K4 Publishing System now available for Adobe InDesign CS2

K4 Publishing System now available for Adobe InDesign CS2 - Accelerated Print and Web Publishing Workflows With K4 Version 5.5 and Adobe Creative Suite 2

Press Release

Hamburg, Germany–(QUARKvsINDESIGN.com)–May 24th, 2005–InDesign and InCopy solu­tion provider SoftCare today announced K4 Publishing System ver­sion 5.5, ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with Adobe Creative Suite 2. K4, a stan­dard edi­to­r­i­al sys­tem for mag­a­zines and cre­ative agen­cies, com­bines lay­out and design soft­ware Adobe InDesign CS2 with Adobe InCopy CS2, a pro­fes­sion­al writ­ing and edit­ing pro­gram that tight­ly inte­grates with InDesign. As one of the first InDesign plug-in devel­op­ers, SoftCare sup­ports as usu­al prompt­ly and entire­ly the new ver­sions of Adobe InDesign and InCopy soft­ware with the K4 Publishing System. Additionally, K4 remains com­pat­i­ble with InDesign CS and InCopy CS. This com­bi­na­tion offers pub­lish­ing hous­es, cre­ative agen­cies and cor­po­ra­tions the pos­si­bil­i­ty to ben­e­fit from Adobe Creative Suite 2 right after its release or to con­tin­ue using Adobe Creative Suite with the new ver­sion of K4.

One of the sen­sa­tion­al new fea­tures in InCopy CS2 allows edi­tors to place and scale images direct­ly in InCopy. Other fea­tures, which are sup­port­ed both for InDesign CS2 and InCopy CS2, include dynam­ic foot­note sup­port with pre­ferred num­ber­ing and lay­out options. Editors can also link to mul­ti­ple user dic­tio­nar­ies and import and export word lists for easy exchange with col­leagues. These fea­tures in com­bi­na­tion with K4 help fur­ther improve the edi­to­r­i­al work­flow and keep users on the cut­ting edge of tech­no­log­i­cal enhancements. 

An option­al add-on pro­duc­tion tool in K4 ver­sion 5.5 that helps increase effi­cien­cy is the new K4 XML-Exporter. This K4 mod­ule exports all K4 objects to a stan­dard­ized out­put for­mat. Data can be re-used auto­mat­i­cal­ly for archiv­ing, syn­di­ca­tion, Web pub­lish­ing or trans­ferred to asset man­age­ment sys­tems. K4 XML-Exporter trans­forms all data into an open XML for­mat defined by SoftCare. This inter­me­di­ate for­mat is designed to pro­vide every­thing that may be need­ed for a lat­er XSL trans­for­ma­tion into a final XML for­mat for a pub­lish­er’s indi­vid­ual needs. K4 XML-Exporter rep­re­sents a cost-effective means to re-use issue-related data and to archive the data for lat­er re-use. Furthermore, InDesign and InCopy users can cre­ate and save text ele­ments that will not appear on the print­ed page. Editors are now able to pre­pare both the print issue and the online issue at the same time, includ­ing items such as hyper­links or Web teasers. 

“InDesign CS2 and InCopy CS2 increase the effi­cien­cy of col­lab­o­ra­tive pub­lish­ing process­es with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the qual­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als,” said Chad Siegel, Product man­ag­er, Professional Publishing Solutions at Adobe. “Medium-to-large sized pub­lish­ers can sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit from the advanced col­lab­o­ra­tion fea­tures found in SoftCare’s edi­to­r­i­al solutions.”

Availability

K4 Publishing System ver­sion 5.5 and the option­al K4 XML-Exporter are avail­able from SoftCare’s inte­gra­tion part­ners world­wide. Customers using K4 ver­sion 5.0 or high­er are eli­gi­ble to receive a free update under the main­te­nance agree­ment and can pur­chase K4 XML-Exporter as an option. K4 sup­ports Mac OS X, includ­ing Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, and Windows clients in mixed plat­form envi­ron­ments. The serv­er soft­ware is avail­able for Mac OS X Server, Windows, SUN Solaris and Linux.

A detailed list of the new fea­tures can be down­loaded at: http://​www​.k4pub​lish​ingsys​tem​.com

About K4 Publishing System

The award-winning K4 Publishing System is a stan­dard solu­tion for pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ing work­flows built around Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy and was the first edi­to­r­i­al sys­tem for InDesign on the mar­ket. With its mul­ti­level secu­ri­ty con­trols and robust cus­tomiza­tion options, K4 sup­ports a trans­par­ent and secure pro­duc­tion work­flow for indi­vid­ual work­groups or entire pub­lish­ing enter­pris­es, allow­ing a simul­ta­ne­ous work­flow between lay­out and edi­to­r­i­al. K4 offers work­flow capa­bil­i­ties for images and ads as well as for oth­er file types such as word pro­cess­ing or spread­sheet files. It offers sup­port for region­al edi­tions and multi-language pub­li­ca­tions, email noti­fi­ca­tion of assign­ments, dead­line man­age­ment and much more. Since 1999, K4 has been suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed at mag­a­zine, news­pa­per and book pub­lish­ing sites rang­ing in size from 10 to more than 250 users.

About SoftCare

SoftCare was found­ed in 1990 and is a lead­ing devel­op­er of work­flow solu­tions for the pub­lish­ing indus­try, help­ing mag­a­zine and news­pa­per pub­lish­ers work more effi­cient­ly. SoftCare’s flag­ship prod­uct is the award-winning K4 Publishing System, the first edi­to­r­i­al sys­tem for pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ing work­flows based on Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy. SoftCare teams up with trained K4 System Integrators through­out Europe and the Americas to ensure high-quality ser­vice and sup­port for the sys­tem on a local lev­el. More than 70 cus­tomers world­wide use K4 to stream­line their pro­duc­tion process, includ­ing Metro Newspapers and Time Out New York, USA, Gruner+Jahr Wirtschaftspresse and Hubert Burda Media, Germany, and IDG Communications AG, Switzerland.