WORLD

CONSORTIUM

Welcome to

An overview byPhil Elliott

Satzconcept Skandinavia a.s.

What is it?• A desktop publishing system?• A set of modular, high quality

publishing tools?• A high end typographic system?• An extremely powerful and flexible

composition and pagination engine?

The answer is “Yes”It can be all of these.

In fact it has become one of the most open and powerful

document rendering systems available in the world today.

History• Began development 13 years ago• Goals - To develop a totally open and

modular set of high end publishing tools– Everything is in ASCII format– Everything is totally macro driven

• Developed to be Platform Independent• Used SGML as basis for its native mark-

up language• Included powerful internal Scripting and

Showstring language

Who uses it?• Over 10,000 users worldwide

including:-– Typographic Houses– Printers– Publishing Houses– Commercial Companies– Government Agencies– Graphic Designers and Advertising Agencies

What does it offer?

• Full composition and pagination of SGML and XML Instances without compromise to the Instance

• Full typographic control • Full Math capability (TeX and LaTeX)• Full tables capability (including Cals.)• Multi-language support (over 40 languages supported)• Powerful Scripting and Showstring language• Manual or fully automated page make-up• On-line capabilities• Desktop or Black-box versions• ODBC and OCX capabilities

Desktop Interface

3B2 provides the desktop user with a fully customisable interface (GUI) which allows simultaneous WYSIWYG and Edit bar displays of the text stream.

Full support for generationand display of Equations.– Uses TEX commands

• <$> for inline<$>• <$$> for display<$$>

– Filter for handling LATEX– Displays both marked-up

stream and WYSIWYG versions simultaneously

– Manual entry orautomated processing

Math

TablesVersatile and powerful tables management– Totally configurable

• multi-column• mutli cell• span columns• span pages• continuation headers

– Automatic rules based placement

– Handles tables in CALS format

SGML and XMLHandles SGML / XML in native format– No conversion or pre-

processing of Instance required on import or export

– No compromise to integrity of Instance

– Full handling of Attributes, Elements and Entities

– James Clarke SP Parser included

– Fully automated page make-up

Languages• Ideally suited to the

production of multi-lingual publications

• 3B2 currently handles over 40 different languages– Western to Eastern– Latin based to Cyrillic– Soon CJK

• Has full hyphenation control• Can work with mixed

languages in a single text stream

AutomationThrough its powerful scripting and macro

languages 3B2 can be implemented as a fully automated black-box composition and

pagination engine allowing:

– Dynamic interpretation of SGML/XML/marked-up data, enabling data manipulation and re-positioning without compromise to the integrity of the original Instance

– Dynamic placement and sizing of tables, graphics, footnotes and endnotes

– Dynamic generation of folio’s, Indexes and Contents.– Automatic high speed pagination

OUTPUT

INTERNET /INTRANET

CD - ROM

PostScript PDF /TIFFEPSGIF

ELECTRONICFILE

This is the final paperversion.

EXTERNAL TEXT

IMAGE LIBRARY

DATABASE

MODEL PART No. DESCRIPTION

Shuttle 12345 Wing Section

Shuttle 12346 Hydraulic Valve

Shuttle 12347 Valve Cover

MANUSCRIPT

TEXTFILE

S G M L/XML

Structured

Text Stream

COMPOSITION/PAGINATION

Automated ProductionSOURCE

Key Applications

Education & Legal• Scientific,

Technical & Medical Journals

• Educational Books• Encyclopaedias• Dictionaries• Legal Publications

– Bound– Loose-leaf

Commercial• Manuals

– User– Service

• Catalogues– Product– Parts

• Directories– Standard– Yellow Pages

Platforms Supported

Desktop Platform– Windows

•95•98•NT

Black-box Platform– NT– Sun Unix– HP UX

Power - Flexibility - Speed

The Solution for Complex Publishing Applications