PrintUI.com

Blog Posts

Controlling Image Resolution in PrintUI

24-Apr-2013 by Harbs

PrintUI offers a few different ways of controlling resolution of linked images. The options differ slightly and it is not always obvious how they interact. Here I will try to explain it in detail.

A bit of history:

Among the first features we introduced to PrintUI was the ability to preflight images. Preflighting is done by InDesign Server at upload time. The server checks that an image meets a designer-defined minimum resolution requirement at a predefined target size. These values are defined in the PrintUI Management plugin on a template-by-template basis. Once the image passes the preflight, it is added to the page with no constraints on how it could be resized on the page.

This was not enough control for many clients, and later we added the ability to control images from resizing to lower than a predefined resolution after upload. The images are constrained in the web app to not be resizeable to a size too large for the resolution constraints.

Controlling the options:

The preflight controls and the resize controls are really two separate features and you can use one without the other, but the controls do overlap. To set the preflight options, you must use the Management plugin and it is set on a template by template basis. For the preflighting of uploaded images to be done, you must set both a ppi value, and a width and height. If any of those values are 0, InDesign Server will not preflight images and all images can be added to the page. In other words, if you specify a ppi of 300, but no width and height, no preflighting will be done.

The resize control is different on two counts. First of all, it can be controlled at run-time using two Flashvars: limitImageResize and imagePpiLimit. limitImageResize is a switch which turns the resize limit on or off (it takes true or false values). If limitImageResize is set to false, the images will be allowed to resize freely no matter what other settings are applied either in the template or Flashvars.

If limitImageResize is set to true (the default), then images will have their size constrained to the set ppi value. Currently, that value can be set in two ways. If there’s no value set (or it’s set to 0), images can be resized freely. The first way to set the limit is at runtime using the imagePpiLimit Flashvar. However, there’s second way to specify the ppi — using the Preflight Options in the Management plugin, which brings us to the second difference alluded to above.

If there is a ppi value set in the preflight options and there is no value set for the imagePpiLimit (i.e. imagePpiLimit takes precedence over the preflight value), then that value will be used to constrain the image resizing. It’s important to note, that the width and height values have no meaning in regard to constraining the image resize. That is only for the preflight controls.

The take-away from all of this is as follows:

  1. If you want to only preflight for image resolution, but not constrain the resizing, do the following: Set the Preflight Options including width and height values, and use the limitImageResize Flashvar, setting it to false.

  2. If you want to both preflight and constrain image resizing to the preflight value, set the preflight values including the width and height, and leave the limitImageResize Flashvar alone.

  3. If you want to only constrain the resizing without preflight and set this on a template-by-template basis, set a ppi value in the Preflight Options, but leave the width and height values at 0.

  4. If you want to control the resizing at runtime, use the imagePpiLimit Flashvar setting it to your minimum ppi.

I hope this helps clear up some confusion on these features. Happy PrintUIing! :)

Posted in Features  |  Tags: ,   |  No Comments »

Beta of PrintUI Version 2 Available

23-Apr-2013 by Harbs

We just rolled out “Version 2″ of PrintUI.

Normally, PrintUI does not change version numbers as we deploy new improvements, but this release is different for a couple of reasons.

First of all, there are many improvements to the app. Below is a full list. Second of all, the improvements required major rewriting of the web app. Normally, updates are completely transparent. We update the referenced web app and all clients are seamlessly updated automatically. Because of this, it’s of the utmost importance that the app is properly tested, and the chance of introducing bugs is extremely small. We don’t want to break any websites of our existing clients.

With this release, we have been doing QA for about a month, and we believe we’ve fixed all regressive bugs, but because of the amount of code rewriting that was done, it’s impossible to be sure. For this reason, we are doing a slow rollout of the newest release. We believe it to be release quality, but we are still calling it “beta” to ensure that all our clients are aware that we recommend testing your templates before switching to the new release. The new release is “opt in”. That is, you will need to link to the new URL to load the version 2 app. To use the new version, you should load https://webapp.printui.com/printui/d002/PrintUI.swf instead of https://webapp.printui.com/printui/d001/PrintUI.swf.

New Features

The new version has a lot of new features, and we believe that all our clients will benefit from at least some of them.

  1. Improved Load Time: We have improved the way assets are loaded into the web app. In our tests this has shown a drastic improvement in the time from when the app loads until the document is rendered. The level of improvement will depend on the specific content in the document, but we have seen improvements of up to 3 or 4 times in our tests. There is now also a progress bar that appears while assets are loaded to give feedback so the user knows the app is not frozen.

  2. Numbered and Bulleted Lists: PrintUI now has limited support for bulleted and numbered lists. The support is limited to lists with a simple structure and a simple numbering scheme. Custom bullets are supported, but hierarchical lists will probably not render correctly. We recommend testing any documents that contain lists to ensure that your lists display correctly. If your lists do not display correctly, please let us know so we can work on expanding the list support. We advise using paragraph styles to apply list formatting.

  3. Multi-column text frames: Multi-column text frames are now rendered correctly and can be used for editable text in your templates.

  4. Threaded Text Support: PrintUI now has full support for threaded text frames. Text threaded in InDesign will now retain the threading and will be completely editable in the web app. The threaded text support includes experimental support for text threaded across pages. We believe this will work as expected, but the performance on longer documents has not yet been determined. Additionally, the undo support in the web app is linked to the active page. Text is considered to be located on the first page of the story, so this can sometimes lead to unexpected results when undoing changes. We look forward to hearing feedback on this feature.

  5. Control of Image Strokes and Fill: There is now full control over the stroke and fill of images. This includes a new color picker component that allows for easy and intuitive removal of color. We have donated this improved component to Apache Flex so the whole community can benefit from the component.

  6. An Eyedropper for color selection: There is a new Flashvar which enables an eyedropper for selecting a color from anywhere within the web app. This allows complete arbitrary color selection to match the document content such as an image.

  7. An Optional Button to Allow adding Rectangles: A new Flashvar allows users to add new rectangles if desired. By default this is disabled.

  8. Opacity Control: There is now a slider in the Image and Object palettes to allow for changing the opacity of images and objects in the web app.

  9. Mirror Images: There is a new control in the image palette for flipping images either horizontally or vertically.

  10. Support for Guides: There is a new Flashvar which allows specification of guides at any location in the web app canvas. These guides are for visual guidance only and are specified at load time.

  11. Support for “Blank Canvas” Templates: It is now possible to load an empty template at any arbitrary size. To load the blank document, you should create the new job using the special “_blank” template with an “n” parameter of 1×1. When loading the job, any size can be specified by using a Flashvar. The job can be resized on a subsequent load by specifying a new size.

For details on the Flashvar’s mentioned above, see Run-Time options for the PrintUI web application for details.

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

Upload and Manage PDF Presets

22-Mar-2013 by Peter Mierau

When InDesign generates a PDF, it uses a “PDF preset” to specify various options to specify various options. For example, you can specify image resolutions or whether to include crop marks or bleeds.

We have now made it easier for you to upload and manage your own PDF presets for use with PrintUI. First, use InDesign to create a custom PDF preset. The preset file will have a .joboptions file extension. Then, log into https://admin.w2p-tools.com and click on the new Settings option in the navigation bar. You can see which PDF presets are available for you to use, including all of the built-in presets, and you can upload and delete your own PDF presets.

To use a specific PDF preset with PrintUI, pass the preset’s name into the requestpdf API using the preset parameter. (Or if you’re an EasyPrintUI customer with an Advanced Plan, just manage and specify the preset on the administrator’s Advanced Settings page.)

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

View-As and Other Features Added to EasyPrintUI

07-Mar-2013 by Peter Mierau

We have added several new features to EasyPrintUI based on requests from our clients.  If you’re not familiar with EasyPrintUI, please see a description or videos to see how you can be up and running with your own web-to-print or web-to-web solution with zero programming and in only one day.

 

View As

In EasyPrintUI, you can easily set up several users to see different sets of templates.  For example, let’s say that a design agency is using EasyPrintUI for two clients called The ABC Company and The DEF Corporation.  Of course they want ABC users to see only the ABC templates and the DEF users to see only the DEF templates, but they want to test their configuration to make absolutely sure.  All they have to do is to click on the View As button next to an ABC or a DEF user on the EasyPrintUI administrator’s Users page and they’ll see exactly how it will look to that user.  The web page even tells you which user’s view you are seeing, like this…

 

PDF Presets

With the EasyPrintUI Advanced Plan, you can now select which PDF preset to use for generating high-resolution PDF files.  You can select from one of several built-in presets:

  • High Quality Print
  • PDF/X-1a:2001
  • PDF/X-3:2002
  • PDF/X-4:2008
  • Press Quality
  • Smallest File Size
 

Or you can create and upload your own PDF preset using InDesign.  (A PDF preset has a .joboptions file extension in InDesign.)  PDF Presets options are found on the administrator’s Advanced Settings page.

 

Image Gallery Options

Several PrintUI clients have implemented a “gallery connector” that connects images stored on their servers to the PrintUI web application.  Their end users can then select from those images while they are customizing a template.  Each set of images is selected via tabs in the image gallery feature.  Here’s an example of what that looks like if you run one of the demos on printui.com…

The People, Places, and Backgrounds tabs represent three different image sets on our demo server.  If you create your own gallery connector on your own server, you replace those tabs with anything you want.  You can even pass XML into your gallery connector at run-time so that you can restrict which images to show to which users.

Then, all you have to do to make it work with EasyPrintUI is to use the Advanced Settings to specify the URL to your connector as well as the XML to use for the qualifiers.

In addition, you can also control other aspects of the way the gallery appears to your end users including whether or not to allow end users the ability to upload images from their computer, and whether or not to show the built-in social galleries for Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa.

 

Run-Time Options

The Advanced Plan also lets you set myriad options to control how PrintUI’s web application looks to your end users while they are customizing a template, including:

  • Show the “Add Image” button
  • Show the “Add Text” button
  • Show the “Preview” button
  • Show the “Start Over” button
  • Show the “Full Screen” button
  • Zoom to fill screen
  • Show the text palette when editing text
  • Initially show all edit fields
  • Colors to show in color picker
  • Show non print layers
  • Preview non print layers
  • Show styles or fonts in text palette
 

Other Features

Some other new features that you might find useful:

  • When an end user submits their job, they can now specify an ID to use for their own tracking purposes.  They can use it for any purpose, including, for example, a purchase order number or a project code.
  • If a user hasn’t yet signed in at the point where they are about to submit their job, they can now do so without losing their customizations.  After signing in, they are returned to the job submission page with the fields filled in with their signin information.
  • You can now ask us here at PrintUI to manually add a new administrator to your account.  Although we shouldn’t have to use that very often, it could be useful in a situation where, for example, you accidentally change your own user role from Administrator to something else.

 

Posted in EasyPrintUI, Features  |  No Comments »

Flex != Flash

27-Jan-2013 by Harbs

Flex recently became a top level project at Apache and released version 4.9.0. I’m personally very excited about the project and I’ve seen a lot of confusion and misinformation on the web. Here’s some of facts as well as some of my thoughts on the subject. I hope it will help clarify what Flex is all about for some people.

A Brief History

Flex started its life in 2002 as a framework to develop enterprise applications for Flash. I think this makes it the oldest framework around for web application development. Flex in its infancy actually took on a very different form than what it currently is. It started off as server-side technology. Over the years, Flex evolved greatly, and four major versions were released. By the time that Flex was at version 3.x, it was a widely popular framework for web application development. A few years ago, Flex 4 was created which had a much more sophisticated skinning model and numerous improvements in the framework as a whole.

As most people know, Steve Jobs waged his war against Flash a couple of years ago, and Adobe shifted its focus. Enterprise application development is no longer a focus at Adobe. At least as Flash is concerned, Adobe is concentrating on games and video. Flex was no longer important to Adobe’s strategy, but it was still a highly popular development framework. I think most people would agree that Adobe did the right thing and donated Flex to Apache at the end of 2011. In fact many would argue that Adobe should have donated Flex earlier. It’s important to note that Adobe did not just “dump Flex in Apache’s lap”. There are a number of full time Adobe employees still working on Flex including Alex Harui, the new Apache Flex PMC Chair.

Where Flex is Today

Despite all the talk about Flash being dead, it’s still a very active technology. There’s lots of websites that use Flash to better deliver content. Some can be replaced by HTML5, but some cannot. Simply reciting the HTML5 mantra doesn’t necessarily make a better user experience for users. But let’s ignore the Flash plugin for a moment and pretend it doesn’t exist anymore…

Not just web

When most people think of Flash technology, they think of the Flash run-time that runs as a browser plugin. The fact of the matter is that Flash technology goes way beyond the browser plugin. The AIR runtime is much more powerful and capable big brother to the Flash browser plugin. Being able to quickly write an application and simply deploy across multiple platforms makes AIR a very compelling development environment. No Flash on iOS? What about AIR? I recently had a very amusing discussion with a friend of mine about the feasibility of creating a specific app using AIR. He had a hard time believing that AIR for iOS and AIR for Android could be used for building serious apps. Why does nobody know that all the Adobe touch apps were created using AIR? I blame Adobe for that. Their marketing department leaves what to be desired. They have the most powerful app publishing platform out there, and so many people believe the “Flash is dead” mantra. It’s sad really… But enough of the past. Let’s discuss the future!

Adobe “Dumping” Flex Was a Good Thing!

I’ve seen a lot of popular opinion that Adobe donating Flex to Apache was just the writing on the wall that Flex is dead. The logic of that argument always escaped me. Why is donating a rich project with many followers to a thriving open source organization a death sentence? The fact is, that the donation of Flex to Apache is the best thing that ever happened to Flex. If I’m not mistaken, the Flex mailing list discussions are the most activate of all the Apache projects. For the first time in Flex history, Flex is a true open source community with all the goodness associated with that.

But Flex was always open source!

Well, it depends what you mean by “open source”. It was in the strict sense of the word, but definitely not in spirit. It was open source in the sense that you can see how the components were implemented, crack them open and change them if you so desire, etc. It was not open source in the sense that anyone could contribute. The only way anything could be changed in Flex before it was donated to Apache was by Adobe employees making changes to the code and committing those changes. There have been countless bugs that had not been fixed and countless improvements that could not be made by the community at large.

As part of the Apache Software Foundation, Flex is truly open source. Literally anyone can contribute bug fixes and new innovations. If there’s an itch you’d like to scratch, you can scratch it yourself. Any one of the volunteers would be happy to commit new code, and if you put in enough effort, you will quickly become a committer yourself. In the last year there have been many new committers added who are doing incredible work advancing Apache Flex.

The discussions on where Flex is headed is incredibly refreshing. Flex got a new face, with a new logo, and a new beautiful website which should be live any day now. Of course I haven’t even discussed the innovations going on!

Flex Innovation is Exploding!

There has been a lot of work done on Apache Flex since the donation process started a little over year ago, and the momentum of the project is picking up rather than slowing down. There have been a whole pile of bugs fixed. There were new components donated. There have been discussion on how to improve Flex for mobile including GPU accelerated and 3D rendering. There have been countless stimulating discussions about where Flex is today and where it’s heading. What Flex is, etc.

What is Flex?

A year or two ago, you might have defined Flex as a framework for building Flash and AIR applications. A year or two ago, you might have even been right. But if someone defines Flex using that definition today, they would be totally wrong. A year ago, the future of Flex was totally tied to Adobe and what Adobe decides to do with Flash and Actionscript.

Falcon Compiler

Possibly as significant a donation as the Flex framework itself was the Falcon compiler. Actually, it might be even more significant than Flex itself! As someone so eloquently put it: “If you own the compiler, you own the language”. The donation of the Falcon compiler to Apache Flex is complete and Gordon Smith is currently finishing up the MXML functionality of the compiler. This means that the future of the ActionScript 3 language is in the hands of Apache Flex. The new Falcon compiler is extremely versatile and Adobe even donated a reference implementation of a Javascript cross-compiler based on Falcon. In my opinion, the future of Flex is in the Falcon compiler.

Flex to Javascript and HTML

If this concept is new to you, you have definitely not been following the Flex mailing lists. There’s not one but three different efforts currently going on to cross-compile Flex applications to Javascript and HTML. There are multiple efforts on different approaches to dealing with generating an HTML UI. This includes a new set of Flex components designed to be compiled both to Flash/AIR and HTML. The work on HTML Flex applications is moving at an incredible pace! Two implementations went from concept to a working demo in less than two months! The cross-compilation is being worked on by some really smart guys, and it’s really modular. The plan is to support a wide range UI frameworks, so native Flex frameworks can be supported as well as Sencha, jQuery UI, Google, etc. Another approach possible with the new generation of Flex will be a separation of business logic and UI design as in the Randori approach developed by Michael Labrioli.

This all adds up to an extremely powerful framework for creating HTML applications that can be used across a really wide range of developing requirements. The future of Flex is looking more exciting by the day! We could very likely be using Flex to create full HTML applications before the year is out!

It Goes Beyond HTML

The potential of the cross-compilation approach goes way beyond web apps. The same way the Falcon compiler is already being used to cross-compile to Javascript, it can be used to cross-compile to Java or Objective C. In other words, we could conceivably cross compile Flex applications directly to native mobile apps without the need for AIR or HTML application wrappers.

The dream of “write-once, deploy everywhere” was not quite realized by Adobe Flex, but it very well might be realized by Apache Flex!

Posted in Technology  |  Tags: , ,   |  16 Comments »

Text Style Support

20-Jan-2013 by Harbs

style paletteBy default, PrintUI displays a text palette for editing all text attributes. Things like font, size, line spacing, color, etc. can all be changed. For cases where the designer does not want the end user to change anything other than the text, the text palette can be hidden.

Brand Management Made Easy

For brand management, this is not enough. The look of text is clearly defined, but very often the user has to be able to change the styling, but be confined in how the text will work. InDesign has a mechanism designed for controlling the look of text, namely text styles. We are happy to announce that it is now possible to specify that a dedicated styles palette be used instead of the standard text palette. The stlyes palette will show all styles in the InDesign document, and selecting a different style will apply the styling defined in that style (and remove any local overrides). Both paragraph and character styles are honored.

The new feature is available today in PrintUI Pro by adding the flashvar:
useStylePalette = "true". The option will be added to Easy PrintUI soon.

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

Transparency Support

20-Jan-2013 by Harbs

One of the advantages of designing in InDesign is the advanced graphic capabilities including partial transparency and transparency effects. While PrintUI has always supported all of InDesign’s native features on non-editable layers, until now, editable objects have not allowed partial transparency or transparency effects.

We’re happy to announce that we now fully support all the transparency you can add to your documents as fully editable objects! This includes partial transparency, blend modes, drop shadows, inner shadows, inner glows, outer glows and bevels. We do out best to reproduce the design you see in InDesign and the output from InDesign Server.

Some Limitations and Caveats

Effects not Rendered

While we did extensive work to replicate the transparency effects in our app, there are an incredible number of options and combinations possible in InDesign, and it was not feasible for us to accurately render every effect possible in InDesign. For example: we make no effort to render satin effects. We do not render feathering including basic, directional and gradient feathering. Also, the noise option in effects is not rendered in the PrintUI app.

Blend Modes

In InDesign, there is a lot of control over blend modes. It is possible to set the blend mode of objects, and it is possible to set the blend mode of each transparency effect (i.e. a drop shadow) separately. While the PrintUI app renders the blend mode of an object as it’s set in InDesign, the transparency effect of an object will render with a normal blend mode. Depending on the effect used, this can be anywhere between an accurate rendition, to totally different than the intent.

Bevels and Embossing

InDesign has a combination of approximately six different types of beveling effects. To accurately reproduce them all would have been a large undertaking. Instead, we render all bevels assuming they are basic bevels. If you bevel uses the default setting in InDesign, the rendering should be close to the intent. If the settings are very different, we advise that you review the rendering to decide if it is acceptable for your purposes.

Effect Combinations

When combining different effects, the combined effect can sometimes be very different than the sum of the whole. While we do our best to render each effect as closely as possible to the rendering in InDesign, when effects are combined, all bets are off. Sometimes it will look correct, and sometimes not. Again, we advise reviewing the rendering of your documents to decide if the rendering is acceptable.

Preflight

When deciding how to handle transparency effects that might not render correctly, we had two choices: One was to limit transparency to the specific cases where we know it renders correctly. The other was to allow all transparency to be uploaded, and place the responsibility on our users to check that their documents display accurately enough for their purposes. Our feeling was that most of our users would rather have the freedom of design, rather than be restricted to cases that are known to work. To assist, we now have a confirmation dialog which comes up during the preflight process which displays the page numbers of any page which might render incorrectly. The dialog will display if any of the cases mentioned above are present in the document. We always recommend checking documents after uploading, and in the case of transparency this is even more important.

In Conclusion

The new transparency support is not without caveats, but even with these caveats, we believe this is a powerful new feature which offers a lot of design freedom that was not there before. We believe that well over 95% of the cases where transparency is used, the content will be rendered completely faithfully, and even in the remaining cases, we believe that much of the rendering will be “good enough” for most purposes. This judgment call, we are leaving up to our users.

(Special thanks to Mike Rankin for use of the displayed graphic.)

Posted in Features  |  5 Comments »

Words Fail…

16-Jan-2013 by John Parsons

Last year, I wrote about Korzybski’s semantic theories—especially the problems generated among humans who confuse words (symbols) with the objects they represent. Since I’m in the business of words, I’m forever hopeful that we’ll figure out how to use them well, and resolve our differences with rational discourse. However, having just returned from a publishing event, I can tell you that we have a long way to go.

At the event, I heard sophisticated versions of arguments that began to sound something like, “Print is dead…” / “No, it’s not!” / “Is so!” / “You take that back!!” Even with all the smiles and social niceties, it was pretty clear that the transition between print (still important) and digital (still confusing and chaotic) is creating a great deal of discomfort and anxiety.

So, let’s look at some of the words we seem to be confusing with their many referents. “Print,” for example, can mean the physical product: ink on bound sheets of paper. It can also mean the complex, expensive manufacturing and distribution process that publishers must manage in order to get their words, pictures, and ads into the hands of readers. It can mean a bad environmental practice (“Don’t print; save a tree!”)—or a good one (“Paper is a sustainable resource!”) It can also be used in a derogatory sense to describe social change, namely the shift from “outdated, static” print to “modern, hip, dynamic” digital communication.

Other words, like “healthcare” or “guns” have far more semantic problems, of course, but we’re in the communication business, so I’ll stick with one that affects us professionally. When we say or hear the word “print,” it’s very likely we won’t understand the legitimate passion or feelings of the person arguing for or against its future. Making progress in developing a publishing strategy depends on connection and understanding—something that can only be achieved if we agree on what words mean.

The first takeaway from all this is to recognize that there are multiple referents or objects for every word we use. Some of these are simple and literal, while others are more abstract. English is a particularly tricky language in this respect. New meanings and nuances are generated continuously—even for words we normally take for granted. Marketing professionals are in the business of inventing new meanings for old words—just to get our attention. However, if we pause for a moment, and consider the possibility of multiple meanings (“levels of abstraction,” to use Korzybski’s phrase,) then we can begin to calm down, truly listen to the other guy, and perhaps find some real solutions.

Those of us who work in the print medium would do well to make words part of the solution, instead of the problem.

–John Parsons

Posted in Thoughts  |  Tags: , , , , , ,   |  No Comments »

Discoverability is Key

03-Jan-2013 by Harbs

discoveryIn our never-ending quest to improve PrintUI, we became aware that not all users are immediately aware that page contents are editable. A first time user does not necessarily know that options not immediately visible are available. Even if they are looking for things to edit, they may not realize that mousing over objects shows the buttons necessary to make edits.

Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference

We realized that by showing the ineractive buttons when a document is opened, the discoverability of editability is vastly improved. Today, we rolled out an update which makes this improvement, as well as a number of smaller bug fixes. The change will take affect immediately for all clients. If you want the old behavior, it’s possible to restore it by adding a flashvar when loading the PrintUI web app:

launchWithHoverButtons="false"

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

New Year, New Server Architecture

01-Jan-2013 by Harbs

New ServerThe last year has been an awesome start for PrintUI! We’re seeing very good adoption of the service and we’re seeing demand for new applications that put a higher load on our servers. We’re always excited to see the desire to use PrintUI for ever more complex applications.

Performance is Key

We want to make sure our architecture is up to the task of handling the additional load. It’s towards this end that we recently made a number of improvements to the way we handle concurrent use. Previously, we’ve been processing all jobs on PrintUI on a FIFO basis. FIFO stands for “First In, First Out”. To ensure that no jobs clog the job queue, we put in a timeout for any job. Recently that timeout has been 20 seconds. Any job that took InDesign Server longer than 20 seconds to process, was kicked out. For almost all our clients this system worked very well. Due to our efficient use of InDesign Server, most jobs finished in a second or two. The job queue was almost always clear and ready to process jobs, so the service has been very responsive to date.

Recently, though, we’ve seen demand for more complex uses for PrintUI where long and complex documents can take longer than 20 seconds to process. We were also concerned that as our overall volume increases, our clients might not always get the maximum possible performance for their jobs.

We needed to create a balance of offering the ability to process more complex documents, while ensuring that normal document processing was not adversely affected by clients who have more demanding needs.

Here’s What We Did

Multiple Concurrent Queues

First, we have upgraded our server where we host InDesign Server. We have multiple instances of InDesign Server which can process many jobs at the same time. We also implemented multiple queues which process jobs in priority order instead of simple FIFO.

This combined change will make a very noticeable difference in system responsiveness. In our tests, JPEG and PDF results come back at least twice as fast as they used to. There should almost never be any lag at all in job processing, with the average JPEG page preview coming back from InDesign Server in less than a second. We have many times the capacity we used to have and we can quickly add even more processing horsepower should we need it.

Complexity Score

We’ve instituted the concept of a complexity score. A complexity score is a way to tell the PrintUI system how long to expect a specific document to take to produce. The complexity score does a few things. First, it tells the system how long to give the job to complete. It’s necessary to have a timeout for all jobs, to ensure that if InDesign Server freezes for some reason, it is automatically restarted. However, you don’t want the system to kick out a job prematurely, so we use the complexity score to define the timeout. The more complex a document is, the more time we give it to complete.

The second thing the complexity score does is to help define the priority for document processing. The more complex a document is, the lower the priority is. This ensures that simple documents will always be processed as quickly as possible. More on this below.

Lastly, the complexity score defines if there will be additional processing fees. Complex documents can take a significant amount of time to process. This means additional costs to us, and those costs will be passed on to the clients who need the extra processing power. Keep in mind, though, that any document which could be processed by PrintUI until today will not have any additional fees. Although we are still fine-tuning the complexity scores and defining exactly what the processing fees will be, we are seeing that, in fact, even many of the more complex documents will not incur extra processing fees. Once we finish that process, you will be able to clearly see the complexity score at the time you upload a template and all fees will be clearly documented. If you have high-demand processing needs, let us know, and we’ll explain everything in fuller detail.

What This Means to You

A much improved experience!

  1. You should notice significant improvement in the general responsiveness of PrintUI.
  2. You can upload more complex documents without concern that they might time out.
  3. No additional charges for any existing documents. Documents of the type that PrintUI was able to handle until today will continue to work as they have until today. The only fees that will be applicable are for documents that were far too complex to consider using with PrintUI in the past.
  4. If you have a need to process very long and complex documents, that is now possible. You will have clear information on exactly what the costs will be, so you can be prepared before the actual processing is done.

 

If you don’t have complex document needs, all the business about complexity score is of no concern to you. No matter what your needs are, you will benefit from the more robust architecture we’ve implemented. We’re very excited about this development. It makes us even more prepared for the future expansion of PrintUI!

Posted in Features, Technology  |  No Comments »

Silver Cloud / Dark Lining?

31-Dec-2012 by John Parsons

At the risk of channeling the late Andy Rooney, I have a bone to pick with cloud computing and its adherents. Like all business trends, “The Cloud” (capitalization required) has achieved meaningless buzzword status. It has also attracted its share of pretenders, predators, and puzzled participants.

Let’s be clear from the start: cloud computing is not new. It used to be called client-server computing, with dumb terminals tethered to big mainframes. The limitations of that world led us to rely on increasingly powerful and more affordable standalone computers, using the network for communications and data transfer, but relying on our own devices—and Moore’s law—to crunch increasing amounts of data.

The Internet, itself a product of the client-server world, is changing all that. Web-based server applications are on the rise, while personal computers, phones and tablets are the not-so-dumb terminals. Cloud disciples hail this—sometimes justifiably—as a huge benefit for consumers and businesses alike.

Unfortunately, hype is outracing reality. Here’s an example…

Like many, I’ve begun the switch from local to Web-based information. In my case, the catalyst was music, specifically the Apple iPod/iTunes combo. I was coaxed into digitizing my CD and LP collections, buying tracks and albums online and, most recently, backing up the whole thing in iCloud. Despite my misgivings,* I dutifully installed the latest versions of Apple software and relinquished more and more of my data to an Apple-managed server somewhere on the planet. The same is happening, slowly, with my e-book collection, with “my” data residing on servers owned by Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, DropBox, and other companies.

There are benefits. I’m immune from losing my music or e-books if a device fails catastrophically. I can access stuff remotely on many different devices, without the need for stacks of CDs or USB drives—assuming I never lose my password. So long as Apple, Amazon, et al, don’t mess up, I’m in pretty good shape, data-wise.

The downside is the truly tenuous nature of the “tether” between me and my data. Last week, for reasons yet unknown, iTunes 11 and QuickTime apparently had a quarrel, making it impossible for me to manage my music collection. Various devices could still play their locally-stored songs, but my collection was essentially frozen, and all but inaccessible. Emails to Apple were unanswered; I was on my own. (I stumbled on a “solution” of sorts—namely removing QuickTime.)

For most consumers, cloud computing only works if a delicate chain of software and systems work flawlessly together. Even if all the links were owned and controlled by a single provider, they don’t always perform as expected. Software is, by nature, prone to unexpected failures. Large software companies have a vested interest in their own success, and in defeating their competitors. To make cloud-based content as stress-free traditional media would require cooperation that may be at odds with the bottom line.

I am not by any means advocating a return to standalone PCs and stacks of ZIP disks or CDs. I’m just saying we should look very hard at the practical realities of cloud-based content before we lightly abandon the reliability and lack of stress to be found in other media—like print.

–John Parsons

 

* Unlike physical recordings or print books, cloud-based content operates under very different economic and legal rules. As long as I don’t make additional copies, I can re-sell or give away my physical albums or books, or include them in a legal will. This is next to impossible with digital music and e-books.

Posted in Thoughts  |  Tags: , , , , , ,   |  No Comments »

New Layer Features

27-Dec-2012 by Harbs

We love seeing the new and innovative ways our customers are using PrintUI! As a result to customer needs we rolled out an update this week with a number of new features relating to layers.

Transparent Background

Transparent Background One request that we got from a number of clients was the ability to have a transparent background in the web app. By default, the page size of a document displays as a white rectangle. When the output media is standard paper, this makes sense. However, PrintUI is being adopted by more and more applications. Who knew there is a market for customized poker chips? Not all media is rectangular. Poker chips are round. We all know what tee shirts look like. The sign industry has many different geometric shapes. The list goes on…

To facilitate representation of non-rectangular media, we added the concept of a transparent background. If transparent background is checked in the template options dialog, only opaque or semi-opaque objects appear in the web app with no white rectangle to represent the page. So, if you need poker chip, you just create an opaque circle in InDesign. Need a tee shirt? Just draw it or import the shape into InDesign. Of course, this doesn’t provide a solution if you want to give a realistic representation of your non-white media, which brings us to some more exciting new features…

Foreground and Non-printing Layers

Layer OptionsStarting with version 2.0.8 of the PrintUI Management extension, initializing a template will pop up a new dialog. The dialog offers the option of creating up to three new optional layers.

Foreground Layer

The foreground layer is useful for things like photo frames or decorative elements that appear above editable content. All foreground layers will appear as a preview in the web app above your editable objects and output from the PrintUI engine at full quality. To define objects as foreground objects, just drag them to the Foreground layer in InDesign.

Non-printing Layers

Non-printing layers have multiple uses. One use is simply showing what a specific media looks like in the web app and/or a preview. Finishing effects can be simulated by using a non-printing foreground layer. If you need visual guidelines to show up in the web app, just put it on a non-printing foreground layer. etc. I have no question that we will learn new uses for theses powerful features once they are used in production!

Our APIs allow for flexible use of the non-printing layers. Each one can be optionally shown or not shown in the web app as well as preview images or pdf files. This flexibility should allow for a wide array of uses.

Posted in Features  |  1 Comment »

Print Different

20-Dec-2012 by John Parsons

Print DifferentThis is typically the time of year when columnists, pundits, and bloggers look back at the past year, and ahead to what the next one may bring. Assuming the planet will not end altogether on December 21st, here’s my retrospective and glimpse forward for the printing industry.

For some, the Mayan apocalypse may actually be welcome. Popular opinion places print (erroneously) on the endangered list. Many things we traditionally associate with print, like newspapers and ad inserts, are in decline, at least in North America and Europe. Companies associated with such things are also struggling—mostly with each other—for what they see as a dwindling food supply, so to speak. The traditional business of print is under extreme duress, surviving by larger companies assimilating smaller ones, or simply filing for bankruptcy.

However, believe it or not, this is not a doomsday scenario. Printing companies and once-profitable print niches may fail, but print itself is a medium that will survive and even thrive for the foreseeable future.

First, let’s look at the obvious. Packaging alone is a huge growth market, totally immune from digital. In the signage market, print does have competition from digital, but the cost and supply chain variance will insure the health of the print side of things for a long while. Both of these “niches,” if something so large can be called that, have enormous technical and logistical challenges—especially as more general commercial printers try to compete with existing specialists—but the demand is huge, and growing.

Second, we should never discount the growth potential of more “traditional” forms of print, like business collateral, direct mail, catalogs, and even publications like books, magazines, and newspapers. To be sure, the days of super-high-volume offset work are passing, but there is still an intrinsic value to using a printed piece in lieu of a digital screen.[1] As long as digital-variable-on-demand printing remains viable,[2] then the medium itself will thrive.

What needs to change is not print, per se, but the business values of those who provide the service. Printing is no longer a simple industry—offering a predictable, high-quality, manufactured product at a competitive price. Instead, printing is a complex service industry, meeting a wide spectrum of needs and, ideally, creating a complex mutual partnership.

At the risk of over-using the example, let’s think about Apple’s iconic “Think Different” campaign.[3] What did it do for the mundane world of computers that a similar outlook could do for a 550-year-old industry, steeped in old-school manufacturing notions?

At the root of Apple’s re-invention of computing was the user experience. The goal was to capitalize on the “ah-ha” moment that accompanied a consumer’s first interaction with the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad. None of those devices was truly original, but users’ experienced them as “Different” in a strongly positive way.

Maybe the print world needs the Jobsian hubris and fanaticism that has made Apple—rightly or wrongly—the thought leader it now is. Attitude alone won’t cut it, however. True invention must equal (at least) the arrogance of those who think print is still great.

The next great idea—probably a hybrid of print and other media—can’t be buried in a corporate culture stuck in the 1950s. Because printing serves human needs, and because humans are infinitely complex, it follows that there are an almost infinite number of possible printing innovations in our future. The only question is whether “different” printing will come from today’s printing companies, or from the next Apple of the print/mobile/whatever world.

–John Parsons


[2] Industry thought leaders have predicted that the ever-increasing efficiency and quality of digital print—approaching and eventually exceeding that of offset—will result in a tipping point, possibly before 2020, where digital will be the preferred approach for nearly all printing applications.

[3] No, it shouldn’t have been, “Think Differently.” The phrase was not about how we think, but about what we should be thinking—namely, the concept of “Different,” and the products that have that distinction.

Paper Power

11-Dec-2012 by John Parsons

Elsewhere in this space, I’ve written about the environmental misconceptions surrounding print and paper. As it turns out, the print medium is potentially[1] the most sustainable and least problematic when it comes to energy consumption and carbon emissions. However, it turns out that paper is not only benign environmentally, but it is also a potential source of energy.

Paper mills already take advantage of this, of course. Since only part of the tree is used for the primary product (paper or other forestry-related manufacturing), the excess wood slash is frequently burned instead of coal to produce power for the plant. This produces somewhat fewer carbon emissions than coal, and in theory reduces the amount of uncontrolled waste burning in logging areas. By itself, however, this is not a big deal, environmentally.

A bigger deal is one of the byproducts of paper manufacturing. When mills use a chemical process to convert wood chips into fiber for papermaking, they end up with a nasty-looking goop called black liquor—about seven tons of it for every ton of pulp. This residue, as it turns out, contains about half the energy content of the wood used to create it. Mills have been recovering and using black liquor as fuel—to create electricity and steam—for decades, rather than dumping the toxic material into the water.

The fact that paper mills use this byproduct to lower their energy bill is not all that remarkable, but there’s more.

More recently, biofuel research has made significant progress with black liquor, creating a range of renewable fuels like synthetic diesel and dimethyl ether (DME) methanol. The latter, according to researchers at the new Chemrec plant in Sweden, has a very high potential as an alternative fuel. “DME from forest residues through black liquor gasification has been proven to be the most energy- and cost-efficient amongst the second generation biofuels,” according to CEO Jonas Rudberg. He goes on to say that the technology “gives the pulp industry globally a possibility to strengthen its profitability remarkably and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases.”[2]

It will be a while before this becomes a practical component of an energy strategy. Industry and government[3] tend to be slow movers on things like this. Be that as it may, alternative energy is a fascinating new reason to appreciate print—and the peculiar medium on which it depends.

–John Parsons

[1] We can still mess things up, of course. Sound practices in sustainable forestry, water use, manufacturing, waste handling, and recycling are business decisions—or political ones—that are not yet universal.

[2] Chemrec press release

[3] Black liquor is less problematic than corn as a biofuel source, but corn-based ethanol has a formidable lobbying presence. I’m just saying.

Fear of the Dark

27-Nov-2012 by John Parsons

Admittedly, Halloween would have been a better holiday for this post, but since superstitions have no fixed season, I thought I’d dredge up an old one—namely, printing as a “dark art”—and ask if those same fears cloud our thinking today.

When Gutenberg’s vision of print manufacturing first emerged, it was a highly disruptive technology. It was feared and resented by those whose influence depended on means of communication they could easily understand and control. By mixing that fear with popular superstition, people were encouraged to resent the technology and its results as heretical or even diabolical. (The phrase “printer’s devil” is of dubious origin, but it does reflect the idea that printing was somehow not a wholesome pursuit.)

Then as now, the rapid spread of information had many detractors—those fearful that easier communication would mean a flood of bad along with the good. They were right about the mixed blessing of print. After all, Gutenberg’s first work was not the Bible but a form—the problematic Papal Indulgence form, to be exact. However, people’s irrational fear of the new technology was misguided, as it is today.

Print has never stopped being a mixed bag—capable of transmitting the sublime, the ridiculous, and the downright destructive and demeaning. As the medium became ever more affordable, men have used it for both good and evil. Over many years, we’ve learned to live with print’s negative results, and appreciate its overall value.

We had essentially the same dilemma with television (but not so much with radio, for some reason.) Commentators bemoaned the decline of civilization triggered by the Boob Tube. Come to think of it, that debate hasn’t ended. Now we face the same type of disruptive forces with Internet-based communications in general and the mobile phenomenon in particular. We fear, perhaps with some justification, the flood of new garbage that could drown out whatever good may come from our “always on” technology. We even fear that the technology itself—not the flawed humans who abuse it—is somehow inherently malevolent.

The lesson—especially for those with a stake in the print medium—is not to succumb to the temptation to become fearful, grumpy old men or (worse) political or philosophical inquisitors. Yes, the print business will change, and some companies will decline. However, print itself has a long future as a part of the new media mix. Digital is no more a “dark art” that print was at the beginning. It’s a genuine opportunity. Those who have learned to do good, and even prosper with print are actually in a good position to do so with the latest generation of communications magic.

–John Parsons

Posted in Thoughts  |  Tags: , , , ,   |  No Comments »

PrintUI Tools 2.0.7 Released

14-Nov-2012 by Harbs

We just pushed out version 2.0.7 of our InDesign PrintUI Tools panel. We have had Extension Manager updates available from the beginning, but users tend to open the Extension Manager very rarely and are not always aware of new updates.

Starting from version 2.0.7, the panel will alert users when an update is available and allow for easy download o the update. Alternatively, the user can open Extension Manager and click update there. We hope this will ensure that all users are always updated to the latest and the greatest!

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

What Makes Paper So Special?

13-Nov-2012 by John Parsons

When discussing the merits of print communication, pundits like me tend to fixate specific applications like publishing or business communication, but don’t say much about the medium itself: paper. There are preconceptions about its inconvenience in dealing with large quantities of data (true) or its negative impact on the environment (false). However, we don’t often think about the thing itself: that sheet of mashed-up fibers on which we make our mark. Despite the realities of digital media, paper continues to be a medium of convenience, cost-effectiveness, and versatility.

The history of paper sheds some light. The word of course comes from papyrus—which is not paper as we know it, but a laminate of a specific plant. The Chinese invention we know as paper (about 100 A.D., give or take a century) involved squeezing water out of a plant fiber slurry to produce a thin sheet of writing material. As the technology made its way across Asia, the Islamic world, and eventually Europe, it replaced common but often inconvenient or costly media like bark, bone, animal skins, and (most inconvenient of all) stone.

Civilizations certainly existed without paper. However, rapid, disruptive change often followed the introduction of this new, more convenient medium for communicating ideas. Just as digital is a catalyst for change today, so has paper been for centuries.

When print advocates defend their choice of media, they often cite the aesthetic experience—the “feel” of paper that is preferable to that of a screen. Some go so far as to claim that the tangible, touchable, tactile nature of paper creates a greater sensory “footprint” in the brain, and is therefore more engaging and effective in communicating ideas to humans. This could be true, arguably, because we’ve had hundreds of years of collective experience with paper, and only decades of experience with screens.

Another somewhat philosophical argument for paper is that its lack of rich media pizazz is actually an advantage—less distraction, more focus, a better medium for our admittedly too distractible minds.

The part of me that simply likes print gravitates towards these arguments. However, the case for paper is actually more prosaic: boring economics. Paper has succeeded through the centuries, and is likely to be viable for a long time, because of plain old cost issues.

Let me explain. Paper—and by extension print itself—provides an extraordinarily high visual experience for a remarkably low cost. On the communicator/publisher side, this is arguable. Print has manufacturing, storage and transportation costs that digital does not.* However, on the consumer side, the cost of print is negligible. Special devices and networks are not required, technical support and e-waste are non-issues, and paper disposal/recycling is well-established—or even free. Power requirements for the paper media consumer are pretty much limited to lighting. Paper does not have a built-in bias towards more affluent consumers who can afford devices. It is also less vulnerable to technology failures or obsolescence.

All this is not to say that paper meets all communication needs—far from it. However, it’s a real mistake to deride paper, or relegate it to the wastebasket, so to speak. Until digital meets the economic, environmental, and aesthetic needs that paper meets so well, we must hang onto both media, and look for ways they can work in tandem.

–John Parsons

 

* Digital is not free for the communicator, by any means. Digital storage, while dropping in cost, involves energy and management overhead that every business and publication must account for.

Posted in Thoughts  |  Tags: , , , ,   |  No Comments »

October was a Busy Month

09-Nov-2012 by Harbs

Baby Harbs And I’m not referring specifically to the newest little baby boy Harbs… ;)

We delivered two major new features being the Image Gallery feature and Easy PrintUI. We are very pleased with how both have been received.

Placing images from social image sources such as Facebook, Flickr and Picasa is really great and we hope to work on building gallery connectors for some major DAM providers. We think this is big news for a lot of our clients.

Easy PrintUI has been received a lot of enthusiasm as well. We think it brings web-to-print capabilities to a lot of smaller companies who did not previously have the resources to consider classic web to print solutions (even hosted ones such as PrintUI). The almost zero setup required and the robust management tools makes it a really good fit for small to medium sized printers and design agencies. We are working on making it even better and we love to hear feedback on how you would like to use it!

Graph Expo was a great venue as well and it was very productive presenting there.

Besides these major events, we added a number of smaller features to PrintUI:

  • Unlimited undo and redo support.
  • Full Screen Mode
  • Support for tabular data: All tab stops set in InDesign will now be fully honored. This allows for a higher level of formatting quality and is extremely useful for things like data sheets and list data.
  • Text frame fills and basic strokes set in InDesign are honored in the web app.
  • Text Frame Insets set in InDesign are honored as well. This allows for text content to have a background fill and stroke set a specific distance around it. The background box will automatically resize to fit the text.
  • Support for proportional and old-style numbers allows for a higher level of typographic quality.
  • Horizontal frame resizing is now more intelligent and expands based on the text alignment setting. For example: if the text is right aligned, the text area expands to the left.
  • Improved color swatch support. All color swatches defined in the InDesign document will now be available for selection in the web app. Additionally, the swatch names defined in InDesign will show in the color picker. Only templates uploaded using extension version 2.0.4 and on will support this feature.
  • Control over the colors which appear: There are now two new flashvars that can be used to specify colors that appear in the color picker. See the flashvar documentation for further details.

Additionally, we recommend that all clients download the latest version of our extension. Besides a number of bug fixes, the new extension is required for extended color swatch support.

Of course we are not resting on our laurels, and we’re hard at work on exciting new developments! :)

Posted in Features  |  No Comments »

First Impressions

03-Nov-2012 by John Parsons

It never pays to resist or deride innovators—especially in the world of print. The clerics and inquisitors who warned us about the dangerous innovation of Herr Gutenberg (himself a pious man) ended up on the losing side of that technology argument. William Morris decried the industrialization of the printed word, and even went so far as to make his own type and paper, and print his own books by hand, but the giant printing factories of his day thrived.

You get the idea. Innovation always has is detractors. Print is certainly no exception. Let’s take a true-or-false quiz:

  1. Offset will never replace gravure.
  2. Phototypesetting will never match the quality of hot type.
  3. Desktop publishing will never replace typesetting (or anything else).
  4. Nothing can replace the color quality of film.
  5. Nothing will replace real printing presses.

At some point in time, most people would have answered “true” to any one of these statements. These days, however, the certainty of these denials is eroding in the face of technology innovation, combined with relentless economic pressure.

This brings us to the last statement. Printing presses as we know them—offset, gravure, and flexo—are still the dominant way to put images on multiple sheets of paper, plastic, or whatnot, but that is changing. At this year’s Graph Expo, for example, I counted only four or five offset presses on the show floor, while the new upstarts—digital presses—were everywhere. Buying a new offset press is becoming rarer; buying a digital one is becoming the norm.

On the quality issue, digital is now meeting (and in some cases exceeding) the quality levels of analog print. Speeds are increasing, as are the paper handling and finishing aspects of digital print. Long run lengths are still the domain of “regular” presses, but that too may be changing over time. Most important: the per-sheet cost of digital print is falling, which will eventually put offset on the same road to obsolescence as letterpress.

Of course this will take a lot of time. Even the unchallenged advantages of digital print, like incredibly low makeready and variable data printing, will not make offset or flexo obsolete overnight.* Offset will be with us for a while, as will flexo. Even gravure will survive, if only to make printed electronics instead of long runs of magazines or catalogs.

The point is that digital print is emerging from the onus of professional scorn, and is becoming part of the acceptable norm. Many of the scorners will go out of business, while some will create new business models and learn how to thrive. Innovation, however disruptive, will survive the early failures and shortcomings—to become the accepted way of doing things.

Now, if only we could refrain from ridiculing the next new thing. Someday, perhaps sooner than we think, digital toner and inkjet presses may be the hidebound technology, the “old school” approach.

What will you be doing when that happens?

–John Parsons

 

* This has a lot to do with business practices. We may have the digital technology to create a customized “run of one” printing process, but we really don’t know how to manage or profit from it yet.

Consumer Media Choices: Paper or Silicon?

29-Oct-2012 by John Parsons

Quark Software Print-Mobile Playing CardNot all that long ago, our communications choices were limited to print and some form of analog broadcast. Computers changed how we created media, especially for the printed page, but not the medium itself. Of course that all changed with the Inter-Web and its latest incarnation: mobile devices. In the rush to go mobile—our collective “digital binge,” if you will—it’s fashionable to dismiss print altogether. That would be a serious mistake.

I was reminded of this by some announcements by a company that—like print—has been ignored lately. Quark Software (remember them?) recently announced their multi-channel Quark Publishing Platform, and a new version of App Studio, an environment for creating customized tablet apps with XML, HTML5, QuarkXPress, and (wait for it) InDesign. Rather than focus on moving away from print and towards digital, the company has elected to embrace both.

Businesses and publishers should not have to choose between print and mobile to communicate with their audience. The two media are not mutually exclusive; each has benefits that the other cannot easily provide.

Let’s start with the easy one: mobile. Digital content does offer immediate, live access to ever-changing data. In theory, an app or a Web page can always reflect very latest version of a story—like when CNN reported that the Supreme Court had struck down a key provision of Obamacare. (No, wait…) More importantly, it can connect more easily with other data, and include engaging “rich media” that print cannot.

Print is certainly out of favor in the mobile age, but it should not be. First of all, it has an extremely efficient creation, production, and distribution supply chain. It’s highly-automated and inexpensive to produce. It’s not only familiar and comfortable for many, it’s also really stable. A printed piece won’t disappear or become obsolete with the next wave of technology.

The “save a tree” argument won’t wash either. If the printing process is well managed—using print-on-demand, online ordering, and paper from managed sources—then it is truly a sustainable medium, probably more so than digital, with its unknown carbon footprint and energy consumption overhead.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for print is the fact that it has a low “technology footprint” for consumers. They only need to be literate, and have sufficient light to read. There’s no requirement for a special device, the right operating system, or a reliable connection. It may be a bit Luddite to say so, but reading print is just plain easy.

This should not discourage anyone from communicating via the mobile Internet—or any digital means. Without any doubt, mobile connection is the next “really big thing” for communication and commerce. However, it is not an exclusive medium. Print-centric companies who cover their ears and hum when the subject of mobile comes up are headed for failure, but so are those that imagine print is dead. Both are essential. Those who figure out how to communicate well in either “language” will succeed.

–John Parsons