Database publishing is and has been the focus of our business since our beginning in 1991. The development and management teams at FML have extensive knowledge and a proven track record in implementing such systems. Simon & Schuster's The Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, 10th Edition, is one of our most comprehensive database publishing projects. We pulled information out of the database, cross-referenced the data, then formatted all of the information as required based on structured rule sets. For example, players who achieved the highest batting average for a particular team in a given year have their averages printed in bold type. Text flow and word wraps are monitored, using structured rules, enabling automatic adjustment of leading and kerning as well as page breaks. It is important to note that what previously took more than a six months to publish (over 3,000 pages) — now takes less than a month. Once the database is brought up to date, Macmillan personnel can literally press a button and the computer will complete the publishing process.
Our expertise includes complex page composition distributed to paper and multiple media. With the advent of the Internet, companies are preparing industrial strength databases to distribute information electronically. Although electronic distribution has growing mass appeal, a wide variety of companies have realized that they want and need to continue publishing to paper as well. PatternStream gives them the ability to publish what they want, when they want it, quicker and more cost efficiently than ever before!
During a new product review, we look for information patterns. An example of a pattern is a name, address, city, phone number, organization name, title, etc. that may comprise a directory. Pictures, graphics, product specifications, pricing, and any type of textual information can also form repetitious patterns (varying in length) that fill a page of a catalog or catalog, for example. Even if an item is not in the database flow, such as a image, PatternStream, working with FrameMaker, will automatically adjust the flow.
PatternStream's technology works in conjunction with FrameMaker - offering many advantages:
These output capabilities give you the option to publish information to the media of choice or multiple medias that you need — from one source at the same time. You can publish information to:
FrameMaker offers more features, functions and publishing power. When publishing to PDF and HTML file formats, hyperlink information is saved and becomes usable in the electronic document (see Rich, Web-Ready Documents without Re-Authoring). The table of contents and indices that are automatically created by FrameMaker and WWW hyperlinks remain active in the PDF and HTML derived hyperlinked files. FrameMaker is the best application for creating PDF files, passing along not only hyperlinks but also bookmark and paragraph information during the document creation process (see Ultimate Acrobat Document Creation in One Easy Step).
Automated publishing is here now using FML's application PatternStream. Our customers have a distinct advantage over their competition utilizing a complete, cost-effective, efficient, in-house publishing system.
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