create a number of empty templates that represent the chunks in traditional workflow in advance, even in those environments, Atomik Dynamic Publisher might create added value. When publishers rely heavily on freelance contributors Atomik Dynamic Publisher may even be a better solution than the traditional editorial workflow systems because it supports remote content suppliers better than traditional editorial systems do.
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