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rschoen1-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 10, 2014
Question

Printing from Arbortext

  • October 10, 2014
  • 28 replies
  • 9354 views
We are running Arbortext v6.1 M010. We currently don't have either the Publishing Engine or the full version of Styler. To make a manuscript print out (very lightly formatted; suitable for proofreading), we are currently using a third party, Unix-based typesetting system. We would like to move our printing to Windows since we are now using the Windows version of Arbortext. I was wondering is anyone printing or creating a PS or PDF file from Arbortext and not using the Publishing Engine? Is this even possible? Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,
Rick

    28 replies

    L
    lfraley1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    October 10, 2014
    You can still get Print Composer, if you just want simple PDF output.

    On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Richard Schoen <->
    wrote:

    > We are running Arbortext v6.1 M010. We currently don’t have either the
    > Publishing Engine or the full version of Styler. To make a manuscript print
    > out (very lightly formatted; suitable for proofreading), we are currently
    > using a third party, Unix-based typesetting system. We would like to move
    > our printing to Windows since we are now using the Windows version of
    > Arbortext. I was wondering is anyone printing or creating a PS or PDF file
    > from Arbortext and not using the Publishing Engine? Is this even possible?
    > Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
    >
    >
    >
    > Regards,
    >
    > Rick
    >
    G
    GarethOakes16-Pearl
    16-Pearl
    October 12, 2014
    Hi Richard,

    We have done this for customers before. You can run the print jobs “by hand”, or with a bit of customisation you can integrate the publishing application with the Arbortext Editor GUI, or with your CMS.

    The biggest challenge will be writing the stylesheets, if you are publishing only simple manuscripts in a common style then probably not a big deal but you still need to keep that in mind. Most people these days are looking at XSL-FO technology for light print needs. We recently implemented Antenna House Formatter for an Arbortext customer and had a good experience.

    // Gareth Oakes
    // Chief Architect, GPSL
    // www.gpsl.co<">http://www.gpsl.co>

    On 11 Oct 2014, at 06:40 , Richard Schoen <-<<a style="COLOR:" blue;=" text-decoration:=" underline&quot;=" target="_BLANK" href="mailto:-">>">mailto:->> wrote:

    We are running Arbortext v6.1 M010. We currently don’t have either the Publishing Engine or the full version of Styler. To make a manuscript print out (very lightly formatted; suitable for proofreading), we are currently using a third party, Unix-based typesetting system. We would like to move our printing to Windows since we are now using the Windows version of Arbortext. I was wondering is anyone printing or creating a PS or PDF file from Arbortext and not using the Publishing Engine? Is this even possible? Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

    Regards,
    Rick
    P
    ptc-19080751-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    October 13, 2014
    Hi Richard,
    As Liz Fraley noted, you can buy a Print Composer license to run on Windows. The license includes the FOSI formatting engine and the APP formatting engine plus the free Styler interface for developing an authoring stylesheet.
    The full version of Styler for published output is an extra cost. However, since your documents are very lightly formatted, you don't need that expense because the Print Composer license also includes two complementary interfaces for FOSI development, one of which is designed specifically for newbies. So you should be able to equickly and easily develop a native FOSI stylesheet for print output. To make it as quick and easy as possible, I recommend my FOSI tutorials (fosiexpert.com/tutorials-new.html).
    FOSI is Arbortext Editor's native formatting language. It has been in use for two decades and is very stable. More information on FOSI is available at my website atfosiexpert.com/resources.html.
    Note that FOSI is easier to learn than XSL-FO and APP. With XSL-FO, you first need to learn XSLT. With native APP, you first need to learn Javascript. The only prerequisite for learning FOSI is experience with document formatting. Programming experience is not needed.
    In addition, FOSI formatting provides the fastest output with Arbortext Editor. Native FOSI is faster than XSL-FO and APP. And with the FOSI formatting pass reduction feature, which sounds suitable for your needs, formatting speed can be doubled, tripled, or more. Note that FOSI formatting speed does not depend on the skill of the developer, as with XSL and APP.
    With native FOSI, you won't have to buy the full version of Styler or any additional software products. For very light formatting, you probably won't need the services of an outside consultant, especially if my tutorials are utilized. So native FOSI is your most cost-effective choice.
    Please let me know any questions you may have.
    Good luck!Suzanne Napoleonwww.FOSIexpert.com"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"


    P
    ptc-56817901-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    October 13, 2014
    We recently moved from FOSI to XSL-FO with FOP for publishing to PDF and our production time dropped about 90%. This is on Win64.
      P
      ptc-19080751-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 13, 2014
      Hi Richard,
      As Liz Fraley noted, you can buy a Print Composer license to run on Windows. The license includes the FOSI formatting engine and the APP formatting engine plus the free Styler interface for developing an authoring stylesheet.
      Since your documents are very lightly formatted, you don't need to purchase the full version of Styler. The Print Composer license includes two complementary interfaces for FOSI development, one of which is designed specifically for newbies, so you can develop a native FOSI stylesheet for print/PS/PDF output. To make it as quick and easy as possible, I recommend my FOSI tutorials (fosiexpert.com/tutorials-new.html).

      FOSI is Arbortext Editor's native formatting language. It has been in use for more than two decades and is very stable. More information on FOSI is available at my website atfosiexpert.com/resources.html.
      Note that FOSI is easier to learn than XSL-FO and APP. With XSL-FO, you first need to learn XSLT. With native APP, you first need to learn Javascript. The only prerequisite for learning FOSI is experience with document formatting. Programming experience is not needed.
      In addition, FOSI formatting is faster than XSL-FO and APP. With the FOSI formatting pass reduction feature, which sounds suitable for your needs, formatting speed can be doubled, tripled, or more. And FOSI formatting speed does not depend on the skill of the developer, as with XSL and APP.
      Native FOSI is your most cost-effective choice as well. With native FOSI, you won't have to buy the full version of Styler or any additional software products. And you probably won't need the services of an outside consultant, especially if my tutorials are utilized.
      Please let me know any questions you may have.
      Good luck!Suzanne Napoleonwww.FOSIexpert.com"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"

      P
      ptc-19080751-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 13, 2014
      Hi Richard,
      As Liz Fraley noted, you can buy a Print Composer license to run on Windows. The license includes the FOSI formatting engine and the APP formatting engine plus the free Styler interface for developing an authoring stylesheet.
      Since your documents are very lightly formatted, you don't need to purchase the full version of Styler. The Print Composer license includes two complementary interfaces for FOSI development, one of which is designed specifically for newbies, so you can develop a native FOSI stylesheet for print/PS/PDF output. To make it as quick and easy as possible, I recommend my FOSI tutorials (fosiexpert.com/tutorials-new.html).

      FOSI is Arbortext Editor's native formatting language. It has been in use for more than two decades and is very stable. More information on FOSI is available at my website atfosiexpert.com/resources.html.
      Note that FOSI is easier to learn than XSL-FO and APP. With XSL-FO, you first need to learn XSLT. With native APP, you first need to learn Javascript. The only prerequisite for learning FOSI is experience with document formatting. Programming experience is not needed.
      In addition, FOSI formatting is faster than XSL-FO and APP. With the FOSI formatting pass reduction feature, which sounds suitable for your needs, formatting speed can be doubled, tripled, or more. And FOSI formatting speed does not depend on the skill of the developer, as with XSL and APP.
      Native FOSI is your most cost-effective choice as well. With native FOSI, you won't have to buy the full version of Styler or any additional software products. And you probably won't need the services of an outside consultant, especially if my tutorials are utilized.
      Please let me know any questions you may have.
      Good luck!Suzanne Napoleonwww.FOSIexpert.com"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"

      P
      ptc-19080751-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 13, 2014
      Hi Richard,
      As Liz Fraley noted, you can buy a Print Composer license to run on Windows. The license includes the FOSI formatting engine and the APP formatting engine plus the free Styler interface for developing an authoring stylesheet.
      Since your documents are very lightly formatted, you don't need to purchase the full version of Styler. The Print Composer license includes two complementary interfaces for FOSI development, one of which is designed specifically for newbies, so you can develop a native FOSI stylesheet for print/PS/PDF output. To make it as quick and easy as possible, I recommend my FOSI tutorials (fosiexpert.com/tutorials-new.html).

      FOSI is Arbortext Editor's native formatting language. It has been in use for more than two decades and is very stable. More information on FOSI is available at my website atfosiexpert.com/resources.html.
      Note that FOSI is easier to learn than XSL-FO and APP. With XSL-FO, you first need to learn XSLT. With native APP, you first need to learn Javascript. The only prerequisite for learning FOSI is experience with document formatting. Programming experience is not needed.
      In addition, FOSI formatting is faster than XSL-FO and APP. With the FOSI formatting pass reduction feature, which sounds suitable for your needs, formatting speed can be doubled, tripled, or more. And FOSI formatting speed does not depend on the skill of the developer, as with XSL and APP.
      Native FOSI is your most cost-effective choice as well. With native FOSI, you won't have to buy the full version of Styler or any additional software products. And you probably won't need the services of an outside consultant, especially if my tutorials are utilized.
      Please let me know any questions you may have.
      Good luck!Suzanne Napoleonwww.FOSIexpert.com"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"

      P
      ptc-19080751-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 13, 2014
      My apologies for the duplicate emails. My mailer has been experiencing "technical difficulties." 😞
      Suzanne
      G
      GarethOakes16-Pearl
      16-Pearl
      October 13, 2014
      Hi Steve,

      I'm intrigued by your statement "production time dropped about 90%", does this mean the new process with FOP is faster or slower?

      In my experience FOP is a poor choice for XSL-FO publishing because it is slow, has quite a few bugs, and does not correctly nor fully implement the XSL-FO specification. On the other hand it does come at an attractive price point 🙂

      // Gareth Oakes
      // Chief Architect, GPSL
      // www.gpsl.co
      P
      ptc-56817901-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      October 14, 2014
      FOP is much faster, what used to take hours is done in minutes. As individual processes the time savings isn't as high but we gain in the ability to run more processes in parallel where we were license bound with Composer. We also find that it is much easier to find someone who knows xslt and xsl-fo than someone who knows FOSI. We may move to a commercial FO engine later, but for our needs (we don't have floats or multi column) FOP is fine. Where we have complexity is in the data where we had to do all sorts of ACL FOSI hooks where we now do those in the XSLT before composition.

      That being said, Styler is a nice product if you don't have deep knowledge of the above listed standards and you have limited requirements. But when your formatting requirements are extensive, you quickly find that styler out of the box won't do the job and you have to use the fosi escape hatch and you are back to being human resource/knowledge constrained.
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