Seybold: open systems! - 13th annual Seybold show; Super Electronic Highway

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1993 by Lorraine Calvacca

The Super Electronic Highway will soon be the road most traveled, and magazine publishers should get involved in its direction and content "or they might not like the results," warned speakers at the 13th annual Seybold show, held in boston in mid-April. Keynote speaker David Nagel, senior vice president of Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group, advocated the notion of an "intelligence information platform" to allow consumers access to a wide range of information services such as financial and legal databases.

In keeping with the open communication theme, Adobe, a Mountain View, California-based software vendor (and author of PostScript), announced the arrival of Acrobat software, designed to allow existing operating systems, including Macintosh, Windows, DOS and Unix, to share desktop publishing files. Adobe's "family" of software products enables users to view, navigate and print documents through its Portable Document Format. (The cost was not announced at press time, but the product is scheduled to ship early this month.)

Desktop consultant Bruce Campbell, president of Caledon Group in New York, is skeptical about the product's impact: "Acrobat is not a breakthrough, in the sense that people can already sufficiently transmit files across the major platforms. A breakthrough is when new software sells computers, and Acrobat won't sell computers."

Also working toward creating a seamless workflow from desktop to printing press is Bedford, Massachusetts-based Scitex America Corp., which introduced a group of application-independent, PostScript-based tools aimed at designers. In January, Scitex reorganized its marketing force into industry-oriented groups, including one for magazines. Traditionally strong in pre-press, the company is now cultivating magazine decision-makers and art directors. Indeed, just two weeks after Seybold, Scitex acquired a 13 percent share in RasterOps, a maker of high-end monitors.