Now, some specifics:

Productivity software
ColorPro software has drawn raves in Europe, but the U.S. reception has been lukewarm so far.

Like Jerry Lewis' reputation, ColorPro from New York-based Binuscan Inc. has been taken seriously on the Continent for automatic color correction and conversion of electronic images, but has been ignored as a serious production tool in the United States.

However, that is all about to change as Binuscan begins a fall promotional push in North America with some aggressive software pricing that includes a Quark XTension that makes color separations for magazines and newspapers virtually an automatic process.

The XTension is Binuscan Job Manager, which allows ColorPro to work in the background, converting any JPEG or PhotoCD, RGB or grayscale image to final Cymk DCS files for hi-res output. The art director/page designer places and crops the raw images in Quark XPress, then calls JobManager, which puts ColorPro to work in the background processing the raw images.

The art director goes on to another layout or project and in a few minutes, the images are ready for final output. It's merely a matter of calibrating ColorPro for the proper output device and resolution, and naming some folders to handle job flow.

The Binuscan software and XTension run on a IIfx or better Macintosh, or a '486DX or better PC (using Windows).

And speaking about XTensions, lets talk about XChange: The people who put out the 150-page-plus catalog of Macintosh XTensions for XPress were touting 13 new XTensions by various companies. As the big software players get bigger, smaller software companies are positioning themselves in more symbiotic relationships, and there's a lot of activity among XTension writers.

Even former big boys in publications production, like Atex, have become XTension providers in the last two years.

At Seybold San Francisco, the most noteworthy XTensions came in two flavors: the traditional single-purpose XTension, and the multipurpose XTensions that add several features to XPress.

Kitchen Sink, the first multipurpose XTension, has been joined by competitors QX-Tools, Xdream and XPert Tools, the successor to Kitchen Sink.

One feature all have in common is page navigation aid. By clicking anywhere on a thumbnail version of a page, the actual size or larger screen display jumps to that part of the page. That feature alone makes all of these XTensions worthwhile tools for enhancing productivity.

Several single-purpose XTensions were especially noteworthy, too. For years, XPress users have wanted to be able to do multiple search-and-replace routines on text, apply character-based styles to any range of text, and import Photoshop files directly into Quark.

At Seybold, StylesPlus and Stylist 2.0 became the latest character-based style XTensions to be introduced, but multipurpose XTensions QX-Tools and XPert Tools also allow for character-based styles.

Alias Pro is the XTension that will make users forget the ease with which dedicated proprietary systems could zip through a multifaceted search. Alias Pro can search and replace just about anything, with an option to completely replace the XPress Find/Change dialogue. It also can apply search criteria directly to any text file as it's being imported into XPress.

One more XTension, Xarchive, makes it easy to put SGML tags on XPress pages for archiving purposes.

Finally, an XTension called, naturally, Photoshop Import allows importation of Photoshop 3.0 files, complete with all layers and clipping paths. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with any version 2.x Photoshop files.

Check with XChange if Windows versions of these XTensions are in the works. Despite the gains by Quark in the Windows side of the market, the number of XTensions for the Mac still greatly outnumbers Windows XPress.

Another caveat: Many XTensions have yet to go native for the PowerPC, so various combinations with a Power Macintosh and a native version of XPress might cause some performance degradation.

Page layout software
Performance degradation for many Macs is a primary reason why Apple's new QuickDraw GX has not been widely accepted, although it was introduced more than a year ago.

While text and graphics can put on a real dog-and-pony show with QuickDraw GX installed, the system bloat it added meant that many Mac users were waiting for more memory and bigger hard disks before giving it a try.

So here comes a new competitor for XPress that requires you load QuickDraw GX in order to use the program. It's UniQorn from SoftPress, a British company that's been working to get the program ready for over a year.

The company had a small, easy-to-miss booth at Seybold, but this program should not escape attention. No, it's not going to "blow this town wide open," but using GX technology gives it features that both Quark and Adobe Pagemaker can only dream about.

UniQorn takes the frame-based page design paradigm of XPress one step further, with flexible frames that can contain either text or graphics. If you wish, when the overall page geometry changes, all text and graphics boxes automatically change their position, too, but remain in the same relationship to each other.

And with GX printing technology, colored type and complex font manipulation are rendered easy.

It's not ready to face off directly with the folks from Denver, but this English challenger should catch the eye of designers, ad agencies and magazine publishers as at least an adjunct to XPress or Pagemaker.

Have we said enough about Quark? In a word, no. For one thing, a strategic alliance was announced at Seybold, linking Quark and Digital Equipment Corp.

Then there are these new XTensions (we're not finished discussing that, either) from Quark that comprise Quark Immedia, which turns Quark XPress into a multimedia design application. Look for this product in early 1996, and be sure you have the latest Quark version, 3.32, which may have to hold users until the big 4.0 comes out (which won't be anytime soon).

The Immedia demo was good ... if you know XPress, you, too, can do the multimedia thing in a twinkling. Sound, motion, animation -- right in XPress. Quark is so big, Immedia is bound to make a splash here.

Is Quark trying to do too much? Maybe. Does it need some help, particularly with Quark Publishing System (QPS)? Certainly, and therein lies the tale of an alliance -- Quark and DEC, to provide "products and services for the publishing industry," to quote the Quark PR release.

For starters, Merrimack, N.H.-based Digital will help Quark market QPS, and become a QPS integrator in North America. Digital will get to provide sales, support and installation to newspapers and magazines.

And here's just the boost that QPS needs (again, from the press release): "Many (of these newspapers and magazines) already use Digital equipment."

So you got Digital, now you should get QPS? Not exactly.

First, the Digital workstations ("born to run Windows NT," the colorful brochure states) have to get QPS to run in a Windows environment, as it's now limited to Macs only. Publishers have seen the Windows version of Quark XPress, but no Windows QPS has shipped.

As Quark moved into the multimedia authoring and image manipulation (Quark XPosure) areas, the organizational attention span was stretched a bit thin. So here comes Digital, and here comes a glimpse of QPS for Windows, running as a demonstration on a Digital Alpha server. (More about the Alpha server shortly).

The Quark folks have begun shipping a gamma version of Quark Connect for Windows. Quark Connect is a QPS helper application permitting third-party apps to communicate with, and have files tracked by, the QPS server.

Digital could be the company that helps Quark raise that hard-to-open window on Windows for QPS. Digital has raised one benchmark already, becoming the first company to deliver a microprocessor, the Alpha Axp 21164, tackling more than 1 billion instructions per second. It's a 64-bit screamer that runs at a snappy 266 or 300 MHz.

This powerful CPU, which contains 9.3 million transistors, takes RISC chip architecture to a new level. It's also the basis for Digital's Alpha servers and workstations, priced to compete and running Windows NT.

(Historic footnote: Five years ago, the Macintosh IIsi clocked in at 20 MHz, more than twice as fast as the original 128K Mac hawked by Hammer Girl during the 1984 Super Bowl.)

Other causes for pauses

Proteus is software for cost-optimized magazine makeup. It handles ad makeup and positioning automatically once it knows the rules, and all the ad information for an issue is in the database. Does it have to be Proteus' proprietary database? Nth Degree Software of Zephyr Cove, Nev., says no, any ad database will work.

A unique feature of this intriguing application for magazine production was the money odometer in the lower lefthand corner of the screen. Based on number of ads and number of issues printed, and factoring in the cost of paper to print on, Proteus can give an immediate estimate of the cost of the magazine.

Individual mileage may vary, so try a lot of what-ifs. However, with this software, going up eight pages may be easier to prove as cost-effective than ever before.

It won't be replacing Photoshop any time soon, but it gives a glimpse of what the next generation of hardware and software can accomplish together.

-- George Powell

Binuscan Inc.,
(800) 881-2352;
Digital Equipment Corp.,
(908) 562-4158;
Em Software Inc.,
(614) 284-1010;
Markzware Inc.,
(800) 300-3532;
Nth Degree Software,
(702) 588-4900;
Quark Inc.,
(303) 894-8888;
SoftPress Systems Ltd.,
(011) {44} 1993 882588;
Spaceward Graphics Ltd.,
(011) {44} 1353 741222;
XChange,
(800) 788-7557.

Also see A SiteMill for sore eyes

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.