Press Release

Boston, MA, March 2, 1999 –Publishers are increasingly seeking solutions that offer the greatest potential to integrate the latest technology and accepted standard applications into powerful easy-to-use workflow solutions. To this end, North Atlantic today announced at Seybold Boston ‘99 that NAPS Publishing System Version 2.0 will start shipping this month. In addition to several new ease-of-use features, this major NPS update will feature enhanced integration with QuarkXPress^®, Adobe InDesign^®, and MS-SQL Server^®. It also will provide enhanced cross-platform support for environments where users rely on both Windows^® and Macintosh^® platforms.

NPS Version 2.0 enhances user productivity with the addition of:

• Art Views – This flexible database view displays all standard types of art files and allows users to specify thumbnail size on-the-fly, as well as the number of thumbnails per row.
• Quick Find – Provides short-cut methods to find files, based on field entries or navigating a logical folder structure. Also provides "Quick" version of Book Position XPress Previews, and "Quick" version of Art Views.

NPS Version 2.0 enhances integration among popular publishing applications, with the addition of:

• Drag and Drop art from browser to Quark Picture boxes – Users can now drag art from the NPS browser (Query View or Art View) directly into QuarkXPress picture boxes. This feature is available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
• Support for Adobe InDesign – NPS now supports Adobe InDesign, including file storage, check-out/check-in, thumbnails in Query Views, and direct launch of InDesign upon file check-out.
• Support for MS-SQL Server – Users now have a choice between an SQL-compliant MS-Access database and the higher capacity MS-SQL Server. NPS uses the SQL database for storage of meta-data and file pointers. Files themselves are stored in a separate file database.
• Automatic generation of Postscript – Workflows can now be set up to automatically generate PostScript for output at a particular point in the workflow path. (Available for Macintosh only.)
• Assign Story to Page – After assigning a story to a particular page in NPS, any HNJs done from MS-Word^® automatically target the assigned QuarkXPress page for copyfit feedback and picture preview. (This feature links even more tightly the NPS workflow features with the optional HNJ Engine module which provides a two-way composition link between QuarkXPress and MS-Word.)
• HNJ Engine for Macintosh – HNJ Engine is now available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms, so whether you are using QuarkXPress for Windows or for Macintosh, you can get all the benefits of HNJ Engine.
• Export of New Text (HNJ Engine) – You can now export text from QuarkXPress to MS-Word, even if the text was not originally imported with HNJ Engine.
• Multi-Page Picture Previews of QuarkXPress Pages in MS-Word (HNJ Engine) – The HNJ Picture Preview tool in MS-Word now shows all pages of multi-page XPress documents. The scrollable bitmap preview shows how the text from the current MS-Word document will look when placed into the assigned QuarkXPress document.

NPS, whose initial release was announced at the Seybold show in March ’98, has enjoyed increasing popularity this year among publishers looking for workflow management solutions based on industry-accepted standard packages and true open architecture technologies, such as web browsers, SQL databases, QuarkXPress and Microsoft Word.

Through its separately-purchasable modules, NAPS Publishing System provides:

• Editorial workflow for file management, including check-out and check-in, and file routing by production stage, function or user-to-user.
• Scheduling for editorial, layout, and other production stages, allowing automatic tracking of what’s due and what’s behind schedule.
• Enhanced composition capabilities with Word and XPress. On the Word side: line counts, copyfit info, and layout preview. On the QuarkXPress side: automatic text revision from Word documents, batch import of text and art, and batch export of revised text back to Word documents.
• Client-server architecture with NT or UNIX servers and Explorer or Netscape browser clients.
• Supports TCP/IP locally and for remote users file transfers occur via HTTP.

North Atlantic Publishing Systems develops, markets, and supports software products for pre-press publishing. Its philosophy is to provide custom publishing systems built from standard components. NAPS Publishing System and HNJ Engine are North Atlantic's latest products. They were developed in response to input from thousands of existing users of North Atlantic products, including Workflow Administrator, CopyBridge and CopyFlow. For more information about North Atlantic Publishing Systems and its products, visit the company's web site at http://www.napsys.com.

Alice Fackre

North Atlantic Publishing Systems, Inc.

(978) 371-8989

alice@napsys.com

 

© North Atlantic Publishing Systems, Inc. 1997. All rights reserved.