This week’s podcast features Chris Western from tformat. tformat is a PTC partner focused on the Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher (APP) (formerly known as 3B2).  Chris was hired at Advent, the original developers of 3B2 as a writer to document the product and it’s usage. In his tenure, he not only developed the product documentation but training materials as well. Since then, he has specialized in training on APP (3B2)

APP takes such a different approach, training is critical to develop stylesheets effectively and well.  When done well, APP development can be deployed as a lights out solution for the most difficult automated publishing tasks. APP is the publishing engine you turn to when you can’t achieve what you want to do anywhere else. It’s an extremely powerful product.

For example, with APP, you can auto-fill advertising content. it’s not uncommon for us to see customers implementing rules like these:

• if one side of the page has dark print, then we want a similar dark ink image on the reverse side of the page because the pages are thin
• If Advertiser A is on the left hand page, then Advertiser B cannot be on the right hand page; and/or it must be N # of pages away.

Also, if an editor wants to hand-tweak the page before the deliverable is finalized, Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher has the capability to do this: editors can move graphics and reflow text if they want to.

It’s my pleasure to present Chris Western so he can share his experience with APP and teaching others to use it as well.

Enjoy!

 

 Chris Western, tformat, chats with Liz Fraley about Arbortext Print Publisher (formerly, 3B2): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Chris Western, tformat, chats with Liz Fraley about Arbortext Print Publisher (formerly, 3B2): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week’s podcast features Chris Makler from Aplia. Aplia is part of Cengage Learning.  Chris works on a team that has built an interesting application on top of Arbortext Editor. They’re using a lot of different technology to create an educational application for teaching economics.

Customization is a tricky subject. Used intelligently, and with prudence, it can be extremely effective. Arbortext Editor has hooks available to developers to touch every part of the document and Arbortext application. Aplia is one of those cases where they’re doing it well and in pursuit of an industry application where it works.

It’s my pleasure to present Chris Makler so he can share his experience customizing Arbortext and the XML application they’ve built at Aplia.

Enjoy!

 

 Chris Makler, Aplia: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Chris Makler, Aplia: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week’s podcast features Todd Hicks from Wolters Kluwer.  I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for a long time. Todd Hicks has been an Arbortext community member for a long time. Todd presented at AUGI and at PTC/User conferences. He started out supporting a division of Wolters Kluwer but now supports their global Arbortext deployment. He’s built custom applications and extensions to Arbortext that even PTC wanted (then developed).  Long-time community members never miss a presentation by Todd Hicks or one of his team at WK. They’re always doing something special, innovative, and technically spectacular.

It’s been my pleasure to get to know Todd better over the years and it’s a greater pleasure to share his knowledge, experience, and advice with the community through this podcast today.

Enjoy!

 

 Todd Hicks, Wolters Kluwer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Todd Hicks, Wolters Kluwer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

DITA may have begun with IBM, but it is now controlled by Oasis. PTC/Arbortext was the only vendor invited to be a charter member of the Oasis DITA Technical Committee.  PTC has a fully-functional, enterprise-level DITA solution: Arbortext Editor, Publishing Engine, and Content Management System. DITA is fully supported. Specializations require no additional programming (beyond the DTD/schema creation) to implement in Arbortext.

This week’s podcast features Robin Sloan from PTC.

Robin Sloan is a name everyone in the Arbortext community knows. Robin is a Product Manager in the Arbortext business unit. She was part of Arbortext prior to the acquisition. Robin was integral in designing the modularity of the DITA stylesheets that ship with Arbortext Editor, Styler, and Publishing Engine. PTC still maintains a DITA answers mailing list that Robin answers.

It’s my pleasure to interview Robin about getting started with Arbortext and DITA. This will be the first of several interviews with Robin. There’s knowledge she has that nearly no one else knows and she’s eager to share.

Enjoy!

 

 Robin Sloan, PTC: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Robin Sloan, PTC: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

About a year ago, I did some stylesheet work for Keith McGinnis at Review Publishing. Review Publishing produces a weekly free newspaper and online news media portal. They were on their way to supporting all five of their local weekly papers and becoming a major media source and were looking for assistance automating a subset of their data sharing between the print and online content sources. This simple stylesheet project gave me a glimpse into a truly innovative media company.

This week’s podcast is an interview with Keith McGinnis. Keith is spearheading the XML project development at Review Publishing.  It is my pleasure to talk to him about his experiences and all the innovative projects that they’ve been doing to revitalize and transform their company from a newspaper to true media company.  Keith’s is a story that inspires us all to continue to always try for more.

Enjoy!

 

 Keith McGinnis, Review Publishing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Keith McGinnis, Review Publishing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Early in 2005, Arbortext acquired Advent, the makers of 3B2 publishing software. That year at the annual AUGI conference, the greater Arbortext community got their first look at the capabilities that 3B2 brought to the publishing table. For the most part, we were stunned. A lot of the things we’d been told you couldn’t do — or rather shouldn’t do — you could with 3B2. Today, it still feels as though we only had the briefest of glimpses of what it could do. The powerful impression of capability remains even though most of us never really saw the product again.

Since that time, PTC acquired Arbortext and 3B2 was renamed Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher (APP).  As soon as we started supporting APP, we reached out to GPSL to add specialized support to our partner network.  GPSL was founded by former Advent employees. If you’ve been a part of the 3B2 community for any length of time, you certainly know GPSL. If you’ve never been an APP/3B2 user, it’s likely you’ve never run into GPSL before.

This past June, PTC released Arbortext 5.4 and it included a free technology preview of APP with Styler. Users finally get the chance to use this product they’ve wanted to touch and feel for a very long time.

In that light, this week’s podcast is an interview with Gareth Oakes from GPSL. It is my pleasure to talk to him about his experiences, the expertise and business of GPSL, and his advice for working with Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher and stylesheets.

Enjoy!

 

 Gareth Oakes, GPSL: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Gareth Oakes, GPSL: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Here’s a recording of the webinar we held on November 20, 2009.

Our presenter was Scott Allshouse, the Regional Director for Technical Illustration Products at PTC. He represents the Arbortext IsoDraw Service Information Solutions.

Here’s a summary of the talk:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In today’s high tech companies, they understand the value of providing detailed accurate information on demand. You can enrich the content of your information by delivering technical illustrations and intelligent graphics to optimize product information in the forms of assembly instructions, parts catalogs, operator and service manuals, training documents, and more.

This interactive web session shows how you can automate the process of creating and updating high-quality technical illustrations and animations with Arbortext IsoDraw, a single software tool for all of your 2D and 3D illustration needs.

Enjoy!

(You may need the Citrix Go2Meeting codec which is available here.)

 

 Let your Illustrations Do The Talking [0:60:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week’s podcast is an interview with Berry Braster from Tedopres. If you’ve been a part of the Arbortext community for any length of time, you’ve seen Berry and you know about The Book.

When I say “The Book” and “Tedopress” in the same breath, everyone knows which book I mean. Tedopress is well known for giving away the book that defines best practices for writing for international audiences, for preparing your content for translation.  The  name of the book is “The New Language in International Business, Simplified English” and you can get your free copy here.

Year after year, I always looked forward to seeing Berry. I’ve had The Book for as long as I can remember. It was one of the first references I got when I was learning.

It is my pleasure to talk to him about his experiences, the expertise and business of Tedopress, and his advice for preparing content for translation. As with all best practices, it’s not the technology but application of it that determines the success of dynamic information development projects.

Enjoy!

 

 Berry Braster, Tedopres: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Berry Braster, Tedopres: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week’s podcast is an interview with Suzanne Napoleon. If you’ve been a part of the Arbortext community for any time at all, you know the name Suzanne Napoleon. Suzanne has been the voice of FOSI for at least 15 years on the adepters mailing list, at conferences, and has helped numerous individuals learn the intricacies of FOSI development — from beginner to expert. Her FOSI tutorials have been invaluable to many people in every industry.

It is my pleasure to talk to her about her experiences, her expertise, and her advice for all of us who want to get better at what we do every day. Whether we use FOSI on a daily basis or not, her advice applies to stylesheet development for us all. It’s not the technology, but the best practices in the application of skills required to achieve results in automated publishing environments that makes the difference. Plus, it’s a fair bet that if you’re trying to do something with a FOSI and having trouble, Suzanne can help.

 

 Suzanne Napoleon, FOSI Expert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Suzanne Napoleon, FOSI Expert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This month’s podcast guest is Rajal Shah from Juniper Networks.

Rajal Shah is the Director of Document Engineering in the Foundation Technologies group at Juniper Networks. FT is the corporate R&D Group at Juniper Networks. His group is responsible for vision of a unified documentation and publishing approach across all five business groups at Juniper. I’m delighted he had time to share his experience, knowledge, and history with Arbortext, DITA, and organizing single-sourcing projects.

Rajal was the featured speaker at the October meeting of the SF Bay Arbortext PTC/User group.

 

 PubWright Podcast: Rajal Shah, Content is King [0:40:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 PubWright Podcast: Rajal Shah, Content is King [0:40:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download