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From: newsbytes@clarinet.com (NB-BOS)
Newsgroups: clari.nb.online,clari.nb.top
Subject: ****Adobe, Netscape Partner On WWW Publishing 03/28/95
Date: 28 Mar 95 22:00:53 GMT
Message-ID: <NB950328.1@clarinet.com>
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A., 1995 MAR 28 (NB) -- In a press
conference on the eve of Seybold, Adobe and Netscape announced
their intentions to integrate Acrobat and other Adobe products with
Netscape Navigator in a series of technologies for publishing and
viewing "secure" but "rich" content for the Internet's World Wide
Web (WWW).
At the press event, which was attended by Newsbytes, Adobe's John
Warnock and Chuck Geschke and Netscape Chairman James Clark
provided the press with a four-step integration "roadmap," and also
presented a demo of the expected results of their product plans.
Also at the press conference, Adobe issued materials on about two
dozen other announcements the company will make at Seybold. But
because of time considerations, discussion at the pre-show
gathering centered on only three major announcements: the Netscape
deal, plus pacts with IBM for printing and publishing systems, and
with Agfa for a joint software development specification for
prepress.
Concerning the Netscape collaboration, the officials told the
journalists that, in the first step of the integration process,
Netscape Navigator 1.1 for Windows and the Mac will support Acrobat
Weblink, a software plug-in for linking Acrobat documents to other
documents on the Internet.
Adobe and Netscape will then work together on a future version of
Navigator aimed at letting users "seamlessly" view documents in
Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), a crossplatform file format
created by Acrobat.
"PDF is a dialect of PostScript that makes (documents) electronic,"
Warnock said. PDF, he added, will bring "rich formatting control"
to Netscape.
"This is what `interactive publishing' should be all about, whether
PC, Mac, or mainframe-based," Clark agreed, after demoing an
Associated Press experiment involving the use of PDF and Netscape
to link an online article to a series of home pages, including a
"David Letterman home page." Also during the demo, Clark showed
Netscape/PDF pages produced by the Times Fax service.
Clark characterized PDF as the "de facto" standard for electronic
publishing. For its part, Netscape will bring "data security" that
is direly needed on the Internet, he added.
The Adobe and Netscape officials went on to say that, in the third
stage of integration, the two companies will collaborate on new
Netscape server software. "If you're going to be reading multiple
(PDF) pages, downloading will be faster," Warnock maintained.
The execs reported that, in the final phase of integration, Adobe
will enhance its document authoring tools with greater support of
the ability to import and export PDF files, and will add the
ability to output to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to future
editions of PageMaker and other Adobe products.
"People can't be shut out because of a specification. We will
support HTML in a lot of our applications," Warnock contended.
During a lengthy Q&A that followed, the officials responded to
several questions about the Internet. One reporter asked for their
thoughts on the commercial viability of Internet publishing.
Geschke said that there are many electronic publications on the
Internet today, and indicated that commercial Internet services are
one way to go.
Warnock added that some WWW publications run advertising. The
Daily Telegram, one of these electronic publications, now has
79,000 subscribers, according to the Adobe chief.
Internet advertising can be done in a way that is actually useful
to users, Warnock noted. For example, users can order brochures
online, and receive them back immediately, instead of having to
rely on the postal service.
Another journalist posed a question about the market for electronic
documents. Warnock responded that he already gets all his stock
quotes and "breaking news stories" from online services, and that
when publications like the Wall Street Journal become available
electronically, he will probably read them online, too. "But I
usually find myself a little ahead of `the power curve,'" the Adobe
CEO acknowledged.
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