Australian-based Typefi Systems and India-based DiTech Process Solutions have announced a partnership that enables publishers to convert legacy content using Typefi’s flagship product, Typefi Publish.
Typefi Publish automates document layout by taking XML content—prepared in commonly used applications including Microsoft Word, XML editors, databases and spreadsheets—and applying layout and design rules specified in Adobe InDesign templates. Its versatility and ability to implement single-source publishing means that Typefi Publish can be used by a broad range of publishers, commercial enterprises and non-profit organizations to automate production of high-quality print, PDF, EPub and HTML documents. With Typefi Publish, it is the source documents that are formatted, making it easy for content creators to make updates or produce new editions without having to re-do the layout.
With many publishers having legacy publications that were produced in traditional methods/formats and whose content needed to be extracted and formatted (or converted), it is a daunting task that can divert in-house resources from more valuable areas. So many companies have chosen to outsource such conversion projects, which is where the new Typefi-DiTech partnership comes into the picture.
“We find that publishers implementing Typefi Publish prefer to focus on new titles,” says Typefi CEO Chandi Perera. “Now, instead of letting the backlist languish or getting bogged down in bringing old titles into the new system, our data conversion partner DiTech can handle the formatting of this content. Publishers can put their energy into what’s most relevant to them—whether that’s new publications or re-issuing existing publications in modern formats.”
For founder and CEO Nizam Ahmed of DiTech, providing conversion and other digital solutions for publishers is nothing new. “We have plenty of experience in XML and various production formats, and now we have a specialist team for Typefi Publish. By combining this experience and expertise, the DiTech-Typefi partnership offers a number of synergies that will benefit publishers. For instance, Typefi Publish handles complex layouts with graphics and icons, and our graphics team can assist with those. Our indexing team on the other hand can apply the index tags to use with Typefi Publish’s embedded indexin feature.”
APA Publications, publisher of travel content including the well-known Insight Guides, is one Typefi customer that has already taken advantage of the partnership. “We implemented Typefi Publish in 2011, and engaged DiTech to handle the backlist conversion,” says APA managing director Katharine Leck, who is “extremely pleased with the quality of DiTech’s work, which enabled us to bring those older titles into our new Typefi workflow easily and quickly. This allows our in-house editorial team to focus on updating that content for new editions, where needed. Once ready, we were able to apply our design templates for print and e-books. Without DiTech and Typefi, this would have been a mammoth and costly task.” (A case study of the Typefi implementation at APA is available here).
More information on Typefi Systems and DiTech Process Solutions can be found from their respective Web sites, www.typefi.com and www.ditechps.com.
