Lead Stories:
XML Revives Rare Botanical Books
Shedding Those Excess Bytes
TI's Tech Docs Travel At The Speed Of Light

Plus:
New Book Conversion Service Ideal For Publishers And Authors
XML To PDF Using XSL-FO Tutorial
Get Your Articles Published In DCLnews

Other News:
Australian Tiger Helicopter Manual Goes Electronic
Teacher Pushes For E-Textbook Accessibility Legislation
50 Million Historical Documents Go Online
Battlefield Gets Wired
Open eBook Releases New XML Spec
E-Book Sales On The Up According To New Figures

Lead Stories:

XML Revives Rare Botanical Books
Date: 4.29.2003, DCLnews Inside Story

The Rare Book Digitization Project at the New York Botanical Garden is making rare books by French botanist Andre Michaux available to all over the Internet. "Our copies are rare and fragile so this is a way to make them available to anyone wanting to use them for research projects or personal study," says Heather Rolen, Library Digitization Specialist at the New York Botanical Garden. More.

Shedding Those Excess Bytes
Date: 4.29.2003, DCLnews Exclusive

Scanned documents are notoriously large in size and take a long time to transmit by fax or the Internet. But new image compression software from CVISION Technologies is overcoming the "World Wide Wait" by throwing off excess bytes in a big way. "With the latest JBIG2 compression technology, our PdfCompressor will shrink a 10-page full-color PDF brochure from 7,200 KBytes to 825KBytes," says Ari Gross, CTO at CVISION. "That makes a lot of difference to transmission times." More

TI's Tech Docs Travel At The Speed Of Light
Date: 4.29.2003, DCLnews Guest Article

Texas Instruments are using an XML-based solution from LightSpeed Software to speed up and streamline the production of technical documents - saving the firm both time and money. "We expect this new system to free up valuable engineering resources, allowing them to spend more time on designing products and less on creating technical documentation," says Bill Breden, Texas Instruments Manager, in a guest article specially prepared for DCLnews. More

Plus:

New Book Conversion Service Ideal For Publishers And Authors
Date: 4.29.2003, DCLnews

Last month, Data Conversion Laboratory launched a new web-based service called Books2Bytes, which converts printed books and typed manuscripts into electronic files (plain text or Microsoft Word). Back catalog or out-of-print titles can then be revived by releasing them as e-books or as new editions.

Books2Bytes is designed to process smaller orders (as little as 1 or 2 books) ... making the service ideal for authors, publishers, trade and scientific associations, attorneys ... and anyone else with paper documents that need to be turned into computer files. More

XML To PDF Using XSL-FO Tutorial
Date: 3.30.2003, DCLnews Extra

If your content is stored in XML, and you need to create high quality print and online pages, a good option is to use XSL Formatting Objects, or XSL-FO. To read an in-depth tutorial on the subject, go to PerfectXML.com.

Get Your Articles Published In DCLnews
Date: 3.25.2003, DCLnews

Got something to say? If so, DCLnews accepts article submissions on XML and document technology subjects. Please send a brief synopsis (two or three paragraphs), along with your details, to DCLnews editorial. We don't offer payment, but will list your website and company details at the end of your article.

Other News:

Australian Tiger Helicopter Manual Goes Electronic
Date: 3.25.2003, Australian IT

Australia's Defense Air Publications Agency has introduced a $2 million document management system. This comes in preparation for the delivery of 22 Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopters, which are part of the $1.3 billion Project AIR 87. For the first time in Australia, the DAPA project, scheduled to begin in December 2004, will use Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals, or IETMs.

IETMs compress multi-volume print technical manuals onto a handful of CD-ROMs, complete with text, graphics, and multi-media. Essentially large databases, IETMs make it easier and cheaper to keep manuals up-to-date. More.

Teacher Pushes For E-Textbook Accessibility Legislation
Date: 3.29.2003, The Arizona Republic

A special education teacher from Arizona is the driving force behind a bill that would allow children with disabilities to get textbooks on electronic computer files - e-textbooks. Mary Platner persevered until she got legislators to back a textbook accessibility bill. It is an amendment to Arizona's 1997 Braille Bill, which says that publishers who sell textbooks in Arizona must supply a computer disk from which Braille books can be produced. An estimated 40,000 students with learning disabilities, including autism, mental retardation, and orthopedic and visual impairments, would benefit from the amended legislation. More.

>>> More on accessibility next month when we present DCL's own Mikail Vaysbukh's special report on what is involved in converting textbooks to accessible electronic formats. Don't miss it.

50 Million Historical Documents Go Online
Date: 4.4.2003 MSNBC News

Researchers and genealogists can now use the Internet to check more than 50 million historical records at the National Archives - from civil war battles to family immigration files. Before the system became available, people had to either visit the archives and spend hours trawling through documents or request the files by telephone and pay to have them mailed. "Now, people can pull these electronic records at their own convenience," said Michael Carlson, electronic and special media records director for the Archives. "It's totally self-service from your desktop."

It is expected that the service will be popular with veterans in particular because of all the information related to military action, casualties, and POWs. More.

Battlefield Gets Wired
Date: 4.25.2003, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Skilled soldiers and airmen were critical to the quick conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom. But networked information and wireless technology also played a critical role. The three week victory was spurred by internetworked tanks on the ground, satellite-linked robot eyes in the sky, and by footsoldiers linked by wireless personal intercoms.

Not only that, but John Garstka, an assistant director in the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation, revealed that every combat leader's vehicle was wired into a network. Each vehicle glowed as a "friendly" blue blip on the computer battle maps of commanders, bomber dispatches, and fighter pilots overhead. Clicking on one of the blue blips would send an AOL-style instant message to the vehicle's crew in real time. Supremacy in Operation Iraqi Freedom depended less on sheer numbers of soldiers, planes, and tanks - even on space age weapons - and more on information power. More.

Open eBook Releases New XML Spec
Date: 4.2.2003, AtNewYork.com

The Open eBook Forum, a group of publishers, software makers, and interest groups, has put forward a new XML specification that will work with most e-book formats and reading devices. Called the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS), the latest version, 1.2, can directly use in-house XML languages with little or no changes, the group said.

Allen Renear, a professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois, and chair of the OEBF Publication Structure Working Group, said the latest specification "allows publishers to easily present their content on almost any e-book device." Kelly Leonard, executive director at AOL Time Warner Book Group, added: "The introduction of the OeBPS will simplify the e-book conversion process for publishers, thus enabling us to get product to our customers more quickly and easily." More.

E-Book Sales On The Up According To New Figures
Date: 3.18.2003, Association of American Publishers

Figures from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) reveal that e-book sales have taken an impressive upward turn. At the beginning of 2003 sales were up by 1,447.4 percent. The electronic book sector of publishing grew from $211,000 in net sales in January 2002 to slightly more than $3.3 million in January 2003.

The AAP say this is a sign that consumer interest in e-books is growing. But it should be remembered that the statistics were drawn from the sales figures of six publishers - FSG, HarperCollins, Wiley, Random House, St. Martin's Press, and Simon & Schuster. These are the biggest, but not the only players in the e-book market. So it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions just yet. But it is good news. And should put paid to the media skepticism about e-books that has been so rife over the last couple of years. More.

Asides:

Confessions Of A Tea Addict
Date: 4.21.2003, DiscoveryHealth.com

Many writers are notoriously fuelled by alcohol. Me? Well, I don't mind the odd drop of Famous Grouse whisky. But my real drug of choice is tea - and lots of it (12 cups a day on average). I thought this was unhealthy ... if not downright dangerous ... after a U.K. publisher told me they knew someone who died of drinking too much tea. But now, at last, the truth is out. Tea is officially good for you. Not just green, but black too.

U.S. researchers say it boosts the immune system. Volunteers who were asked to drink 20 ounces of black tea a day demonstrated stronger immune responses to infection than they had previously, or than a control group of coffee drinkers. "Our research suggest that when tea drinkers become exposed to germs, some, but not all, may be protected from getting sick," said Jack Bukowski, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. More.