All publishing systems are created equal, right?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct, 1989 by Jim Strothman

New York City-Say a magazine artist creates a fourcolor layout on a computer monitor, transmits that exact same page file to three different image setters, and Cromalins of each are made. They'll all look alike, right?

Wrong. Or, say an art director wants to trade in the old monitor and move up to a big, snazzy screen that can show lots of colors in glorious detail. MI big monitors will bring up complex image files just as fast-or slow-right?

Wrong. These kind of problem&-which can affect both productivity and quality-are emerging as technology advances. At the same time, the graphics arts industry is finding that the only way to get honest equipment measurements is by joint cooperation among users and vendors.

The case of the exact same PostScript color page file coming out differently on three similar image setters, but from different manufacturers-Linotype, Varityper and AGFA Compugraphic-resulted from a test run by The New York Postscript Users Group (NYPUG).

Meanwhile, a major heavyweight combo-led by the National Computer Graphics Association (NCGA) teamed with another major industry organization, SIGGRAPH, and 11 hardware vendors-has invested $1 million so far on the problem of measuring graphics display speeds on different computer hardware setups. "NYPUG is trying to set up a bench mark for color," says Denis Shedd, an executive of the group and president of Quad Right, New York Citybased graphic design service center used by several magazines.

Shedd hopes such a benchmark will "catch on in a small way," gaining public acceptance, when NYPUG distributes test results to users by year's end.

The test run of the three image setters was "very interesting," Shedd adds. "Same files. All Adobelicensed PostScript printers. And they are all different."

A separate, more ambitious project-finding a standard way of measuring how fast an image comes up on a computer screenmay be ready for public distribution by next March, when NCGA '90 is held in Anaheim, California.

The problem is, the bigger and fancier the monitor, the longer it takes for an image to appear. It's not unusual for very complex files with heavy graphics and numerous different font families to take many minutes, occasionally hours, to appear on a computer screen, Make a minor change, hit the "Enter" button, and it takes many minutes again.

Called the Graphics Performance Characterization (GPC) project, the goal is to develop a "benchmark" standard that users employ to "test drive" terminals, measuring how fast their own type of file can appear.

NCGA president Joe Orr is encouraging users to get involved by testing benchmark trial systems NCGA is now making available. Feedback is needed by yearend, officials say, so performance test tapes can be made more widely available to the public in March.