Nexpo report: magazines gamble on prepress - newspaper printing trade show

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1994 by Paul McDougall

Though still geared mostly to its members, Nexpo, the newspaper industry's annual hardware meet that convened this year in sweltering Las Vegas, is beginning to attract a broader crowd of technology users, including respectable contingents from the magazine industry.

Scitex spokesman Craig Kevghas explains the change: "In the digital age, there is not a great deal of difference in the process, regardless of whether you are creating output for a newspaper, a magazine or other media."

Indeed, Scitex itself demoed enhancements to its P.INK publishing system that could make life easier for publishers looking for painless entree to the information highway. The P.INK Media System is an SQL-compliant client/server system that lets users easily store entire page files, which can later be recalled and formatted for alternative media such as CD-ROM. "It acknowledges that publishers are no longer limited to paper," says Kevghas.

On the front-end, venerable Atex showed off its Press2Go package of editorial, pagination and copy-tracking software. Hoping to beat Quark at its own game, Atex says Press2Go can integrate to QuarkXPress as easily and as seamlessly as Quark's QPS, heralding a new era of open systems for the one-time proprietary vendor.

The show also stirred a lot of backroom wheeling and dealing-activities well suited for its Las Vegas venue. For starters, United Kingdom-based International Publishing Associates was said to be on the verge of a European marketing deal with Informational International, Inc. (generally referred to as Triple-I), the Culver City, California, front-end developer headed by Atex co-founder Charles Ying.

Triple-I offers a number of key products - including color RIP technology from its Diadem division and a RIP server for FITS Imaging's Live Picture application - but, with its customer base still pinching pennies, the company has strug gled to turn a profit. Under Ying's leadership, however, Triple-I has developed or acquired a number of systems in databasing, image networking and other technologies that could help magazines' efforts to move prepress tasks in-house. Marketing support from IPA should make the company even stronger.

Also on the minds of many show-goers was the fate of DuPont Printing & Publishing. Many industry insiders believe the company wants to exit the prepress business, which has not proven to be the growth industry that execs at the chemical giant had expected when they jumped into it with the acquisition of Camex and Crosfield in 1989.

Indeed, in a statement issued one day after Nexpo, DuPont said it will sell off its Imagitex subsidiary by this fall. The Nashua, New Hampshire-based division markets a line of black-and-white scanners and the Whirlwind editorial and pagination system. One rumored buyer is Sacramento-based System Integrators, although DuPont sold its Camex unit to Triple-I early last year.

And noticeably absent from DuPont's scaled-down Nexpo booth were scanners and other equipment from its Crosfield unit. One source says that Japanese flim-giant Fuji - which owns a 50 percent stake in Crosfield-has been negotiating to buy the unit outright. DuPont officials released a statement affirming the company's commitment to die printing industry, but did not categorically rule out a sale of Crosfield.

Further stirring talk of the company's exit from publishing is the army of ex-DuPont executives who are now manning posts at former rivals. Most notable among them is David Lightfoot, who until M was vice president/sales and marketing at DuPont Newspaper Systems, but has since joined Xerox. Meanwhile, marketing executive Brack Tucker recently signed on with Atex.

Xerox has also hired Ranjit Mulgaonkar from Seattle-based Aldus Corp. He was the company's point man on the professional prepress market, and may have been one of the first casualties of its merger with Adobe Systems Inc.

The show was not all backroom deals and speculation, however; a few vendors unveiled legitimate breakthroughs. Chief among them were two manufacturers who drew back the curtain on imagesetters enabled to work with so-called "dry media" - environmentally friendly film that eliminates expensive and toxic chemicals. For instance, ECRM, of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, announced its DM (Dual Media) Imaging Systems, a family of high-resolution imagesetters that process both traditional silver-halide film. and special red-sensitive dry-image film developed by 3M. The systems will sell "for not much more" than ECRM's standard boxes, and will be available as the PelBox 3850DM, 1045DM, or 1245DM. ECRM is further developing products to work with Xerox's Verde silver-free film.

Additionally, Linotype-Hell's Ultre division launched its Vision 300 and 400 model laser-diode imagesetters, which can also image the 3M dry media. The imagesetters are also capable of handling low-cost helium-neon imaged wet media, sold by Eastman Kodak, 3M and several others. Experts say the dry media technology will help magazines that produce film in-house avoid the scrutiny of enviromental regulators, who in many states have classified the chemicals used in traditional imagesetters as hazardous.