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From: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: FRONT END / PAGE MAKEUP SYSTEMS FOR NEWSPAPERS: Info Sought
Message-ID: <1592@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 10 Sep 89 12:58:39 GMT
References: <8909100418.AA04327@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu>
Reply-To: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 81
In article <8909100418.AA04327@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu> you write:
>
> NEWSPAPER FRONT END PAGEMAKER SYSTEMS
>- - - - - - - - - -
>
>I am looking for information on/about companies that provide front end
>page makeup systems for major newspapers.
A *very* good source of such info can be found in what is probably
the greatest bargain EVER published - the Upper&lowercase magazine
put out by the ITC (International Typeeface Corporation), 2 Hammar-
skjold Plaza, New York, NY 10017, tel (to the companion ITC Center,
type gallery-cum-library) (212) 371-0699, subscription US$ 20/year
- talk to Eloise Coleman. Apart from being a high-class rag for
every type of graphic design (ie, not limited to typefaces as such,
although it also serves as a vessel for the ITC typefaces promotion)
it has most up-to-date column re: computer typesetting & related
topics that I've seen (in every second issue or so). I'd summarize
it for you here but you're just much better off by reading a stack
of back issues which you'll find at the ITC Center once you get there
(try the IRT).
>Also any info about satellite/facsimile transmission of data to remote
>printing plants etc done by major publications. What is the state of the art?
>What companies make such equipment?
Again, such systems are practically *old*hat*. I remember visiting
a newspaper plant in Sweden during the 70-s that transmitted fully-
composed pages by high-density facsimile to a sister printing plant
some 500 km away. That was still in the era when the newspapers
were set in hot type, ie by hand & Linotype-methods. I don't recall
seeing any computer there at that time... around 1974 or so.
>These days even computers like the Apple Mac can drive industrial photo-
>typsetters like Linotype etc. Does that mean that a newspaper can be brought
>out (published daily) using just an Apple Mac based system?
There are several (*thousands* I'd guess) put out in this manner.
For various (not seldom union-related reasons) they tend to be the
smaller/ small-distribution ones that cannot afford manual page-making
by craftsmen. The results vary from *ugly* to highly professional.
>I have used Pagemaker on the mac but wonder if there is any software package
>for it that allows Full Newspaper Size Page makup.
The limitation is not so much in the PageMaker as in the maximum
size that the Linotype 100/300 (= the common typesetting machines
equipped with the RIP (Raster Imaging Processor) will print; I recall
that it is slightly narrower than the "standard" tabloid size, whatever
the last may be. At one point I had to image a whole-page at 90%
of the actual size & then enlarge it by traditional photo methods.
PageMaker 3.0 (I'm talking of the Mac version; the MS Windows' one
is a kludge) is entirely capable of working with full tabloid spreads;
there are also several (Apple & third party) 2-Page monitors available,
in monochrome, 4 grey-levels, 16- , 256- and full color versions.
You ought to remeber, hovever, that large amounts of data (and what
are full-page spreads if not that) require **HUUGE** amounts of memory
for internal buffers et al; also as fast hardware as possible. An
ordinary MacII with a 2-page Radius monitor is *painfully* slow;
I wouldn't recommend anything less than a cx (or a MacII with
a 33MHz accelerator card), the maximum amount of memory - 8 or 16MB
for any serious work (where time counts & human-resources are scarce).
>I have also seen a "color scanner of 35mm slides" from Nikon that feeds the
>data thru an RS 232 to computers (like the MAC IIcx?). Does that mean that
>people can now bring out color magazines using such "desktop" stuff?
Now you're talking about something entirely different - a full-color
prepress facility. There are systems at around US$ 350,000 or so
for that - the desktiop "stuff" may be used for _production_ of
b&w (line) originals (= composition) but not for any halftone
(of typographically acceptable quality) nor any color work. These
are usually marked with squares for later - manual - inclusion
during the reprographic (negative) preparation process.
--
You just survived another load of gross exaggerations from
Ian Feldman, the ASCII hacker
ianf@nada.kth.se / ianf@sekth.bitnet
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