Viewing Electronic Development of Publishing Production Process from Advertising Automation

Ten years ago, in order to accelerate the pace of digitalization, Singapore’s newspapers developed a network system called Ad-Net. The purpose is to link advertisers, agents and newspapers, and agents can go through specially arranged intranets. The newspaper prescribes advertising space, and then inquires about the progress of the advertisement, the accumulated amount of advertisement, and can transmit the electronic copy to the newspaper via the Internet.

This fully automated "through-train" operation should be ideal for any computerized project. Singapore has only a handful of print publishers, and the newspapers are almost exclusively based on business. However, this work still took a few years to complete the management and ordering system. Full-electronics has not yet completed today, compared to the previous period in Asia. There is still a significant gap between the start of the Wall Street Journal's entry into color e-books. The reason may be that the start was too early. For example, when the Internet was still not popular, it was very difficult to establish a convenient and effective network. The early development work was very big. Part of it came from networking. As for another reason, it may be related to Chinese processing. This is not only the main difficulty in the electronic flow of advertising in Southeast Asia, but also the obstacle to publishing the printing industry to fully develop the electronic supply chain.

The same electronic work started in Taiwan six or seven years ago, and Hong Kong is nothing more than three or four years. Based on past experience, the automation of contractual orders and scheduling management of advertisements has been accomplished almost without difficulty, thanks to the reduction of manpower, the strengthening of management and transparency, and the obvious benefits. However, there are many technical and business decision-making issues related to the connection with advertisers and the direct supply of electronic manuscripts, including:

1. Chinese processing - such as the selection of characters, characters, self-made characters and special symbols, etc. If you become a full-scale image, you must solve the problem of too high data volume.

2. File Formats - Before PDF became the standard for file transfer, different advertisers and designers had their preferences, from the original application files such as PageMaker, QuarkXpress to TIFF, JPEG, DCS, EPS and other file formats. Yes, although EPS has gradually become mainstream, its overly flexible structure has often led printing companies to worry about out-of-the-box output errors.

3. Transmission Network - As the Internet is still not widely used, file transfer, content authentication and storage are still very troublesome, and high-speed networks including ISDN, cable networks and ADSL are still in their infancy, while the special line costs are extremely high.

4. Color advertising - color control and management is still the biggest difficulty today.

5. Responsibility belongs to who – Since advertising companies generally cover the entire advertising plan for their customers, and production and drafting have already been included, advertising companies have to “do more than one less thing” in order to avoid affecting advertising effectiveness due to production problems. Under the state of mind, we are even less enthusiastic about electronics. This situation is even more evident in Hong Kong.

However, geographical pressures in Taiwan require at least three or four hours from the north to the south. To shorten the basic conditions of the process and the production cycle, it must be fully electronic. It can use the communication network to transfer files to different regions for export and printing. . In Hong Kong, due to the lack of a driving force for remote communications, the progress of the electronic production process is extremely slow. But with several important technological improvements, the electronic publishing process, including advertising, is ready:

1.PDF Process Support Chinese--PDF is very successful in Europe and the United States, but Greater China is subject to double-byte encoding and Chinese processing. Until Acrobat 4 version, this issue has not been completely resolved, until the 5.0 version appeared, almost completely Solved the Chinese problems. Coupled with the advent of PDF publishing software such as InDesign, PDF can not only be a standard, but also a platform for data exchange, typesetting, and business applications.

2. The popularization of Internet applications - The Internet has attracted many network experts to develop communication networks, reducing the cost of connection, and a complete network server architecture, making it easy to digitize services.

3. Color Management Becomes Mature - Although color control, digital printing, and proofing are still in the development stage, they have gradually matured and become practically available products.

4. E-management is highly regarded - Although the Internet boom has faded, the electronic work in B2B and Enterprise Portal has gradually become a way for modern companies to improve their competitiveness and enhance management efficiency. Electronic services have not been limited to specific needs but are essential basic conditions.

As the publishing industry gradually became more open and integrated, the Wall Street Journal was reportedly ready to switch to a specially designed special typesetting and advertising system. At first, the author was puzzled by this, but thought deeply about it, as the publishing and printing technology matured and gradually standardized, the products and systems that are still competitive in the future will be no matter how big, how special or what the operation is. System platforms have all been difficult to break away from the generally accepted basic conditions of PDF, XML, CMS, and so on. Some institutions will choose specialized systems because of their emphasis on regulatory control, and they will also choose commercial software that focuses on flexible and popular choices. For users, the most important thing is to strengthen the process and enable them to have a satisfactory choice. .