November 18, 1996

AII Post-RIP Assembly facilitates workflow

Impose, step-repeat, proof after RIP

This capability, which AII is marketing as Post-RIP Assembly among its commercial customers, is similar to the Bitmap Stitching feature being offered to its newspaper customers. It minimizes the processing necessary to output certain types of jobs.

For example, for label production and other applications involving step-and-repeat operation, Post-RIP Assembly requires only that an element be rasterized once, after which it can be repeated horizontally and vertically any number of times without being rasterizing again. (This contrasts with the methodology of the step-and-repeat software Agfa offers with its large-format Avantra imagesetters. It requires that an entire row of elements be rasterized; that row is then repeated.)

For color proofing, AII recombines the rasterized CMYK data and prints them on an HP DesignJet 350 using Radiance color-matching software from SeeColor. A software algorithm downsamples the resolution of the raster data for the 300-dpi DesignJet, without having to rasterize again for the different resolution.

It is possible also to replace part of a page by substituting one rasterized block for another one based on xy coordinate positioning.

Other post-RIP capabilities include rotating a page 90 degrees and replacing an entire page within an imposed job.

Tracking. The program includes facilities for tracking the elements of a publication being output, including reporting where each element resides (with filters available to limit the display to items conforming to certain criteria), which publication and edition each one belongs to, the output device each was sent to, etc. It also provides an error queue for jobs that fail to output and an option to specify how long jobs should be held after output and prior to purging.

Post-RIP Assembly, which was demonstrated to the commercial market at Graph Expo, is being installed at a commercial site in Canada. It runs on a DEC Alpha or Intel Pentium server. AII recommends dedicating one server to the RIP function and another one to Post-RIP Assembly. The price ranges from $35,000 to $50,000, depending on the platform.

Consolidation status. AII also reported that it has completed the consolidation of the Autologic and Information International operations into one facility at the former Autologic location in Thousand Oaks, CA. The combined company has about 450 employees.

One project that hasn't been completed, though, is the provision of identical functionality for both the ex-Information International Sparc RIP and the ex-Autologic Alpha RIP. Both use Harlequin interpreters, but the Sparc RIP lagged behind the Alpha RIP in functionality.