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by Rose Blessing "E-books are more than hype right now. E-books are definitely here," asserted Victor McCrary, group leader, Information Storage and Integrated Systems Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). McCrary was speaking at the Electronic Book 1999 conference held in Gaithersburg, MD, in September, the second such conference sponsored by NIST; he chaired the event. McCrary and many other speakers--including the reading-device makers--agreed that improved displays, lowered device weights and decreased power requirements are desired. "A lot of work still needs to be done in terms of (creating) a thriving electronic book industry," added McCrary. He credited SoftBook Press and NuvoMedia

Maybe we have an answer to all our prepress problems. It's called PDF. That's short for Portable Document Format. It's Adobe's file format. It's not difficult to grasp the basic principles of what PDF is all about. But it takes more than the page I have here, so please go read our related stories, then come back. All done? Good. (OK, for those of you who hate to flip pages, you should at least know that a PDF file can be made from a PostScript file. PostScript is the final format of a file made with Adobe's PageMaker or Illustrator programs and Quark's QuarkXPress, among others.) So, you

INPUT: a few dollars for new software + a little time to learn to use it OUTPUT: time saved; errors minimized; consistent and dynamic-looking pages Tremendous advantage can be gained through effective application of digital techniques and technologies, advises Irving S. Berman, digital production and workflow specialist for 21st Century Publishing and Communications (21C). Of course it helps to know the tools to use. So Berman compiled this list of concisely described software automation tools to share with BookTech readers. As extensive as it is, it is still by no means a definitive list, he says, and he invites readers to help him add

By Rose Blessing The following are just a few of the many PDF-related tools shown at Seybold San Francisco. www.acquiredknowledge.com EZ-PDF, from Acquired Knowledge With EZ-PDF, a prepress pro can set up PDF Distiller menu settings for a client's typical work and "package" them for the clients to use. EZ-PDF also includes pre-defined styles for common types of work such as digital advertising, large-format output or Web viewing. EZ-PDF can be configured to accept and/or automatically fill in job ticket information, according to the Portable Job Ticket Format specification defined by Adobe Systems. www.adobe.com Adobe PostScript Extreme, from Adobe Extreme is an extensible systems

by Tatyana Sinioukov Seybold Seminars program director Thad McIlroy, Arcadia House, highlights key issues of PDF workflows Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), the new golden child of the publishing industry, was a hot topic at Seybold in San Francisco in September. As PDF workflows are being implemented in various ways by industry pioneers, many agree that PDF stands a very good chance of becoming the standard for digital workflows in the near future. PDF, says Thad McIlroy, president of the San Francisco-based Arcadia House and program director, Seybold Seminars, will have a profound impact on the efficiency and profitability of workflows. A major advantage