Will publishers swallow the PIL? New page layout spec could cure PostScript publishing headaches

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1991 by Len Egol

New page layout spec could cure PostScript publishing headaches

There's a new cure for electronic pagination headaches. The digital analgesic, called Page interchange Language (PIL), is billed as a specification that will allow different editorial and page composition systems to talk to each other. The initial version was first demonstrated at the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) conference this month.

Developed over the past year by a committee of a dozen or so computer publishing vendors, the PIL page geometry spec is expected eventually to take its place alongside the already well-established Open Prepress Interface (OPI). OPI is a mechanism for digitally designing a page layout with low-res versions of high-resolution graphics, and getting high-end color electronic pre-press systems to output the high-resolution results.

But while OPI has become fairly well entrenched with leading publishing system vendors, PIL is still evolving. "It isn't going to be an either/or alternative to OPI," says Paul Trevithick of Archetype inc. Both are worthwhile standards, he believes. Once PIL is established, he adds, professional publishers can expect cost and time savings, as well as an end to PostScript performance hang-ups.

By definition, PIL is a way to describe the layout of various components that make up an electronic page. The page description data are stored as an ASCII file. What makes PIL potentially valuable is that it handles different elements-headlines, stories, captions, graphics and ads-done in PostScript, TIFF, PICT, SGML and various vendor and typesetter-specific formats.

"And it works without the different vendors having to write individual interfaces for their programs," says committee participant Tom Arnold, of Quark.

Using PIL as the interchange, for example, editorial written on an Atex system and page layout done on QuarkXpress can be readily mixed and matched. The user can manipulate the overall page layout, exchange different files, edit contents and print the page described by the file.

"PIL isn't intended to describe all aspects of a page and it doesn't provide a way to specify directly the formatting and style of text or pictures" Arnold explains, "but it does provide the ability to transform objects in certain ways, including rotating, scaling and cropping."

Some skeptics, among them the editors of the Seybold Report, question how real PIL is and whether publishers will accept PIL products in the future. "We're waiting for publishers to demonstrate sufficient interest in PIL to prod us into doing a report on it," a Seybold editor told FOLIO:. Arnold responds, "We're working on the assumption that PIL is needed, and we believe we have something of value."

Meanwhile, several committee members, including Quark, Agfa, Atex and Micrografx, "have PIL products in the can," Arnold says. He expects Quark's PIL Xtension to be shipped later this year, but couldn't say when.