Comments for Publishing with Silicon

Comment on iPad and Flash by admin

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:59:48 +0000

Hi Nikhil!

Apple and Google are oddly co-conspirators at times (arrayed against Microsoft and/or Adobe); their HTML 5 efforts have overlap, for example, while their device/phone efforts are directly at odds. Interesting that Flash is supported on Android devices…

You’re right, in terms of “doing what it says” there is nothing wrong with the iPad. I guess for us programmers, we shouldn’t look to consumer devices for computing power: it is just a bit frustrating to watch that level of underlying power get intentionally dumbed down to ensure that consumers won’t suffer from having to think too much, and the majority of existing software will not run, though it could have easily with less development effort and equally strong consumer capabilities. But yes, the iPad kills the kindle in its current state: though I’m sure Amazon won’t sit still.

What an insult to University students, really… books for those reading novels, maybe, or use as an iPod on steroids; a playstation 4. A university student with a brain would want an un-neutered computer.

Perhaps they will come up with a small device to my liking some day. Meanwhile I will complain.

Comment on iPad and Flash by Nikhil

Nikhil — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:23:34 +0000

I see the iPad (be it regular or maxi) as a device that will replace books for the university students to begin with, and if Apple is successfull in it’s negotiations with university libraries, bring the whole universe of scientific and literary sources to the fingertips of every student. Question is who will succeed – Apple or Google? Apple has a great device, Google already has scanned books, but still requires some legal hurdles to cross. If Google (hand in hand with HTC) can come out with an iGoogle device within the next 12 months, the iPad would be history.
Flash or no Flash, as evidenced in the last 36 months, has not been a significant player in Apple product success. It has succeeded beyond expectations (and imaginations). What it means is that no one (software) is irreplaceable. If Flash was that significant, iPhone/iTouch would have been a dud. Not so. The demo on the apple website for the iPad is impressive. It does what it is supposed to do. That is it. Nothing more. Nothing less. It does not promise and underdeliver or underpromise and overdeliver. It claims to be good at 4 things…email, picture album, ebook reader and watching movies. Essentially a media player. It does not tout to be a pc or a computer that can even wash your laundry!!

Comment on iPad and Flash by Ipad And Flash - XTS

Ipad And Flash - XTS — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:19:37 +0000

[...] Publishing With Silicon » Blog Archive » IPad And Flash – Max Of course I am unhappy that they would not support Flash on the iPad, if that is the case (a bit unclear from news today). There could be no performance excuse, as they had with the iPhone initially. It is funny how Adobe and Apple have… [...]

Comment on iPad and Flash by Ipad And Flash - Nardu

Ipad And Flash - Nardu — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:09:01 +0000

Comment on iPad and Flash by Ipad And Flash | AXI

Ipad And Flash | AXI — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:03:21 +0000

Comment on Adobe Learns XML, Slowly by davidjmcclelland

davidjmcclelland — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:20:16 +0000

Thanks for pulling this info together and providing context.

Comment on The Two Perspectives on XML by admin

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:53:15 +0000

Thank you both for the comments! Yes I should have described more of just what differentiates the document- and data-perspectives… will post again on this I’m sure, but in general the XML I see in the data world tends to be message-oriented: often a very flat structure, usually much smaller files, relational data wrapped in tags, SOAP messages, WSDL, etc. Developers usually love tools like XML Spy: they vastly prefer schema to DTD (Microsoft even went so far as to say “DTDs are a security risk” LOL) as strong data types do make a tons of sense for them, and as structures are often defined automatically they don’t see much value in human-readable schema. Document-centric XML has to handle, um, documents, with characteristics such as component reuse, hyperlinking, cross-references; the things DITA handles are generally relevant only to this side of XML. Many in the document-centric world still hand code DTDs. Of course XML is XML, so it is a continuum without a strongly identifiable border.

When we started Silicon Publishing in 2000, we stopped using Xyvision. Initially this was not our first choice but economic reality. However, being forced into early adoption of InDesign automation turned out to be a very good thing. We built apps that opened up the desktop app and would run for 22 hours to produce, for example, 100 healthcare directories from a database, driven by a rules table. We begged Adobe for an InDesign Server for 5 years, and were in the beta before the first one came out: my request to join the beta was something like “I am probably the only person on the planet who literally dreams about an InDesign Server.”

Xyvision was (is?) great! Very fast, great composition, one of the first/best tools to automate typographical craft. It will probably stay around a long time because many automated document generation programs work with it – we find people trying to move away from it, yet typically there is significant rework. I hope SDL keeps it going; they sure have acquired many companies. I still like InDesign Server better as it surpasses the typography/graphics, but I miss the speed.

Comment on The Two Perspectives on XML by Bill Trippe

Bill Trippe — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:45:02 +0000

Good thoughts. One question–did you ever get rid of Xyvision? I still see it in a lot of scientific and technical publishing.

Comment on The Two Perspectives on XML by loarabia

loarabia — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:54:19 +0000

Interesting read. I’d love to hear more. I’d be particularly interested in hearing your definition of document-centric XML and data-centric XML along with some examples to get a feel for the nuances you see in the two models and I’d also love to hear your telling of some more of the history and evolution of the standards.

thanks for a good read