December 1999 - Now that the two major trade shows in the Newspaper industry are over, Nexpo and IFRA, all the vendors who have announced their support for Adobe¬ InDesign have shown their products and development plans. The cards are on the table.

So who has the best hand? Are all the hands basically alike, since they are all based upon the very same product, InDesign?

As it turns out, there are four different approaches to using InDesign in conjunction with a newspaper system. The most simple that was demonstrated was to simply show that you can accept EPSF files created by InDesign and include them in your system. CCI showed an example of this approach. The second was to treat InDesign as a document which is stored in Lotus Notes, and fed text and graphics through an interface from the document management system. SII showed an example of this approach. The third approach was to write some plug-ins for InDesign, very similar to the way developers write Xtensions for Quark Xpress, and then manage InDesign files from a database which points to those files, essentially a header-base. Baseview showed an example of this approach, as did several others, who want to offer either Xpress or InDesign to their customers without favoring one over the other. This is basically a lowest-common-denominator approach. The fourth was simply twist on the plug-in approach to making InDesign suitable for newspapers as shown by Mediasystemen.

Only one vendor has gone beyond doing plug-ins, and has actually integrated InDesign objects within a complete multi-user database architecture. DTI showed the only example of this approach. The page elements and text created by InDesign are stored inside a true SQL database structure, enabling database directory and search access to all of the information by multiple users. The remarkable advantages of this approach are database-managed workflow, true database management of all publishable information, the most efficient multi-user production environment, and computer-automated pagination.

Because the advantages of this approach are so significant, and the very openness of InDesign makes a large variety of implementation methods possible, DTI is a little surprised that no other vendor has taken this approach of integration at a core level. They have their reasons of course: a large installed base of QuarkXpress is one, which limits development to doing the same plug-ins for InDesign as Xtensions for Quark. Another reason is "time to market"; the simpler approaches are the only chance to be counted for those who entered the fray only lately. Another reason, is some vendors have such a large investment in their own technology that they don't want to bite the bullet to make such a drastic change. There is even the "all things to all people" approach that a couple of vendors are taking; which allows them to tell any potential customer anything they want to hear, but which precludes them from putting all their resources into developing and supporting any one solution. Whatever all the reasons are, DTI is currently all alone in the approach of totally integrating InDesign at the object and database level.

DTI had some advantages in doing this. It was first to sign with Adobe and has a significant head start. It never went down the Quark path and therefore has no fear of leaving behind any customers to take advantage of the technology of InDesign. The architecture of DTI's database-centered system, will allow us to upgrade our current customer base. And we had the guts, early on, to decide to replace our own composition engine with InDesign.

InDesign is a popular tool, however, DTI has never tried to take the popular or easy route just to win customers. Instead, decisions have been based on what is best technically, and DTI has established a record of technology leadership. Evidence of this is our early adoption of Postscript when popular opinion was that it would be too slow for daily newspapers. More evidence was our adoption of Macintosh computers when popular opinion dubbed them toys, and our sticking with Macs when Apple was having hard times. (We added Windows only after NT came out, which was vastly superior to regular Windows.) More evidence was our move to client-server computing, when the trend in the industry was to adopt Quark. Integrating InDesign at the core level is consistent with all of DTI's history ? we simply choose to do things the right way, popular or not. In the end, this has always paid off.

Feedback from the major trade shows is exciting; those who have seen the NewsSpeed 5.0 system are recognizing and acknowledging the difference. DTI's NewsSpeed 5.0 system offers significant advantages over any competitive systems with InDesign. Adobe InDesign alone boasts some very powerful features. Embedding these features into a robust, multi user database environment means that publishers can have not only powerful layout and design tools for a better product, but they can have a more powerful production environment and a more profitable product as well.