WEEK 03

CUSTOMISED PUBLISHING

Overview: All organisations are becoming publishers of content and the sorts of publishing are increasingly being customized to satisfy very specific contextual requirements. The development of enterprise-wide publishing solutions that integrate key features of content and document management practices is a challenge that will unlock changes on a scale similar to the invention of the printing press in the mid 1400s.

What is an enterprise-wide publishing system?

An enterprise-wide publishing system is the term given to the infrastructure that supports the myriad of steps and pathways involved in the creation, reviewing, editing and outputting of customized content.

One example of one particular type of enterprise publishing workflow is outlined in Figure 1. This is the simple example of the workflow associated with publishing an enterprise policy and procedures manual.

Figure 1 An example of one type of workflow managed by an enterprise-wide publishing system.

The various functions of an enterprise-wide publishing system

Examples of the types of functionalities that an enterprise publishing system may encompass include:

Flexible web design and publishing outputs, including deployment of content through mobile devices and e-newsletters.
Offset print management and digital print on demand outputs via an on-line bookstore, with e-commerce and logistics fulfillment facilities.
E-books and e-publications via an on-line bookstore.
Server based document management systems and enterprise metadata management.
Colour management systems to manage colour across multiple format outputs.
A user focus that allows customers and knowledge workers to maintain as much user control over all elements of the publishing system.
A knowledge management system that allows for peer reviewing, version control and editing processes to be carried out on an on-line basis, but within the strict provisions of authorized access to various publishing functions (such as editing).

Such systems should also incorporate a means of dealing with on-line e-forms management including:

including the use of scanning analogue forms directly to databases; and backend data reporting facilities.
Data aggregation to support the publishing of “transaction records” associated with the work of an organization. Such records are fundamental to the future of records management and digital archiving.

Handling print and the web: the challenge for enterprise-wide publishing systems

There is a hidden challenge associated within enterprise-wide publishing systems which is not often explicitly acknowledged or understood. The traditional print industry has its origin in mass-manufacturing, mass marketing and the logic of minimizing unit costs of production. In contrast, the origins of the web lie in the world of binary-computation techniques, computer networking and the development of data-management and structural mark up languages, like HTML and XML. Posting to the web was conceived as a possibility derived from the networking of resources between computers. This stream of industrial practice is facilitating a different type of logic of mass customization, personalisation and variable print. Print did not arise from a world of computer networking. But, nonetheless, the printing industry is incrementally being transformed by computer networking and the use of servers to share print resources. This transformation is at the heart of new content distribution channels such as RSS news feeds.

Points of convergence between print-based output and web-publishing

Because of these differences in historical origins and inherent logics, it is essential to recognize that web-publishing and print-output workflows are usually treated in very different ways in organisations. The source of these divergent workflows back to the difference in paradigms between pages printed on paper and functionally structured documents. The former is a physically inert object the latter is something that can interact semantically and dynamically with the specific interests and needs of the user.

At the present time, the three main points where there are “crossovers” between print-based workflow and workflow associated with posting to the web are as follows.

Conversion of content into HTML
The first cross over occurs with the conversion of content from its native file format to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a mark up language of a kind that which enables interoperability, but only on a computer-to-computer basis: it enables content to be rendered to a variety of browser-based output devices like laptops and computers. Printers on the whole do not know about the technicalities of markup. Further to this, in most enterprises today, the conversion to HTML is not a user-driven process. This means that most creators of content are reliant on IT departments to post materials to the web as there is a requirement to mark up text to the HTML standard.

Conversion of content into PDF
The second cross over occurs when a PDF file is generated from a raw native file and loaded onto the web. Printers are involved with this cross over, because PDF, whilst being a print industry standard, does not require knowledge of any mark up language. PDF has been widely adopted by the print industry, precisely because it is a presentation format that enables computer-to-machine interoperability. The problem for printers with PDF workflow is that this perpetuates the paradigm of the inert printed page. PDF is not conducive to semantic interoperability between systems and end users.

Printing of web pages
When converting web materials accessed via a screen to print, a third cross over occurs. But here the cross over is from web publishing to print-output and this occurs via the ripping function that happens at the level of print equipment. If content presented to the printer is in HTML format, this does not necessarily deliver high quality outputs. This is because HTML is a mark up language for the web and not for print. As such, there might be significant problems with quality of the images, page layout and font resolution when printing HTML content. This is indicative of the structural separation of workflow between print and web-publishing.

KEY IMPLICATIONS

The shift towards enterprise-wide publishing solutions is a trend that is very much in its infancy. But the trend is of fundamental importance to the future of the media and publishing industries.
It will take quite sometime to determine which functions associated with the enterprise-wide publishing system are in-sourced and which should be outsourced.
This is a period of transition where no one party from the media and publishing industry or the IT / computer / software vendor sector have an end to end solution to service the emerging needs of customers. However, there is no doubt that the content management sector is more closely placed to the decision makers in customer organisations.
All enterprises will be searching for and grappling with their own particular solutions to these challenging tasks.
The media and publishing industries should develop some overarching marketing position in relation to these important matters. Failure to do so will mean that the current and more dominant approaches to content management are likely to prevail.