Feel the need for 'Speed: Digital Technology International's new PageSpeed -- like the rest of its product line -- utilizes modules from the Adobe InDesign page layout application while leveraging a relational database.

Relational database, XML and InDesign get DTI up to 'Speed

NEW ORLEANS -- Newspaper supplier Digital Technology International has always had a cohesive vision, and that vision was as clear as ever at NEXPO 2001.

Does DTI have a 21st century product to produce a newspaper, and archive, manage and repurpose all those data seamlessly? The answer from the home office in Springville, Utah, is an easy "yes."

In the Big Easy, attendance may have been down overall, but interest in DTI's suite of Speed5 products was way up.

This should be no surprise.

For more than a decade, Don Oldham, DTI's founder, president and chief visionary, has understood the need to provide an integrated database for holding a newspaper's assets. In fact, he was pushing the relational database concept as a piece of his systems pie when most other providers were just talking simple flat files.

Well, Oldham and DTI have proved to be more than right. As one of the DTI demoers said, "If you don't have a database, you can't come to NEXPO."

DTI does have a database, which stores objects, in Oracle, with eXtensible Markup Language (XML) tags for consistent, easy reuse in print or on the Web. This multiuser, multipurpose database can run on any flavor of server, not just Windows NT or 2000.

For those not completely conversant with the latest trends, all of the above is a very good thing indeed.

Two years ago, DTI formally announced it was scrapping its open standards-based proprietary system and hitching its corporate star to InDesign and InCopy from Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose. Two years before that announcement, DTI had learned Adobe was developing InDesign, a new page layout product. DTI jumped at the chance to get in on the ground floor, and so gained a big advantage over every other system provider that is now providing InDesign integration.

InDesign, perhaps gratuitously referred to as the "Quark XPress killer," is an object-oriented layout program written to take full advantage of today's modern operating systems and multipurposing needs.

DTI has wisely improved on that foundation even further by adding "full support for XML into this foundation, something Adobe did not do," Oldham said. "The XML tags are internal to the data, and add considerable value to the content. ... The foundation of the DTI solution was designed from the beginning to support a convergent newsgathering and dissemination model that goes well beyond just page layout in InDesign."

This integration of Adobe's technology (InDesign and InCopy) and DTI's SpeedWriter and PageSpeed makes for a robust and scalable product, with data already marked in the database for easy repurposing. With such a potent offering, DTI is moving into a somewhat larger pond -- the 398,100-circulation Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the largest metro using this system.

It would not be brash to say that more will follow.

Taking full advantage of the newest hardware and using the DTI addition of built-in XML tagging of everything that goes into the database, DTI has created the beginnings of a true bureau-in-a-shirt-pocket (see The Cole Papers, May 1999). With a wireless cell phone connection, a Palm OS device and a folding keyboard, a reporter could file a story from anywhere wireless connectivity was available.

In a real pinch, one could struggle through with the built-in handwriting recognition. And thanks to XML, these stories would come in tagged for easy use in the newspaper or on the Web.

All this is so easy that Oldham himself updated a story that appeared immediately on the Web from his own hand-held computer. It wasn't magic, it was merely built-in XML tagging.

Five years ago, before embracing Adobe's new technology, DTI was approaching a high level of integration, but it had separate databases for graphics, classified and editorial. Then came Adobe's new products, with much improved hyphenation-and-justification algorithms for composition, along with XML tagging, that resulted in an integrated archiving system (the Data Center).

Every user, whether in advertising or editorial, now could find database elements in the same way, and would know immediately what was a headline, what was a caption and what was text. And it doesn't matter where the databases are located. The Data Center, the nexus for finding data elements, is common to every program.

DTI always had this integrated vision, but the technology was not quite there to implement it. Now, in the first years of the 21st century, the vision and the technology are more closely aligned -- or, shall we say, more up to 'Speed.

In the DTI pantheon of products, speed does seem to be of the essence. Whether it's NewsSpeed, AdSpeed, PageSpeed, ClassSpeed or PlanSpeed, all the parts make use of the same integrated data, all of it XML-tagged, with graphics in some 20 different formats.

When you factor in the Adobe-based, tight drag-and-drop integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, the easy creation and use of Portable Document Format (PDF) files, the Adobe hyphenation and justification of text (which is instantly available to the designer, whether the story comes from the wires or a writer), coupled with the integrated multi-user nature of the database for all these data ... it's pretty obvious there are more than a few bells and whistles here.

Then there are a couple of little lagniappes as yet unmentioned. The first is the integrated intrasystem messaging function, the Message Center. It's not e-mail, but enables system users to send actual database links to each other. It also equips the system to send users a specific message, such as notifying them when a wire story matching specific user-defined criteria moves into the database.

The other is a value-added item, a new, patent-pending solution for linking print and the Web. Called SpeedURL, the feature enables an editor to give readers Internet sources for additional information about a story. It also allows advertisers to direct readers to a web location where they can buy something.

SpeedURL generates a four-digit alphanumeric code in place of a more conventional URL, such as www.gotothispage.com. SpeedURL's four characters -- PRO1, for example -- are uniquely generated by the SpeedURL database, and can be used in any printed product that wants to include URLs. It's speedier to search on and easier for a reader to remember.

To implement it, the newspaper prints SpeedURL codes in stories or ads. A reader may take a code to the paper's web site, where he or she will find SpeedURL Linker -- a field where a code is entered, then interpreted by the SpeedURL database, with the desired page delivered to the user.

Any downsides? Yes. Performance sometimes seems a bit sluggish, so be sure all newsroom computers have plenty of memory.

Version 5 is just coming into heavy use on larger papers; by DTI's count, 18 titles around the world will be -- or are, as of June 2001 -- implementing complete Version 5 systems.

The conversion of old databases to the XML-centric version might be an additional struggle for MIS departments that just put Y2K behind them. However, to get a newspaper's database in shape for virtually instant and seamless repurposing of all its content would pay dividends far into this century.

If, as Oldham says, "the benefit is the most cost effective, profitable newspaper publishing system ever built," then DTI will win many new customers. What's even more interesting is that this assertion seems to have more than mere marketing hyperbole to back it up.

-- George Powell, gp@colepapers.net

Digital Technology International, (801) 853-5000, e-mail: info@dtint.com.

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 2001, Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.