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Time of Entry: 2007 10 19 UT - by fc

Hi Erik

Very good review. One thing I would like to point out is the lack of focus on the fact that the layout application being chosen has a huge influence on how good the systems are, because users canget better results in certain apps, so I would like to see a rating that includes this as well.

It’s a shame you did the review just before SCE v.5 being released...I would assume you will cover this change when the release is made public.

Cheers
Fraser

Time of Entry: 2007 10 20 UT - by Erik Vlietinck

Thanks.

The layout application has been analysed in a separate report, as you can see from the list in “Premium Content”. I know a lot of you think I was biased there, but I wasn’t. Even if you don’t agree with my test setup and conclusions, it’s a fact that QuarkXPress 7 and Indesign CS3 don’t differ much in waht you can accomplish with them --within the same time frame.

As for Smart Connection 5: I had the specs of the new version and didn’t think it necessary to update my report just for those few new features in there --basically, a new groupage functionality that I don’t think will change the outcome of the report much.

Time of Entry: 2007 10 20 UT - by fc

I beg to differ about v.5 There has been a huge change/upgrade in the web editor, and with the development of the Adobe AIR application, Lucina, and the emergence of specific verticals for mags, newspapers, online etc, these changes would have to influence the reprot, even in a moderate way. If you haven’t seen ucina, then the biggest feature change since WWSCE was launched has been missed.

Additionally, the licensing administraion has changed, so the admin implications are quite important from a rollout point of view.

In terms of replication, WWSCE v.5 has a replication feature using Smart Mover, that was not in the v.4.x product, so you might need to mention this as well. It syncs the publication, or whole db for that matter based on simple or complex conditions.

As far as 3rd party integration, if you had called WW and asked, you would have found that Dutch Software, Tell, Van Gennap (PlanMaker using the WWSCE db), Journal Designer and others already have tight integrations. I saw all of these in Barcelona at the WW conference, so the information is freely available.

Your report on versioning is incorrect. There is full version control in WWSCE which has nothing to do with VersionCue. All verisons are stored in the database and are acessible to the users depending on their access rights. It is a clean and simple process. Bridge has no connection to the SCE db so it has no relevance in this space....yet.

On comment about the applications is that with the QPS system, you have several desktop applications to support. In the case of WWSCE, you have 2 plugins, which are hosted by InDesign and InCopy, which means the users are not going from client app to client app to client app. Sure enough, Lucina will see this change to introduce a 3rd applications, but WWSCE would have to be easirer to support and easier for the user as they don’t hopfrom app to app.

Still, your review was very useful. I don’t see any bias toward QPS...the only thing missing is the ciurrency of the comparisons.

Time of Entry: 2007 10 21 UT - by Erik Vlietinck

Thanks for your comments, fc.

I can assure you that I am in close and continuous contact with both PR, Development, and Management at WoodWing Software and that, if the changes would be so dramatic as you are explaining, they would surely have told me --but they haven’t. Instead, the comments were more along the line that these changes were not so dramatic that I would have had to withold the report.

Smart Mover: I don’t know if I explicitly mentioned it, but I had Smart Mover on the test system. It more or less works like K4’s mass upload application.

The part on version control in the report covering Smart Connection Enterprise might be confusing --you’re absolutely correct there. It seems I have been confusing Smart Connection’s own versioning with VersionCue --a risk of being presented with two versioning systems that don’t relate to each other. I will adjust the report accordingly.

Your remark on having to hop across several applications is moot in my opinion. The plug-ins in Smart Connection Enterprise also tie together two applications, and you seem to rule out the management interface --the only difference with QPS being that it’s accessed solely from the web browser. K4 ties together 2 applications as well. QPS ditto. The only difference between the 3 is that Smart Connection and K4 have different apps to mass upload assets, whereas QPS seems to rely on 3d parties to accomplish that task --or on the admin filling the database with the migration tool. I did not cover the latter in the report.

So, hopping from one app to another is simply something that you do in QPS as well as in K4 or SCE. Just as much or just as little. Besides, you can in all three systems simply replace InCopy/QuarkCopyDesk with InDesign/QuarkXPress, and use these applications for editing.

As for Lucina or Ucina, I take it you’re referring to the Smart Newspapers system that’s been built on Smart Connection Enterprise? This is a completely new product that has only just been released, and it’s also not for general publishing --the report is aimed at general publishing, not at this new publishing paradigm that WoodWing is now going to support.

To wrap this up, and to make this absolutely clear: my comparisons were current in as much as the developers supported me with their latest systems. As I said, I have very close contacts with WoodWing, and they did not think it necessary to provide me with a copy of the latest update of Smart Connection. If the system would have been so dramatically new as fc is suggesting, it would have been in their interest to at least send me details about this update.

Time of Entry: 2007 10 21 UT - by fc

I spent 3 hours with the Chairman of WW in September in their head office in NL, following 5 days staight in Barcelona with 60 other WW bodies of various fields of expertise. I can assure you that the changes from v.4.x to v.5 are very much more than you make it out. I have seen the changes, whereas you have only heard of the changes.

The SmartMover application which provides the replciation of issues or whole servers in v.5 is a different part of the application than is used for uploading. Incidentally, uploading can be done in the web browser as well, in v.4.x and v.5.

Smartmover also allows you to “watch” email accounts and automatically upload the contents of the email and checkit into the system as an article. I guess this feature wasn’t worth mentioning either. How about Smartmover being able to automatically import XML and “translating” it ont he fly to strip out the XML tags and check it into the system as an article. The number of features that are in Smartmover make it very powerful, leveraging SOAP and SQL.

Speaking of web browsers, the web editor in v.5 has improved out of sight. One thing your contacts should have mentioned. There is a new WYSIWYG display for the text being edited, alongside a fully synced preview of the page on the RHS of the edit panel. There is also a cache of the text that you are typing on screen so if your browser crashes or you forget to save and quit the browser, the text is saved as a draft, so all of your hard work can be retireved on next login. This is surely worth mentioning.

The product name Lucina is a code name which was publicly announced at the WW conference in September, is for all of the verticals, not just newspapers. In this sense, it is very much general publishing, therefore absolutely relevant to the readers of the report.

Lucina is a very powerful “collection” point application where a user can host snippets of text, pics, urls etc etc etc, and then decide later when to upload to a section in the server. In terms of how this sets WWSCE aside from the rest, time will show.

Getting back to the Qk vs ID, there is no contest if the major publishers in the magazine industry have any say about this. Time Inc knew about QPS 7 ect for quite a while and still decided to go with WWSCE. I don’t wonder why, but it is worth looking into it.

One last thing that isn’t mentioned in the article. The checkin dialogue can be customised so that certain metadata becomes mandatory to enter in before a file is checked in, depending on what status the file is.

Once again, I think your report was very good indeed. I’m still concerned that the v.5 part didn’t rate highly enough to include. Give your WW sources a rev.