Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

What happens when you combine a trade show devoted largely to print-on-demand and variable data printing (the On Demand show), a conference "focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes" (the AIIM conference) and yet another conference from "the worldwide association of users and suppliers of the products and services that create, modify, and deliver customized information using a variety of document technologies" (the Xplor International conference), and then decide to announce a major new product? Answer: No one notices. On Demand pulled some 25,000 visitors to the show floor, and the two conferences had their share of attendees, but lacking a more auspicious venue, Quark's March 4th announcement of its new "Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution" received scant notice in the press, and has yet to draw much in the way of serious comment or analysis. That's a pity, because the "Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution" (QDPS) is something altogether new from the stalwart Quark, and deserves careful consideration and evaluation.

The problem is perhaps not only the venue. Some blame has to fall on the definition of the product. According to Quark's press release, "Dynamic publishing automates the creation and delivery of information across multiple channels, from print to Web, email and beyond. It allows users to create reusable components of information that can be combined to create various types of documents for any audience. Dynamic publishing automates the page formatting process allowing for the production of print, Web, and electronic content from a single source of information." Where have we heard this before?

A clue to what's different in Quark's announcement can be found in that the word "print" appears twice in that paragraph. Most of the "dynamic publishing" products on the market today tend to eschew that scatology. "Multiple channels" most often reference multiple electronic channels. Print is simply not in the equation.

Quark (and so many other vendors who forged their fortunes on print) has made several missteps in dreaming (hoping or imagining) that the world would work outwards from ink-on-paper to images on screens, and has the scars to show for it. Quark's QDPS offering finally recognizes that print is no longer the sheriff in this town - the Web shot the sheriff. This is a great step forward for Quark, and, at the same time, an indictment of the innumerable other "dynamic publishing" solutions that assume that there is no reason to give print the time of day. None of the evidence of the decline of print publishing points to its actual eradication. The challenge is to find the right balance of media, while accepting that print remains a legitimate and essential expression of content. The Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution is Quark's first offering that is media-agnostic.

This reflects, I think, the relatively recent infusion of several of the senior staff from the old Arbortext (now owned by PTC). Arbortext offered what was called an "enterprise-class" high-end XML-based publishing system. It cost plenty, and was strictly directed at the largest publishing organizations that could consider spending $1 million or so to get "mission-critical" information into print (and onto the Web). Great technology, but very limited because of price and complexity. How do you take the best of the concepts from a high-end system like Arbortext's and bring those into the world of mere mortals? When you mix the culture of a group from Arbortext with a consumer-oriented off-the-shelf software company like Quark interesting things are bound to emerge. They could be calamitous; they could be fascinating. QDPS is fascinating in concept - let's hope its future will not be so dynamic as to become destructive.

As with all complex publishing systems, describing the Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution offers a vocabulary challenge. Several key aspects dominate:

● It is thoroughly based on existing Quark products including QuarkXPress, QPS and the QuarkXPress Server.

● It incorporates third-party technologies as required in an "open" fashion: while the first announcements reference specific third-party tools for XML editing and for asset management, Quark is at pains to point out that these are merely early and worthy parties at the party, but not the full guest list.

● The early announcement paints a clear roadmap, but does not reveal all that will follow
● This is not a do-it-yourself system - third-party integrators are an essential component to a successful implementation.

The best way to get a handle on the full system is to visit the dedicated Quark site.

Visiting the site leads to a broad range of detail and some key points can be challenging to discern. First is that QDPS fully embraces that publishing is a content-centric endeavor, and the particular output medium is secondary to the content. Of great importance in this announcement is that Quark has become the first large-scale software publisher that appears to appreciate that the XML in Office 2007 can and should be fully exploited in publishing workflows.

The technology described by Quark also acknowledges that the future of authoring is the assembly of what the company calls "content components." These content components must be assembled in very different ways depending on the output medium, and few cross-media publishing systems appear to have a clue about how important this has become to content authoring.

The Quark Dynamic Publishing System was officially released on March 4th, and needless to say, pricing will vary greatly with scale, but it will not be cheap ($250,000 range may not be far off). Still it will be less expensive than many of its competitors, and will fit more smoothly into existing publishing workflows than virtually all of its competitors. It's well worth taking the time to fully examine QDPS. Quark may not have provided all of the answers, but they are certainly tackling most of the questions.

Previously unpublished. Written April 06, 2008