Newspaper publishing digital workflow with PDF

I. Analysis of the Present Situation of Domestic Newspaper Publishing Production

Before the appearance of process technology and PDF standard, the publishing process of newspapers still has the defects of theory and practical application, which limits the development of newspaper industry technology. At present, the vast majority of domestic newspaper publishing processes use the PS standard as the core data flow publishing process (PS runs through advertising, collection and issuance, printing, printing, data storage, etc.), and each link is highly independent. Lack of effective cooperation and unified management. There are many limitations and drawbacks to this existing process.

Newspaper production safety

The security of newspaper production is a top priority for any newspaper company. The security of newspaper publishing involves many aspects. Here we only analyze the security problems caused by the flaws in the PS standard.

The political security of newspaper production is mainly manifested in the intentional destruction of the use of PS's technical loopholes to tamper with the layout of newspapers. Because PS language as a programming language, theoretically supports the modification and editing of various rules, you can actually use a lot of convenient tools to directly open the PS to modify or replace text or external images.

The quality and safety of newspaper production is mainly reflected in the inconsistency between the contents of the editor's signature and the actual contents of the report. The reason for this is mainly due to the fact that PS language may have inconsistencies in the interpretation of RIP. The emergence of such problems is mainly reflected in the text fonts of newspapers and the changes in the color of pictures.

Due to the inherent technical flaws of PS, newspapers can only strengthen the security of newspaper publishing by improving management in the production process of newspapers, but it is impossible to fundamentally solve them from the technical point of view.

The efficiency of newspaper production

How to achieve the “late draft and early newspaper release”, that is, to improve the timeliness of newspaper publishing as much as possible is also a goal pursued by various newspaper companies. However, due to the limitation of technical conditions, the existing newspaper publishing process has restricted the further improvement of the effectiveness of newspapers. Mainly reflected in the following aspects.

On the one hand, the volume of data related to newspaper production and production is large, resulting in a decrease in data transfer efficiency. Because of the large amount of data, a lot of time is wasted on data transmission. On the other hand, all aspects of newspaper publishing production and production of hardware and software equipment are relatively decentralized and independent, lacking of unified status monitoring and control management. In actual production, the convergence and communication between various links wastes a lot of time, and the production efficiency of equipment cannot be fully realized.

Newspaper Digital Asset Management and Reuse

At present, digital asset management of newspapers mainly involves two aspects. The first is the carrier that is saved, that is, which format file is selected for preservation. At present, many newspapers store FIT, PS, etc., and newspaper companies use tools to reprocess PS. Save it and publish it online. However, there is a fatal flaw in these methods, that is, the consistency with the contents of the actual report is not fully guaranteed, and the emergence of PDF solves this problem. However, how to accurately generate high-quality PDF files for electronic newspapers that are suitable for web publishing is a key issue that must be solved in newspapers and magazines. At present, the tools that provide PDF data for the production of newsletters have limitations due to their own technical conditions. The resulting PDFs have deficiencies in terms of content and fonts, and cannot fully guarantee consistency with the printed content of the newspapers.

On the other hand, the real-time nature and degree of automation of data preservation are relatively poor, and often there are many manual interventions in newspapers for data storage, which is time-consuming and laborious.

Based on the above analysis, we can see that the current newspaper publishing technology can not fully meet the needs of newspaper publishing in terms of security, efficiency, quality, and digital asset management.

Second, PDF digital workflow application

With the continuous development and maturity of the PDF standard and digital workflow technology, the adoption of the PDF-based digital flow technology has become an inevitable trend in the production of newspapers at home and abroad. At present, in the developed countries such as Europe and the United States, PDF digital workflow technology has become the mainstream technology for newspaper publishing.

In China, PDF digital workflow technology is first applied in high-end publishing and printing. Since the very beginning, our agency has paid attention to PDF digital workflow technology, especially in newspaper publishing. In order to provide comprehensive data and solutions for newspaper production technology reform and construction in the next step, after full technical demonstration, in the second half of 2004, we cooperated with the domestic software supplier Peking University Founder, and the newspaper Xin Minsheng In the publication and production of the book, the newspaper PDF workflow product developed by Peking University Founder specifically for the domestic newspaper industry has been introduced. After more than a year of barrier-free operation, CCS completed the technological transformation of the publishing production system of all the newspapers, including Zhejiang Daily, Qianjiang Evening News, and Today Morning Post, at the end of 2005. Newspaper security publishing system.

The application of the Changshu newspaper security publishing system in the CCS involves the production of newspaper advertising document data processing, newspaper layout group proofs, pass editions, newspaper digital data storage, and prepress production of Indian newspapers. To process and issue advertising documents/layouts, various proofing methods in newspaper layouts, scanning/monitoring of editing/editing, printing PDF generation, layout document encryption/decryption, and newspaper layout digital data generation and filing control, PDF version, PDF layout Receives, carries on unified control and management to the entire process of high-speed imposition, output, and other newspaper publishing production of printing plants and on-demand printing sites.

In the newspaper advertising department, Changyou conducts PDF generation and proofreading on the advertisement layout, checks whether the advertising document meets the printing specifications, and early detection of erroneous advertisement documents reduces quality accidents. Convert all kinds of complex formats of advertising files into EPS with a small amount of data and can't be modified. When the newspapers are published in newspapers, they are transferred to the newspaper layout. This reduces the network pressure caused by large amounts of data circulation.

In the photocopying group edition department of the newspaper, a newspaper layout PDF file was generated using smooth flow, and proofing of newspaper printing was performed based on PDF. A variety of printing proofing equipment is unified by the smooth flow of centralized control and management, through the equipment load balance control, improve the production efficiency of the equipment; at the same time, smooth flow and acquisition and editing to achieve the newspaper PDF version of the issuance and pass version control, the use of PDF self-contained Characteristics, completely embedded in a PDF file in each layout related to the picture, text, fonts and other information, completely avoid the previous PS file "dragging with women" phenomenon, and because of the small amount of data, the plate does not need to package unpacking This greatly saves the production time of newspapers and increases production efficiency. In addition, PDF has performed full encryption control during the entire newspaper publishing process. Encrypted PDFs cannot be modified in the entire production process. Plus, the stability of PDF provides effective technical means for newspaper publication security.
In addition, the 11 newspaper points of the Press and Printing Co., Ltd. also used the smooth flow to conduct prepress production processing of newspapers, high-speed imposition of newspaper output, and curve compensation and counter compensation according to the printing process of newspapers to achieve the standardization of newspaper printing production. Data technology control, so as to further improve newspaper printing quality. At the same time in the smooth flow of newspaper layout, large version, dot matrix multi-level security checks, always ensure the safety of newspaper production.

In addition, in the newspaper information room, at the same time as the publication of the newspaper document, the free flow system automatically archives and stores the PDF files in the newspaper layout, and automatically generates the low-precision PDF and layout JPG images for electronic publication. Because the documents stored in the data are printed in the same PDF file as the originals, the consistency between the newspaper data storage and the reported contents is ensured, which lays a solid foundation for the digital asset management of the newspaper.

Third, the development trend of PDF digital workflow

After the smooth circulation of the newspaper security publishing system was successfully applied in the production of newspapers and periodicals of our company, there has been no newspaper production security accident in our society so far. The cooperation in all aspects of newspaper publishing has been smoother, and the timeliness of newspaper publishing has also been improved. Moreover, by coordinating with our social newsletter system, the online newsletter is released in a timely manner.

Changliu's revolution in the security, timeliness, and digital asset management aspects of our newspaper publication fully demonstrates the potential of PDF digital workflow technology in newspaper publication production. Today, emerging media such as the Internet, TV, and mobile phones have challenged traditional media, and PDF digital workflow technology has provided a powerful technical guarantee for the newspaper industry to face challenges. It is to achieve full digital, safe, and efficient production of newspaper publishing. Provides technical means. We have reason to believe that PDF digital workflow technology will become one of the important contents of the third technical revolution in newspaper publishing.

Reprinted from: Digital Printing