Adobe demos features of K2 design program

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct 1, 1998 by Dzintars Dzilna

Dzintars Dzina, editor of Digital Publishing, can be reached at dzdzilna@aol.com.

As talk of an apparent bid by Quark to buy Adobe swirled at Seybold San Francisco last month, showgoers had a first look at Adobe's page layout product, code-named K2, which is currently under development. (Quark has since dropped its acquisition plan, citing problems that a hostile bid would bring.) Ben Rotholtz, Adobe group product manager, publishing products, gave a demonstration of the software during a conference keynote. The product, intended to compete in the page-creation arena against QuarkXPress, has been under wraps since rumors started flying about it last December. The anticipated release date has not been announced, but K2 is likely to be released sometime next year. (eMediaweekly reported that sources had said Adobe originally planned to show it at the March 1999 Seybold conference in Boston.)

The demo was short on many details of K2's features and capabilities, but it did offer insights into Adobe's strategy in developing the product. "We've been concentrating on the problems people have today as they're dealing with graphics applications, trying to make sure the software doesn't get in the way of creativity," said Rotholtz. "One of our ideas is just not to let people be held back by the past." With promises of innovations like multiple views, new forms of text manipulation and image editing features from other software, K2 will give art directors more freedom for designing pages.

K2's capabilities

One aspect of K2 that Adobe did demonstrate, and that impressed showgoers, was the software's new way of showing layouts on screen. K2 will have a shearing tool, which will allow a user to look at editable layouts in three-dimensions, adding depth to the page for a more ergonomic view. K2 will also have multiple views of a given layout--views not available in other page layout programs--through a navigator palette similar to the one in Adobe's Photoshop. For example, Rotholtz showed that a user could see how kerning changes made at 400 percent zoom would look at actual size. Another example Rotholtz showed was how, if a user is copy editing text on page one of a layout, the effect of that work on page 20 could be seen simultaneously. K2 will have up to 4,000 percent zoom, and a one-one-millionth internal-point precision.

The user will also be able to apply gradients to text independent of the stroke or fill, leaving the text editable. "Today if you apply a gradient fill to text in Illustrator or QuarkXPress, that text is uneditable. It becomes a graphic, for all intents and purposes," Rotholtz said. "I was demonstrating that it doesn't have to be." Also, the user will not have to set up a formal text frame to bring text in. One source familiar with K2 points out that users will be able to do things like hang quotation marks outside the bounded region of a text column.

But one of the most compelling aspects of K2 is its promise to include functions from other Adobe graphic arts products, namely Photoshop and Illustrator. Rotholtz did not demonstrate these capabilities, but according to another source familiar with K2, the software will include features like image editing and cropping. This means that a designer could make changes to images and see those transformations on page--without having to move between programs to apply changes. Of course, K2 will not include all the high-end graphics tools that Adobe's other products offer. Rotholtz also showed how K2 will not rely on Adobe Type Manager to render type.

Wait and see

It's still unclear how K2 will provide efficient Web output and digital asset management--two capabilities that the program also promises. But the product will be leveraging Adobe's portable document file (PDF) format, which--with its compactness, cross-platform capabilities and searchability--could make both those functions possible. It's also unclear to what extent K2 will allow users to edit text in PDFs--whether it would do only simple touchup or make changes involving large blocks of copy reflow.

During the demo, Rotholtz alluded to Display Postscript, a technology that allows a user to look at Postscripted files on a monitor, but needs high-end computers for the heavy-duty processing involved. "If you've seen the wonders of Display Postscript, think of this world as Display PDF because were certainly leveraging Adobe's PDF technologies," he said.

But PDF does not yet natively provide high-end output capabilities such as multitones, printer marks and page bleed specifications, and Rotholtz was short on specifics of how K2 will provide Display PDF. Still, it appears to promise true digital film in that text and images could be viewed and edited on-screen--without having to re-output to Postscript. "We've broken into a new world where not only can [text manipulation] be done, but it's printable," said Rotholtz. "It's printable because we re relying on PDF in more ways than meets the eye."

Promises, promises

If K-2 gets off the ground, these capabilities could put it over QuarkXPress: