Dynamic publishing
Dynamic page publishing is a method of designing publications in which layout templates are created which can contain different content in different publications. Using this method, page designers do not work on finished pages, but rather on various layout templates and pieces of content, which can then be combined to create a number of finished pages. In cases where the same content is being used in multiple layouts, the same layout is being used for several different sets of content, or both, dynamic page publishing can offer significant advantages of efficiency over a traditional system of page-by-page design.
This technology is often leveraged in web-to-print solutions for corporate intranets to enable customization and ordering of printed materials, advertising automation workflows inside of advertising agencies, catalog generation solutions for retailers and variable digital print on demand solutions for highly personalized one to one marketing. The output from these solutions is often printed by a digital printing press, such as a Xerox iGen, Kodak NexPress, Hewlett-Packard Indigo, Canon ImagePRESS C7000VP or Xeikon production devices.
Common commercial applications for dynamic publishing include QuarkXPress Server, InDesign Server, DesignMerge, Online Print Solutions GroupCanvas, Frontlab Ad builder, Pageflex, Saepio, Balihoo, Printable FusionPro, FinerEdge Publisher, and RenderX XEP[1], amongst others.
PODI.org[2] promotes print on demand systems for web and print that leverage dynamic publishing technology through PPML output.
Dynamic Publishing is often considered to be a subset of automated publishing that enables generation of long documents, such as manuals or books from a content repository. Adobe Framemaker[3] software is a common automated publishing package.
Dynamic Publishing is often used for assembling large volumes of transactional documents, such as ads, collateral, brochures, catalogs, direct mail, eBooks and personalized correspondence from multiple sources for print and electronic output or other documents on demand or in variable data printing workflows. For high volume, mass composition of personalized correspondence, RenderX's applications, such as XEP Engine and Enmasse, can be used. By applying XSL Formatting Objects, XEP converts XML documents into a printable form: PDF, PostScript, AFP (Advanced Function Presentation), SVG or HTML.
The templates for generation of dynamic documents can be created in a wide variety of tools, like Docbench, Assentis:DocDesign, VisualXSL or even in Microsoft Word. In the latter case the templates are saved in WordML, and then processed by WordML2FO (developed by RenderX) to generate documents.
Dynamic Publishing is often associated with XML authoring and technologies related to the Semantic Web initiatives.
External Links
See also