The Second Wave of Japanese Desktop Publishing

6 July 2003

The Japanese market has lagged somewhat behind the trend in Europe and America for the adoption of desktop workstations in the publishing industry, sticking with tried and tested proprietory systems to a very large extent.

In this extended feature article Joel Breckinridge, who has over 15 years experience of the Japanese design and prepress industries, looks at the reasons for this. He also takes a look at some breaking technologies which may mean that the workflows we take for granted in the West may soon enter the world of complex scripts – and even make a good job of adapting to the local demands involved.

Read the rest of this article:

Conclusion 06/07/2003
Weight of technology will lead to gradual ongoing changes

Cultural differences 06/07/2003
Conservative attitudes amongst managers and professionals need to be overcome

Japanese layout and the promise of InDesign J 06/07/2003
Breakthrough as applications begin to adopt Japanese methods rather than adapted Latin

GX legacies 06/07/2003
Dodging the OpenType juggernaut with ATSUI and MacOS X

Dueling fixes 06/07/2003
Competing standards and glyph sets muddy the waters

The font technology failure 06/07/2003
Models adapted from Latin typography don’t fulfill expections of quality in the Japanese market

It’s the economy… 06/07/2003
The publishing and advertising industries still struggle to pay off debts incurred during the 1990s

Input

Joel Breckinridge e:jbreckinridge@mac.com

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