Prepress Technology November 1999
Sii leads way with Adobe InTegration
By Lisa Larson
Assistant Editor
System Integrators Inc. took advantage of the IFRA 99 trade show in Amsterdam to announce the integration of its Insiight editorial solution with InCopy, a copy-edit tool also just introduced at IFRA by Adobe Systems Inc.
Sii's new editorial and advertising product line, Insiight features a fully open and scaleable Intranet architecture that seamlessly connects the various components of the publishing enterprise.
Instead of offering proprietary editing tools, Sii will offer a complete environment with standard Adobe components throughout, the company said.
"We believe that Insiight's editorial pagination package should be matched with equally advanced page design and copy-edit applications," said Mike Lee, executive vice president of newspaper operations at Sii. "Together, Sii and Adobe will deliver this solution to the newspaper industry."
Based on the extensible architecture of Adobe's recently introduced InDesign page layout program, InCopy allows the layout and the text of a story to be changed at the same time. Writers using Insiight will be able to gain full text-only access to layouts created with InDesign using InCopy, said Sii.
"We are pleased that Sii will incorporate our InCopy copy-edit tool into its Insiight newspaper system," said Peter Kellogg-Smith, director of professional publishing for Adobe Systems Inc.
"It is exciting to help enable Sii's next generation solution, which will radically change the way page designers and journalists work together."
Because InDesign and InCopy share a common text composition engine and hyphenation and justification rules, copy fitting can be nearly 100-percent accurate when editing a story laid out using InDesign. InCopy also provides a way for editors to track H&J changes and the movement of paragraphs.
InCopy allows writers to work in a galley or layout view. The layout view displays text how it will appear in print, and the galley view displays edits and editorial notes along with the editor's name.
Sii at IFRA also unveiled its Insiight editorial solution integrating QuarkXPress and QuarkCopyDesk, first announced at Nexpo earlier this year.
With the new Insiight solutions, Sii developed the Universal Newsgram Architecture to provide newspapers operating in a distributed environment a common framework for moving data seamlessly between applications.
A "newsgram" is an open and portable representation of the data exchanged between different systems using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Along with UNA components, newsgrams provide interoperability between applications on a variety of platforms and distributed systems.
Users gain access to information transparently, without having to know where in the enterprise the information resides, or what software or hardware platform holds the information, said Sii.
This open solutions approach gives Insiight the ability to generate, save, exchange and archive information across departments, regardless of what software or platform was used to create it.
The UNA incorporates the global IFRATrack standard, which tracks every element on a system, including stories, graphics, advertisements and individual pages, to monitor status changes during the publishing process.
Insiight Advertising now features a customer relationship management tool designed to help newspapers analyze their advertisers' buying patterns to actively pursue sales.
Users can perform an unlimited combination of queries using the open database and construct specific reports to develop special offers, create targeted incentives and build better pricing models, the company said.
The campaign management facility helps sales departments track advertising sales opportunities from initial lead qualification through to securing the business, said Sii.
"Insiight Advertising has been designed with the user in mind, offering efficient automation and the power and flexibility to sell more effectively to target markets," said Sii's vice president of marketing for newspaper operations, Albert de Bruijin.
"One of the most exciting features of Insiight Advertising is it enables remote staff to work on the system as effectively off-site as those in the office."
The advertising solution has the ability to calculate ad rates in up to six currencies simultaneously, as well as remote-access capabilities via the Internet for print or Web ad generation, automatic compilation and management of the customer database.
Certain customers also can access appropriate areas of the system over the Internet to create and place their own advertisements electronically with Insiight's browser-based user interface, said Sii.
Insiight Advertising allows users to open multiple ads on-screen, track dollar or unit volume contracts, trigger for pricing by graphic depth or flat charge, view previous versions of ads and convert expired or killed ads into new ads to be rescheduled.
The advertising software estimates the number of pages needed, controls the amount of filler placed on a page, will sell standby advertising in place of filler and can fill pages back-to-front or front-to-back.
The Insiight advertising solution was acquired from CompuText Inc. and its WorldClass advertising system following a joint operating agreement the companies reached earlier this year.
