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Mechanical versus digital publishing
Thursday, January 08, 2009 — posted by Sarah O'Keefe
My last XML Strategist article (PDF) briefly mentioned Gutenberg and movable type before moving on to the focus of the article--a discussion of the implications of XML publishing and the similarities with Gutenberg's efforts. The Biblical Illuminator's Guild blog provides a much more detailed discussion of the technical challenges solved in production of the Gutenberg Bible, including:Printer's ink. Gutenberg had to develop a new kind of ink, an oil-based one (as over against the traditional water-based ink used in manuscripts), so that it would stick better to the metal types. [...]Read the whole thing. I think for many of us, the physical process of printing is a complete abstraction, except for the occasional toner cartridge replacement.
Font. The first part of the Gutenberg idea was using a single, hand-carved character to create identical copies of itself. Cutting a single letter could take a craftsman a day of work. A single page taking 2500 letters, crafting per page was unattainable. A less labor intensive method of reproduction was needed. Copies were produced by stamping the original into a iron plate, called a matrix. A rectangular tube was then connected to the matrix, creating a container in which molten lead could be poured. Once cooled, the solid lead form was released from the tube. The end result was a rectangular block of lead with the form of the desired character protruding from the end. This piece of type could be put in a line, facing up, with other pieces of type. These lines were arranged to form blocks of text, which could be inked and pressed against paper, transferring the desired text to the paper. Each unique character requires a master piece of type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g. the sequence 'fi' combined in one character, commonly used in writing) the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters.
Contrast that with a recent article on Read/Write Web by Alex Isold, Brave New World: More Digital, Less Physical:
The main thing we learned is patterns in physical objects. We know that we can bend them under certain conditions. We know that there is friction. We know that things react differently to heat. [...] These patterns get wired into our brains and help us live our daily lives.And this interesting note in comment #20:
Computers have software inside that does not behave like physical objects do. The key thing about software is [...] that the conventional laws of physics do not apply to it. [...] It is hard for people with brains trained to deal with physical things to understand how software works.
[...]
Our kids are growing up native to this new digital world. To them, the new rules of digital physics are what the rules of physical physics are to us. They take these new rules for granted, because that is just how all our brains work.
Your comments about how software has been designed to replicate physical effects, such as the bounce in the iPhone, are an indication that we need our software to conform to the way we see the world, not that we are beginning to conform to a new paradigm of software.Like many of you, I grudgingly operate a Parental Technical Support hotline. My four-year-old is better at operating computers than her grandparents -- probably because she's never existed in a world without computers. For her, computers are obvious.
Now, if we look at the world of publishing, we are currently in the midst of an enormous paradigm shift. More than 1000 years ago, we replaced scrolls with books. Since then, we have been operating with books. The process of creating books has evolved from hand-copying to printing to desktop publishing, but the books themselves haven't changed much. (I did find it interesting that the Gutenberg Bible does not have page numbers. Those came along later in the sixteenth century, according to this article.) Books are obvious. We've been using them all our lives and so have our parents, grandparents, and ancestors.
In the 1980s, we shifted from mechanical production (cut and paste, galleys, etc.) to computer-based production (desktop publishing). Again, the process of creating books changed, but the end result was still a book. (Perhaps a book with horrid layout and ransom-note fonts, but that's a discussion for another day.)
And this brings me to the challenges we face today. In addition to another paradigm shift in publishing -- this time from desktop publishing to structured authoring -- we have a second, more fundamental shift. In addition to (or perhaps instead of) producing books, we must now produce digital information -- online help, wikis, forums, email, databases, and much more. We don't have hundreds of years of collective experience to draw upon in figuring out how digital information should work.
Thus, we see efforts to fall back on the book paradigm. Just as computers have "desktops" and "folders" in an effort to make them more understandable, we have e-books with "pages" and "bookmarks."
What will truly digital publishing look like when we let go of the requirements of a paper book and embrace the possibilities of digital information fully?
Labels: analysis, change management, history, structured authoring
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