Markzware launched, at PRINT 09 in September, a new content search engine technology called PageZephyr. This beta Macintosh application will index desktop publishing file formats such as Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and soon other document types, like PDF, Microsoft Publisher and even “the rage” of it’s day, PageMaker. Here we see some of the excitement generated from the show-floor and one simple exclusive press release, which Mary Gay (Public Relations) pushed up court… and re-tweets via Twitter! Watch Patrick Marchese, co-founder and CEO of Markzware, demonstrate PageZephyr…

It is amazing how fast information can travel in this day and age; which is one of the said purposes of PageZepyr; to bridge the printed world with the Internet or online world.

TRANSCRIPT:

All right, so “Content Search Engine“, so Mary Gay, tell us…. Hey everybody, were here at Print 09 in Chicago. It has been a pretty interesting show here, because we have announced a new product that, which is completely different from our “normal joe” that we’ve been showing here at the shows with preflighting. Were going into a whole new direction, which is ‘exciting’! Because were looking into the future with, well, here it is- Content Search Engine.  Read more... (925 words, estimated 3:42 mins reading time)

This was a very nice image that our Swiss distributor, Kursiv, designed for their FlightCheck Professional v6.5 Swiss German mailing. Check it out; and for those from Switzerland, you may want to see the text below, for there are some great offers on stand-alone preflighting for multiple desktop publishing file formats via FlightCheck:

Preflighting für (fast) alles

Sicherheit in der Produktion – das erreichen Sie durch standardisierte Arbeitsabläufe. Eingehende oder ausgehende Dokumente können auf Fehler untersucht werden. FlightCheck Pro prüft alle wichtigen Dokumentformate aus der Druckvorstufe – sogar ohne dass Sie über die Originalprogramme verfügen müssen.

FlightCheck Pro 6.5
FlightCheck Professional 6.5 ist die neueste Version von Markzware’s Preflighting Tool, welches sowohl offene Dokumentformate (XPress 3–8, InDesign bis CS4, Word, Illustrator, usw.) als auch Ausgabeformate wie EPS, PDF und PDF-X prüft.

FlightCheck Professional läuft als eigenständiges Programm, und Dokumente werden durch einfaches Drag-and-Drop auf das Programm-Icon geprüft. Dafür müssen die Originalprogramme nicht installiert sein. Flightcheck Pro generiert sofort einen vollständigen Report gemäss Ihren Einstellungen. Perfekt für Ihre AVOR.
FlightCheck Pro unterstützt auch eine Batchverarbeitung mehrerer Dateien, und lässt sich durch Presets einfach für verschiedene Aufgaben konfigurieren.  Read more... (270 words, 1 image, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group talks to us at PRINT 09 in this video on how he uses FlightCheck Professional AND Adobe Acrobat to preflight his incoming files for their print workflow. He uses both; but prefers FlightCheck (for everything first) due to it’s ease-of-use and support of more than 50 file formats such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, PDF and others. Much more effective to preflight before outputting to PDF:

In the last segment, you see Doug Rosen, Markzware project manager, going into some advanced details with Jon on font search paths for helping optimize your font preflighting in FlightCheck. FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is now shipping with CS4 and Quark8 support. See:
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_…

The reason it was so great to hear Jon’s comments, is that some out there in the graphic arts industry, or what is it called now, “print media“, like to think that it is best to funnel this multi-step process called preflight to the very end of the workflow and even some are trying to automate preflight checking. It is however, largely a human process which requires a simple checklist to work best and should be done at every step in the graphics workflow where the layout file switches hands or is due to be output (see preflight defined). As Dr. Demming said on quality assurance,

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility.”

Here is a neat and perhaps handy new resource for viewing and grouping RSS feeds called WebPartner. Standard, you can monitor all things Apple and another group of feeds for creative and graphic designer type stuff, you know Adobe Creative Suite stuff, etc. Here is Markzware’s page on WebPartner; just another way to view our feeds and this blog perhaps:

Don’t forget; a NEW version of FlightCheck is out. Preflight and Package or collect fonts and images from more than 50 file formats!

While reading “WoodWing enters the Web-to-Print Market with the announcement of Brand Station” it hit me that the graphic media world is doing everything it can to try and not preflight their documents. Now of course, I understand the use of such a product like Brand Station, after all, Markzware has dipped its toes in this marketplace in the past with FlightCheck Online and FlightCheck Workflow and certain solutions based on these, could make the document management much easier and more efficient. Here we can read more about this interesting Internet based solution from WoodWing, long know for their InDesign editorial system:

The Web-to-Print process involves a brand owner, designers and brand users. Designers create templates according to the corporate identity. The brand owner approves the templates and provides them via the Web to a controlled group of brand users (e.g. the subsidiaries). These users can access the templates through their Web browser and generate high-quality, print-ready files without needing an in-depth knowledge of print production. Brand users cannot change the design; they can only customize the templates with their own information. A brand owner can request an optional approval step for every document. Finally, Brand Station delivers the print-ready files to the brand user in various file formats, including JPG, PDF or EPS; more formats can be added easily.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/  Read more... (262 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

Codex Sinaiticus is a 1,600 year old form of the Bible or manuscript (Non-canonized; a minority text, not a Textus Receptus based Bible translation.) that is now available online. As their web site says about it’s history:

Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, where it was preserved for many centuries. It is generally dated to the middle of the fourth century.

View it here if you like, which is pretty interesting:
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx

Codex Sinaiticus

You say your not Christian, so what does it matter? Think of the workflow to create this masterpiece. Then think of exactly why Johannes Gutenberg set forth to create the printing press and more importantly movable type; to automate the publishing process. We read on the web page that hosts the Codex this about how such a manuscript was produced. The production workflow; amazing how some elements remain the same:

Production

Codex Sinaiticus was copied by more than one scribe. Constantine Tischendorf identified four in the nineteenth century. Subsequent research decided that there were three, but it is possible that a fourth (different from Tischendorf’s fourth scribe) can be identified. Each of the three undisputed scribes has a distinctive way of writing which can be identified with practice. Each also had a distinctive way of spelling many sounds, particularly vowels which scribes often wrote phonetically. One of them may have been a senior copyist.  Read more... (530 words, 1 image, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Here we see a good resource for those just starting with in-flight preflighting checking within Adobe’s InDesign CS4 (Adobe InDesign tutorial videos):

Saving time with InDesign CS4’s new preflight panel.
Want to also see how FlightCheck Professional can be used to prefight 50+ file formats? Watch the Adobe InDesign CS tutorial video here:

We hope you enjoy checking out these InDesign tutorials, as well as the other videos that Markzware has available.

Markzware recently spoke with Bruce Harris, lead graphic designer at AlphaGraphics in Cary, North Carolina, about some of the workflow challenges he faces in this role—including how best to deal with Microsoft Publisher files submitted by customers.

Markzware: Tell us a bit about your role with AlphaGraphics.

Harris: We design largely for print, with a fast-paced, production-oriented workflow. We design everything from corporate identities, all the way down to self-inking stamps. We also provide prepress services for client-supplied files.

Markzware: Do you advise your customer about how best to prepare their files, about what constitutes a ‘print-ready’ file?

Harris: Yes, we are in the habit of guiding the customer by suggesting file formats, as well as many other tips. We have documentation in place that we can hand out—or email, as needed. There are also times when we advise the client to allow us to create the files from scratch.

Markzware: How prevalent are Microsoft Publisher files these days? If you had to estimate the number of Microsoft Publisher files that come in, what would be the percentage in an average month?  Read more... (537 words, 1 image, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

The need for preflight quality assurance arose at the same time as digital technology became widespread enough to land in the hands of well-meaning customers who tried some drawing software and suddenly felt qualified to be graphic designers. In those early days, a printer would have to inspect each digital document, manually verifying the appropriateness of art file formats, the presence of all versions of all needed fonts defaulted or improperly kearned fonts, the proper color coding, and various other factors. If just one critical element were overlooked, it was back to the drawing board.

Have you ever had to reverse your workflow because of a jaggy piece of art, a missing line of type, a missing line of type, a defaulted font that looked “right” on the monitor, a piece of art that just seemed to have disappeared colors, that went from vibrant to dull? Those are the perils of accepting client work in digital format and attempting to output the job without a preflight procedure. Many of your well-meaning clients, and indeed, even ad agency artists, often do sloppy work from a technical standpoint, ignoring such issues as linescreen, dpi, RGB vs. CMYK and a host of other issues that can prevent you from outputting their piece in the way they believe they’ve provided it.  Read more... (600 words, estimated 2:24 mins reading time)

05-29-08 Show
Carey Holzman – Thursday, 29 May 2008, at 10:58 p.m.

Hour one: Markzware. This software publishing company, caters to the worldwide graphic, printing and publishing industries. FlightCheck Professional is a stand-alone application that can inspect over 45 layout application types and hundreds of image types. The amazing thing is that you do not even need to purchase Acrobat to perform quality control checks on PDF files!

Whenever print shop managers make the decision to adopt a PDF workflow, they need preflight and conversion tools that can easily accept a wide variety of file formats. Increasingly, customers are using business office software applications like Microsoft Word and Publisher. This is bad news for printers since they would rather be dealing with QuarkXPress or InDesign files.

The solution is a combination of Markzware’s wide technical knowledge of file formats and our applications like FlightCheck, Q2ID, ID2Q and MarkzTools. All of these are easy-to-use, cost effective solutions for prepress and print shop managers. While plugins and XTensions like Q2ID, ID2Q and MarkzTools convert and migrate date from application to application, FlightCheck then checks those files, including PDFs to ensure proper printability.  Read more... (209 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)