Intergraph Corp, Huntsville, Alabama is trying to push its way into lucrative US government contracts with a computer-integrated publishing system which, it claims, addresses the major publishing needs of government and industrial organisations. Intergraph president Jim Meadlock said the company’s Distributed Publishing System reflects a long-term strategy to build an integrated system for publishing and information management, adding that initial modules of the Intergraph workstation-based software will be delivered next month. Meadlock said the database-oriented system distributes the publishing function within an organisation’s overall workflow. To do this extensive integration and data management are required. The integration occurs at three levels: integration within the publishing workflow, all of the Distributed Publishing System’s software modules being based on a common data structure; integration of publishing with the engineering workflow – Intergraph claims its publishing system is compatible with the company’s applications software – both Intergraph Unix-based and VAX-based workstations – and it also has a scanning subsystem; and integration of publishing with the corporate workflow. The Distributed Publishing System uses communication links to mainframes, workstations and personal computers and standard data structures to exchange text, vector graphics, raster graphics and database information. At the same time, an Informix-based relational database management and tracking system manages documents and illustrations throughout their production cycles. Distributed publishing activities are co-ordinated across an Ethernet network. The first four modules of the Distributed Publishing System are: DP/Publisher – general-purpose composition and pagination software, available this month for $2,000; DP/Paint: raster paint-and-draw software also available this month for $800; DP/Presenter – software for preparing spreadsheet-driven charts, plus tools for graphics editing, available in July at a price of $2,000; DP/Manager – software for the tracking and management of documents and illustrations and for production management, available in the third quarter at $2,000 per workstation user, or $15,000 to $19,000 per host processor (depending upon the host).
