From: Erik Naggum <SGML@ifi.uio.no>
Date: 17 Oct 1992 00:10:16 +0100
Subject: Re: desktop publishing vs. the old fashioned way

"David Herron" <david@twg.com> writes:
|
|   bernhold@qtp.ufl.edu (David E. Bernholdt) wrote:
|   > Do publishing houses (the kind that generate paper output :-) use SGML
|   > yet?  Obviously they're going to use some kind of markup language when
|   > they put the document into production.  Is it likely to be SGML?  Will
|   > it ever be?  Can you ask a publisher for their book/journal/whatever
|   > DTD in order to write your document using it?
|
|   My guess: NO.

My guess: NO, not for another five years, maybe longer.  Remember that
we're trying to change the direction of a very large herd of elephants
that has gained a very high speed in the past 10-15 years.  We should be
happy for each individual that changes direction, but, to continue the
analogy, be aware that they might be run over by the rest, and that this
is forcing each elephant to make his choice more carefully.

|   Source for guess: The most recent issue of MicroTimes (a free biweekly
|   newspaper focussed on the computer industry and available (only?) in
|   Silicon Valley) has a longish interview with (name?) Seybold.  It's
|   an interesting interview with lots of interesting things said, but
|   there are two telling points:
|
|	   1. The paper pushers do not see how they can sell a purely
|	      electronic version of a book.  That is, they see their job
|	      primarily as pushing paper, not pushing information.

This isn't entirely right.  Don't forget the market; it pretty much
dictates where investment and research effort gets directed.  Of course,
it would be much "better" (in the academic sense) if we could have
electronic versions of any book and use the high-end technology that
some of us have available.  However, this market is so small that books
will cost so much money that the information user who had a choice
between a cheap book and an expensive CD-ROM would usually choose the
book.  In the beginning, the biggest payoffs should be realized where
the savings are most visible, as in encyclopaedia, dictionaries,
directories, and the like.  Isn't this where it's also happening?

Then there's the analogy that my father pointed out to me: You can sell
drills, or you can sell holes.  If you sell drills, you won't discover
industrial lasers or even water beam drilling.  However, remember that
once the market for this new stuff grows, the market for drills doesn't
_vanish_.  Likewise, I doubt that much information will ever be "purely
electronic" for a variety of reasons.  (Not counting the 15-20 gigabytes
of USENET every year, because 99.9% of it is completely useless 48 hours
after publication, an order of magnitude more than the newspapers.)

|	   2. The publishing houses are (*STILL*!) generally using
|	      proprietary document systems.

I think this has another simple explanation: Prior investments must pay
off before new ones can be made, as in "installed base inertia."  Most
of the publishers aren't that rich at the moment, either, and the more
they can make their authors or other information sources do of the
pre-press work, and the longer they can use their old equipment, the
better.

|   He said there were exceptions to both, fortunately ..

It's always the exceptions that are interesting...

Personally, I don't worry about the publishers.  I worry about the
typographically challenged who use WYSIWYG software in the authoring
phase and send "camera-ready copy" to the publisher, and thereby give
electronic document preparation a bad name in this serious and
conservative industry.  However, as long as people are sold flint stones
with colors and graphics, and are misled to believe it makes better fire
than a boring, grey lighter, all we need to do is hold up the lighter
and the important people will see the light (pardon the pun).  Things
like this take time.  I have never understood what all the hurry is
about.  Not that I don't try to hasten it, but hey! it takes several
years from idea to published book, anyway.  I sincerely hope that we
won't encourage even more completely content-free books just because
they can be produced with less effort.  However, I do hope that the
books that were never written because of the great toll involved, can
get written.  (It turns out that, sadly, we can't get only one of them.)

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum             :  ISO  8879 SGML     :      +47 295 0313
                        :  ISO 10744 HyTime   :
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