This week I interviewed Chris Western from tformat, a PTC partner focused on training and services for the Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher (APP) (formerly known as 3B2). Chris was hired at Advent, the original developers of 3B2 as a writer to document the product and it's usage. In his tenure, he not only developed the product documentation but training materials as well. Chris is a specialist in in training on APP (3B2).
APP takes such a different approach, training is critical to develop stylesheets effectively and well. When done well, APP development can be deployed as a "lights out" solution for the most difficult automated publishing tasks. APP is the publishing engine you turn to when you can't achieve what you want to do anywhere else. It's an extremely powerful product.
For example, with APP, you can auto-fill advertising content. it's not uncommon for us to see customers implementing rules like these:
- if one side of the page has dark print, then we want a similar dark ink image on the reverse side of the page because the pages are thin
- If Advertiser A is on the left hand page, then Advertiser B cannot be on the right hand page; and/or it must be N # of pages away.
Also, if an editor wants to hand-tweak the page before the deliverable is finalized, Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher has the capability to do this: editors can move graphics and reflow text if they want to.
It's my pleasure to present Chris Western so he can share his experience with APP and teaching others to use it as well.
Enjoy!
Key Concepts:
arbortext layout developer (ald) (3b2), community