1996 – Brisque, QXP 3.3 & Verdana
• QuarkXPress 3.3 ships and remains the leading page design tool for many years.
• Scitex releases Brisque, a Unix-based workflow system that uses CT/LW as its internal file format. This popular digital front-end which reaches an installed based of around 7000 users remains in active development until 2002.
• Another new Scitex product that will become very popular and win numerous awards is the EVERSMART scanner.
• Microsoft include Microsoft Publisher in the Small Business Edition of Office ’97.
• The $4295 Barco Personal Calibrator is a typical example of Barco’s range of high-end monitors for color-critical retouching work. LaCie and Eizo are competing popular brands.
• Adobe and Microsoft surprise the entire industry by announcing the joint development of a new font format codenamed OpenType. Its specs are published in 1997 but the first fonts only become available in 2000.
• The HP 750/755C inkjet printer is a popular choice of imposition proofing as well as the occasional poster job.
• Heidelberger Druckmaschinen acquires Linotype-Hell.
• Agfa introduces the Avantra 30, a 4-up imagesetter which simply makes it to this overview because it is my personal favorite – the best imagesetter that I have ever used.
• Matthew Carter, with the help of Tom Rickner, designs the Verdana typeface for Microsoft. Since then it has been included in all versions of Windows, Office and Internet Explorer.
• Global Graphics is founded in Nancy, France. After a series of acquisitions, including that of Harlequin Group Plc in 1999, it becomes a major player in the prepress software market.
• The Taliban seizes Kabul.
• There is an outbreak of mad cow disease in Great-Britain.
• The Iraq army attacks the Iraqi Kurdish enclave.
• Gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur is killed in a drive-by shooting.
• In the USA more e-mail is sent than postal mail.
Scitex … ah, the good old days. CT stood for “con-tone” which was short for continuous tone or pixel-based art at 304.6 dpi up to 16-bit. Which could really mess you up if you spec’d re-sizing with 300 dpi instead. LW stood for a Line-Work file which was a much higher resolution but only 8-bit (255 levels). These files were worked independently and then combined at the end with the help of a “Page-Works” file which kept the two files in the proper coordinates. Now I was a Mac guy at the time but one should always “know thy enemy.”